Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter, Part 7

Gee, this mortgage paperwork thing is starting to get a mite bit out of control here, isn't it?

Attorneys general in at least six states, including Massachusetts, Iowa, Florida and Illinois, are investigating improper foreclosure practices. Last week, Jennifer Brunner, the secretary of state of Ohio, referred examples of what her office considers possible notary abuse by Chase Home Mortgage to federal prosecutors for investigation.

The implications are not yet clear for borrowers who have been evicted from their homes as a result of improper filings. But legal experts say that courts may impose sanctions on lenders or their representatives or may force banks to pay borrowers’ legal costs in these cases.

Judges may dismiss the foreclosures altogether, barring lenders from refiling and awarding the home to the borrower. That would create a loss for the lender or investor holding the note underlying the property. Almost certainly, lawyers say, lawsuits on behalf of borrowers will multiply. 

Ding ding ding!  Here's your nightmare scenario for the banks.  Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of foreclosures are dismissed and the borrower is awarded the deed to the home.  Banks lose billions in real estate assets on the books.  That huge flushing sound you hear is the banking industry testing those new too big to fail regs.

In Florida, problems with foreclosure cases are especially acute. A recent sample of foreclosure cases in the 12th Judicial Circuit of Florida showed that 20 percent of those set for summary judgment involved deficient documents, according to chief judge Lee E. Haworth.

“We have sent repeated notices to law firms saying, ‘You are not following the rules, and if you don’t clean up your act, we are going to impose sanctions on you,’ ” Mr. Haworth said in an interview. “They say, ‘We’ll fix it, we’ll fix it, we’ll fix it.’ But they don’t.”

As a result, Mr. Haworth said, on Sept. 17, Harry Rapkin, a judge overseeing foreclosures in the district, dismissed 61 foreclosure cases. The plaintiffs can refile but they need to pay new filing fees, Mr. Haworth said. 

This is just one judge in one state.  How many more lawsuits and foreclosure changes will the industry go through?  What bank in their right mind is going to risk foreclosure proceedings now?  Who is going to risk buying a foreclosed property if you can't be sure the bank really is able to foreclose and sell to you?  That entire sector of the housing market vanishes overnight.

The almost-dead housing market is now deep into corpse territory from this.  That's going to lead to a massive drop in housing prices...no buyers.  Can't be sure if the seller actually has the deed anymore, so you can't risk buying.  Game over.

Now the press is starting to get wind of how lethal this is going to be to the economy, and a month before the midterm elections to boot.

Strap in, kids.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft believes he's discovered proof of insidious socialism in schools over the weekend.

High School kids are forced to attend the one Nation rally in order to graduate. SSL (Student Service Learning) hours are required by many state governments to graduate High School, so kids must attend these rallies. Apparently, the organizers were willing to use any means to bring thousands to the rally.

Yes, because the only possible way they could have gotten credit for these hours that teachers would have accepted is this rally and this rally only, therefore they were forced to come to Washington DC in order to graduate.

Well, let's see what nearby Montgomery County, Maryland's school district web site says you need to do to earn these Student Service Learning hours, shall we?

Consider things that interest you, activities you enjoy, areas you are curious about or a specific organization you want to work with. All SSL must be done with nonprofit, tax exempt organizations.

Oh wait, I thought they were forced to come to the One Nation Rally.

Check organizations that are tagged, "Approved SSL MCPS" and opportunities that are tagged, "MCPS SSL Approved" at this website.

Aha, so, the only activity is the One Nation Rally, right? What if the activity I want to perform isn't tagged, huh? HUH, YOU COMMIE PINKOS?!?!

Learn what is expected from the organization, complete a Request for SSL Pre approval and submit it to your school SSL Coordinator PRIOR TO BEGINNING service.

Oh. So you mean I can have to school look over a new activity with a non-profit of my choice then to get credit then...well gosh that's pretty fair and everything.

I guess that means Jim Hoft is full of crap then, huh.

There's a shocker. This isn't even bad Obama Derangement Syndrome, it's just...stupid.

Megster's Millions

Digby is convinced that Meg Whitman spending $104 million of her own money on her campaign for Governor of California is disastrous.

It's not like we're exactly living in good times here in California. I think this is a deadly strategy. The optics are just terrible and I suspect that subliminally people find it horrific that she's spending like a drunken sailor in the middle of a terrible recession. 

I disagree completely for the simple reason that what Whitman is doing can easily sold as the ultimate Galtie frontier.  What's more glibertarian than using your own fortune to finance your own campaign?  If a Democrat does it, it's the moneyed elite.  If Meg Whitman does it, is she not entitled to the sweat of her own brow?

It's the fact that Meggy here has a hundred million bucks to spend.  She got that money from being CEO of eBay.  That makes her like the smartest Galtie in the world.

Now if she was former CEO of Goldman Sachs, things would be different.  But the media has been talking about Megster's Millions for the entire campaign, and nobody seems to care in California.  She's spending her own money.  That's not a crime unless you're a Democrat.

Your Even A Stopped Clock Can Be Right Alert Of The Day

Ross Douthat pulls his head out of his ass just long enough to actually pen an insightful column on Obama.

The party’s centrists, from Blue Dog Democrats to Wall Street, insist that he’s turned out to be far more liberal than they expected. The health care bill was too expensive. The deficits are too big. He’s been too hard on business interests, and on Israel. And what happened to bipartisanship?

On the left, meanwhile, Obama is deemed a disappointment for all the things he hasn’t done. The stimulus should have been bigger. The financial reforms should have been tougher. He should have withdrawn from Afghanistan. He should have taken the fight to the Republicans, instead of letting them obstruct.

Both these arguments are self-serving, of course — a way for activists on both sides to imply, none too subtly, that the Democrats’ dispiriting poll numbers are all the other faction’s fault. 

He's got that pegged correctly.  Who knew?  It gets better, however:

Can Obama rebuild his coalition? Perhaps, but not the way he did the first time. He won the White House by being all things to all Democrats (and quite a few independents and even Republicans as well), by making each faction see its own values reflected in his candidacy.

But the days of soaring above the grubbiness of politics are over. If Obama wants to save his presidency, he may have to do it the old-fashioned way: not by transcending his party’s divisions, but by uniting his supporters around their common fears. 

And sadly, that's exactly what we've become.  Not the party of Hope and Change, but the party of "Dear God, don't let these Republican assholes destroy our country!"

That has been the real Republican victory, getting Democrats themselves to lead the way in reducing the Obama agenda to "I don't care for what he has done but at least he's not insane!"

And as much as it grinds my gears, Ross Douthat is completely right.  We're cowering, sniveling, broken people who are pleading for sanity in the middle of Bedlam.

Wage Slaves

Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon raised the possibility of lowering or eliminating the minimum wage last week in Connecticut if elected, and now Alaska Republican Senate Candidate Joe Miller is going all in, adding the minimum wage to his long lost of things that are "illegal under the Constitution" and should be solely up to states.

Over the weekend, extremist Senate candidate Joe Miller (R) of Alaska went even further in an interview with ABC News.

We asked him, for example, if there should be a federally mandated minimum wage, something that has existed since Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

"That is clearly up to the states," Miller said. "The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination. The minimum level again should be the state's decision."

So there should not be a federal minimum wage?

"There should not be," Miller answered.

This is, of course, the same Miller who also believes that federal unemployment benefits, Medicare, and Social Security should all be eliminated. He justifies all of this with a radical "Tenther" worldview that's popular in fringe circles.

And yet plenty of people would agree with Miller here.  Without the protection of a federal minimum wage, why wouldn't state Republicans then wove to eliminate it in state after state?  If you really wanted to draw companies to your state, why not play "How low can you go?" with a state minimum wage?

If Alaska then mandated a lower minimum wage, oh well.  I could certainly see Arizona getting rid of its minimum wage in order to try to drive illegals away.  Yes, there are states with minimum wages that are higher than the federal rate.  But under that logic, why eliminate the federal minimum?

The fact that this is catching on with Tea Party Republicans, especially in states that do have a higher state minimum wage, is no accident.  After all, laying the groundwork for "that job isn't worth $7.25 an hour" and "If we cut wages we could hire more people and lower the unemployment rate!" is important stuff if you're a Republican.

If you think $15K a year is just too much to pay people to live on, that is.  There's no reason to get rid of the federal minimum unless you plan to put your state's wages lower.

You Can Still Follow The Money

Because the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision made it legal to give nearly unlimited cash in elections and not have to disclose where that money is coming from.  But you can see where they money's going, and that's overwhelmingly to Republicans as we enter the last 30 days of the campaign season.

Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from.

The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors' identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post.

The trends amount to a spending frenzy conducted largely in the shadows.

The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings unleashing the ability of corporations and interest groups to spend money on politics. Conservative operatives also say they are riding the support of donors upset with Democratic policies they perceive as anti-business.

"The outside group spending is primarily being driven by the political climate," said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College who studies campaign finance. "Organized groups are looking at great opportunity, and therefore there's great interest to spend money to influence the election. You've got the possibility of a change in the control of Congress." 

Unlimited funds, unlimited attack ads, and no disclosure of campaign money.  Big Wall Street interests can literally spend a few million in order to buy elections, swamping the kind of small donations that made Obama's campaign possible in 2008.  $16 million spent in 2006, $80 million spent so far, and now with unlimited corporate money able to go to the last 30 days of an election who know how many millions more will flow to Republican campaign coffers.

This is the world of politics we now live in.  No matter what happens, America has already lost.

Duckpocalypse

This made me giggle.



Ahh, but there's an important lesson here. There are a lot of folks out there in Donald's position here, and the Obama administration still isn't doing everything it can be to help them.

Yes, a lot of that is being blocked by the Republicans. They've shown that they are more than willing to kill thousands of jobs at election time just to try to ruin the Democrats in this election. These are the people you should be angry at.

There's more Obama should be doing, however.

One Is All You Need

Jack Kelly of Real Clear Politics takes a look at black Republicans running this year and declares it a "resurgence".  To me, it proves just how far African-Americans have to go in the Republican Party.

I bet you haven't heard of Tim Scott, Allen West or Ryan Frazier. If they were Democrats, I might lose that bet.

But they're not. Mr. Scott, Mr. West and Mr. Frazier are three of the 14 black candidates running for Congress as Republicans this November. Thirty-two black Republicans ran in the primaries.

Most of the 14 are running all-but-hopeless races against black Democratic incumbents in black majority districts. But Mr. Scott, running in South Carolina, is a virtual cinch to win. Mr. West (Florida) and Mr. Frazier (Colorado) are in races that are judged tossups.

If all three win, that would be a post-Reconstruction record. The largest number of black Republicans to serve together in the House in the last century is two, J.C. Watts (Oklahoma) and Gary Franks (Connecticut) between 1995 and 1997. There haven't been any since Mr. Watts retired in 2003.

One might think the resurgence of black Republicans, coming as it does at a time when a black Democrat is president, would rate more than a feature story or two in the national media. But that would conflict with the liberal meme that Republicans are racist.

Tim Scott is indeed in a strong position to win.  Kelly also goes on to talk about gains Latinos have made in the Republican Party, especially in Florida.  But the first black Republican in Congress in eight years doesn't bring the GOP absolution any more than it makes a junkie cured when quitting after eight years of drug abuse, and the rest of Kelly's story shows it.

Accusations of racism against Republicans are a staple of Democratic politics because Democrats need to keep blacks on the plantation to remain viable nationally. "Young people and minorities are all the president has left," the National Journal headlined its story on a poll released Wednesday.

Barack Obama got 96 percent of the black vote in 2008. If "only" 80 percent of blacks routinely voted Democratic, it's hard to see how Democrats could win in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, North Carolina or Florida.

Here's a hint, Jack.  When you assume that African-Americans are as a whole too stupid to do anything but vote for Democrats, and attribute their loyalty to the Democrats as enslavement and being kept "on a plantation", it doesn't make African-Americans want to vote for Republicans, dig?

In fact, it makes us think Republicans are racists.  I've voted for Republicans before, too.  There are times when they are the better candidate.  But that seems like a lifetime ago.  When you weigh the pros and cons of the party in 2010 and continue to come up with Democrats as your preferred candidate, it doesn't make me a plantation slave, it makes me exercising my right to vote as an American.

But hey, what would I know.  I'm just a po' house boy.

StupidiNews!

• The pioneer behind in-vitro fertilization has finally received his long overdue Nobel prize for medicine after over 35 years.
• Verizon has agreed to refund $90 million to mobile customers after the FCC says it charged for data plans that customers never used or agreed to.
• Legalization of pot in California could mean additional jobs that California's unions are already looking to organize.
• IRS records show that some 3,000 millionaires lost their jobs in 2008 and collected unemployment.
• One of the fields that quantum physics is exploring:  really, really tiny refrigerators.

Last Call

This may win some sort of award for the least surprising news story ever.

The husband-and-wife team behind the planned Islamic center and mosque near New York's ground zero have received threats, a New York police spokesman said Sunday, hours after the wife said her life is under threat.

The threats "began several weeks ago," police spokesman Paul Browne told CNN "We were investigating them."

Browne would disclose no details of the threats made against Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf or his wife, Daisy Khan, or whether they were receiving any police protection.

Khan raised the issue during a discussion aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week," which spent this week's broadcast focusing on American Muslims and the fears evoked by the proposed Park51 Islamic center in New York and by mosques in other parts of the United States.

"For the record, my life is under threat," she said.

"Check with the Police Department. My husband's life is under threat," she added. "We do not walk around with bodyguards, because we love this country. We don't walk around with big bodyguards because we don't want use taxpayer's money."

Imagine that.  The folks behind Park51 are getting threats.  Muslims, getting threats in America?

Least surprising news story I've read all year.

Small Government, No...Small-Minded, Yes

Bob Cesca catches another "small-government libertarian" Republican in action, Sen. Jim DeMint.

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn't be in the classroom.

Government shouldn't be interfering in the beliefs of the American people, unless it's social conservatives enforcing how people should live their lives.

The most inalienable right to a Tea Party Republican is the God-given, Constitutional right to be able to remove the people who don't agree with them in order to prevent anyone from interfering with their right to pretend that everyone else in America has the same opinion they do.

Oh, and the Teabaggers want Jim DeMint to be their new Senate leader.

Master Debaters

Jack Conway and Rand Paul appeared on FOX News Sunday today for a debate of sorts.  I give credit to Conway for showing up on FOX, too.  It was a two on one fight he had to put up with.

Conway, the state's attorney general, said that while he agreed with some Obama policies including health care reform, he would be an independent voice looking out for Kentucky.


Asked about his campaign ads and reported comments depicting Paul as "crazy," Conway said: "I'm not saying Dr. Paul is crazy. I think some of his ideas are out of the mainstream and they're out of touch with the values of normal Kentuckians."

The debate moderated by "FOX News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace included accusations by Paul that Conway flip-flopped on some issues, first backing and now questioning cap-and-trade energy legislation and the expiration of some Bush-era tax cuts.

Conway denied changing positions but made clear that he now was firmly in the moderate camp on some hot-button issues, for example insisting that all the tax cuts should be extended.

Obama wants to extend the tax cuts for the 98 percent of the country earning up to $200,000 individually or $250,000 as families, while returning to higher tax rates of the 1990s for the 2 percent making more money.

Republicans, along with some Democrats -- including Conway -- say all the tax cuts should be extended as the economy slowly recovers from the recession.

Conway accused Paul of being out of touch with Kentuckians by advocating policies that he said were out of the 1930s. He repeatedly cited Paul's past suggestion of a $2,000 deductible for Medicare coverage and reducing the federal role in mine safety regulations as examples.

And while Jack Conway would certainly be a better Senator than Rand Paul, at best he would be another Evan Bayh/Ben Nelson type.  The really sad part is out of the four primary candidates from the two parties, Conway is the furthest to the left.  That means he's mistaken for a Republican only most of the time.

I'm not sure why Conway thinks he can beat Rand Paul by trying to be conservative.  That dog don't hunt.  Ahh, but I don't have much of a choice, do I?  After all, Rand wants to raise the retirement age for me.

Conservative Ben Nelson type over Rand Paul?  Absolutely.  I'll take predictable over insane.

Trojan Dipstick

Frank Rich's opinion of Christine O' Donnell is that she is 2010's Sarah Palin, and that's not in any way a good thing.

The O’Donnell template, by sharp contrast, is Palin. It was Palin’s endorsement that put O’Donnell on the map, and it’s Palin’s script that O’Donnell is assiduously following. The once obscure governor of Alaska was also tripped up by lies and gaffes when she emerged on the national stage, starting with her misrepresentation of her supposed opposition to “the bridge to nowhere.” But she quickly wove the attacks into a brilliant cloak of martyrdom that positioned her as a fierce small-town opponent of the coasts’ pointy-head elites.

O’Donnell, like Palin, knows that attacks by those elites, including conservative grandees, only backfire and enhance her image as a feisty defender of the aggrieved and resentful Joe Plumbers in “real America.”
The more O’Donnell is vilified, the bigger the star she becomes, and the more she can reinforce the Tea Party’s preferred narrative as “a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement” (in the recent words of the pundit Charles Krauthammer) populated only by everyday folk upset by big government and the deficit. This airbrushed take has had a surprisingly long life even in some of the nonpartisan press. In a typical example just three weeks ago, the influential publication National Journal delivered a breathless report on how the Tea Party functions as a “headless” movement where “no one gives orders.” To prove the point, a head of the headless Tea Party Patriots vouched that “75 percent of the group’s funding comes from small donations, $20 or less.”

In fact, local chapters of Tea Party Patriots routinely received early training and support from FreedomWorks, the moneyed libertarian outfit run by the former Republican House majority leader and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey. FreedomWorks is itself a spinoff from Citizens for a Sound Economy, a pseudo-grassroots group whose links to the billionaire Koch brothers were traced by Jane Mayer in her blockbuster August exposé in The New Yorker. Last week the same Tea Party Patriots leader who bragged to the National Journal about all those small donations announced a $1 million gift from a man she would identify only as an entrepreneur. The donor’s hidden identity speaks even louder than the size of the check. As long as we don’t know who he is, we won’t know what orders he’s giving either.

Such deep-pocketed mystery benefactors — not O’Donnell, whose reported income for this year and last is $5,800 — are the real indicators of what’s going on under the broad Tea Party rubric. Big money rains down on the “bottom up” Tea Party insurgency through phantom front organizations (Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security) that exploit legal loopholes to keep their sugar daddies’ names secret. Reporters at The Times and The Washington Post, among others, have lately made real strides in explaining how the game works. But we still don’t know the identities of most of those anonymous donors. 

Rich is right, but he's also missing the larger point:  Tea Partiers don't give a damn about the fact that cash is being poured into the system by conservative groups with unlimited donation power, and that's because Tea Partiers don't give a damn about fiscal responsibility.  They just want Obama gone, and they don't really give a damn how it's accomplished.

All of the rest is a ruse.  Yes, if this means Christine O'Donnell is in office, they don't care what she does, as long as Obama is removed from office.

People need to recognize the driving force behind Tea Party anger is getting rid of Obama.

Fortress Europe

A major terrorism-based travel advisory for Americans in Europe is a big deal, folks.

The U.S. State Department has issued a travel alert for U.S. citizens in Europe, based on information that suggests that al Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks. Americans are warned to be aware of their surroundings and protect themselves when traveling.

One senior U.S. official said earlier that in addition to the travel alert from the State Department, "U.S. military installations are taking prudent precautions. This is a serious situation."

A separate U.S. official said the alert is being prompted by the volume of intelligence on possible terror threats, rather than new intelligence.

It emerged last week that U.S. intelligence officials were looking at information about a possible "Mumbai-style" attack in cities across Europe.

ABC News has more:

Strong concerns that terrorist teams in Europe have selected their targets, completed their surveillance, eluded capture and are now ready to strike at airports and tourist attractions have prompted the State Department to ready a highly unusual travel advisory for Europe, multiple law enforcement and intelligence sources tell ABC News.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials have information that the teams could at any time launch a "Mumbai style" terror attack that targets civilians for death or hostage taking. The 2008 Mumbai attack used small arms and explosives to kill 175 people and paralyze the Indian city for days.

The current concerns are for scenarios that include opening fire at airports in Europe as well as executing similar attacks at "soft" targets like tourist attractions or hotels.

According to ABC News sources, the terror plotters have moved through the surveillance stage, checked back in with al Qaeda in Pakistan, and have received the go-ahead to strike.

The US issuing an alert like this for all of Europe is not anything to be treated lightly, because it becomes an instant logistical nightmare for the EU, but apparently it's deadly serious.

Hopefully nobody will be hurt here.

Today In Village Idiocy

You don't even have to read Dean Broder's column this week, you just need to glance at the title:

"John Boehner's useful thoughts on fixing Congress"

You want to know what Orange Julius brought to Congress in the last two years?



You want to know who Broder blames for the last two years?

What Boehner called "a cycle of gridlock" afflicts both sides of the Capitol, and has been enabled by both parties, depending on who had the majority. As he was honest enough to admit, the abuses did not start when Pelosi took the gavel, and both sides have been guilty of twisting the rules.

If the margins of control shrink in January, as I think they will, it might well be time to negotiate a truce.

I'd like to see Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leaders take Boehner up on the challenge he has raised, not try to demean it. He said, for example, that rather than stifling debate through the manipulation of rules, "we should open things up and let the battle of ideas help break down the scar tissue between the parties. . . . Let's let legislators legislate again."

Does anyone on Earth, even the Republicans, think Boehner will be allowed to "break down the scare tissue between parties" with the Tea Party in charge of the GOP?   When half of your party doesn't even think the President is legitimately the President, how do you work with him?

Broder really does need to be put out to pasture.  He lives in a fantasy world where he's actually taking John Boehner at his word.

But we're already seeing the Village meme for the next two years:  "Will the Democrats be the adults and capitulate to the Republicans?"  It'll be funny too right up to the point where Obama's being impeached.