Tag: Politics

Sep 27 2011

Occupy Wall St. Finally Gets Media Attention

Keith Olbermann reports on Occupy Wall St. and the “clear case of police brutality”. Going into its eleventh day, the protest has finally started to get attention from the media, sadly, not because of the mission of the protest to bring attention on the abuses of Wall St and the banks but because of the over-reacton of the NYC Police Department to an essentially peaceful demonstration and obvious police brutality.

The movement has received attention in the world press such as the Guardian UK and Al Jazeera. Also filmmaker and activist Michael Moore has taken up the cause, visiting the site and Noam Chomsky announced his solidarity adding to the encouragement of the protesters to continue bring their message about corporate greed and social inequality. It was also revealed that the white shirted police officer who maliciously maced the young women on Saturday has been accused of civil rights violations at the time of the 2004 Republican national convention protests.

In case anyone has missed the reason of Occupy Wall St. here it is:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

The occupation will continue and if you can’t be there, please, donate.

Sep 27 2011

“I Dream Of Another Recession”

Never mind dreaming of Jeannie, trader Alessio Rastani tells the BBC host that he goes to bed dreaming of the next recession and doesn’t care what happens to the economy because people like him will make a fortune from the crash. He almost makes an ambulance chasing lawyer sound like a humanitarian but he’s not wrong just painfully realistic.

‘Governments Don’t Rule the World, Goldman Sachs’ Does

“This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out,” Rastani told the BBC. “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.”

In a candid interview about the Eurozone rescue plan, Rastani said the market is ruled by fear and cannot be saved by the rescue plan.

“They know the stock market is toast,” he said. “They know the stock market is finished.”

Rastani said most investors are moving their money to places it would be more safe, like U.S. treasuries and the dollar, as they simply do not care about the state of the economy but rather about their own pockets.

“Personally it doesn’t matter,” he said. “See I’m a trader. I don’t really care about that kind of stuff. If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that.”

snip

“For most traders…we don’t really care that much about how they’re going to fix the economy, how they’re going to fix the whole situation,” Rastani said. “Our job is to make money from it.”

h/t Yves Smith @ naked capitalism

Sep 27 2011

Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Worst Persons 9.23.2011

Worst Persons: A “peck” of Republicans, O’Reilly and Pam Olsen

“Find out why a “peck” of Republicans comprised of Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan and conservative columnist John Feehery is WORSE; FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly is WORSER; and Pam Olsen, Rick Perry’s new Florida campaign co-chair, is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for September 23, 2011.

 

Sep 26 2011

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Dean Baker: Why Don’t the Deficit Hawks Want to Tax Wall Street?

The intensity with which the country’s leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining. While deficit hawks like Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson, Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and The Washington Post never tire of preaching the virtues of shared sacrifice, somehow sacrifice for Wall Street never features as a part of this story.

The refusal of this group to consider FST is becoming more striking because most of the world appears to be moving in this direction. Last spring, the European Parliament voted by an almost four to one margin in support of FST. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU), is now making plans to implement a modest tax beginning in 2014.

New York Times Editorial: An Indefensible Punishment

When the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty 35 years ago, it did so provisionally. Since then, it has sought to articulate legal standards for states to follow that would ensure the fair administration of capital punishment and avoid the arbitrariness and discrimination that had led it to strike down all state death penalty statutes in 1972.

As the unconscionable execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last week underscores, the court has failed because it is impossible to succeed at this task. The death penalty is grotesque and immoral and should be repealed.

David Sirota: Two Heads of One Political Monster

By now, probably everyone reading this is already sick of America’s quadrennial political spectacle – the one in which politicians and media outlets ask us to believe that there remain vast differences between our two political parties. It’s like cheaply staged pornography on a red and blue set, with words like “polarization,” “socialist,” and “extremist” comprising the breathless dialogue in a wholly unconvincing plot.

Some of this tripe can be momentarily compelling, of course. And as the 2012 election climax draws nearer, many Americans will no doubt submit to the fantasy. But before that happens, it’s worth looking a few levels beneath the orgiastic presidential campaign for a last necessary dose of nonfiction, if only to remind us that the parties are often two heads of the same political monster.

John Nichols: Why Nader, Cornel West, Jonathan Kozol Seek Primary Challenges to Obama

The volume on the ongoing discussion about whether President Obama should face a primary challenge for the 2012 Democratic nomination is constantly being adjusted. When the president compromises on basic premises of progressivism, when he talks of putting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts “on the table,” and sometimes when he simply seems unfocused and politically inept, the volume goes up. When the president stands strong, however, when he outlines plans for making the rich pay their fair share, when he promotes infrastructure and investment in he face of Republican intransigence, sometimes when he simply seems to “get” that there is a point where compromise becomes capitulation, the talk dies down.

After the president drew some lines in the sand last Monday, with a speech that laid out the case for genuine shared sacrifice by the wealthy and that seemed to reject the most extreme cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the “Primary Obama” volume dialed downward. As Michael Moore said on MSNBC the other day: “It doesn’t take much” to renew the “hope”-or, at least, the partisan fidelity-that made Obama the most politically potent Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Joan Walsh: Are white liberals abandoning the president?

A Nation writer worries that an “insidious form of racism” explains their criticism of Obama. I don’t see evidence

The Nation’s most-read article this week is by my friend Melissa Harris-Perry, “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama.” Perry doesn’t mention any white liberals by name, nor cite polls showing a decline in support for President Obama among white liberals (as opposed to white voters generally, where his approval rating has dropped sharply). But her piece touched a nerve because of the widespread perception that white liberals are, in fact, abandoning the president.

I’m not sure how to argue with a perception, which is by definition subjective, but I’m going to try, because this is becoming a prevalent and divisive belief. When I say Melissa Harris-Perry is my friend, I don’t say that rhetorically, or ironically; we are professional friends, we have socialized together; she has included me on political round tables; I like and respect her enormously. That’s why I think it’s important to engage her argument, and I’ve invited her to reply.

E J. Dionne, Jr.: Only Conservatives Can End the Death Penalty

How can we end the death penalty in the United States?

Every so often, one capital case receives wide attention and makes a public spectacle of the American machinery of death. Last week, it was the controversy over Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia after years of impassioned argument, organizing and litigation.

I honor those who worked so hard to save Davis’ life because they forced the nation to deal with all of the uncertainties, imperfections and, in some instances, brutalities of the criminal justice system.

Sep 25 2011

Occupy Wall St. Day 8 with Livestream

OccupyWallStreet


The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉

A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Eight)

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

If you wait long enough, they will come but not necessarily to join you.

Glenn Greenwald Tweets the media hypocrisy

The corrupting effects of journalistic “objectivity” and Occupy Wall Street: http://is.gd/QuxYmY Paging @jayrosen_nyu

America’s future rallies near Wall Street- Lend them an ear!

t’s hard to walk in lower Manhattan without noticing a dense police presence. At first a passerby is likely to think that the NYPD is there to protect the 9-11 Memorial, but soon they’ll realize that it’s something else. There’s a protest happening nearby.

A few blocks away  there are about 1000 young people assembled- they’re playing instruments, dancing happily and carrying signs that say things like The American Dream is a Pyramid Scheme, Stop Wall Street Greed, Americans Against Bankster Parasites and so on…

“We’re peacefully protesting economic injustice,” says seventeen year old Lucas Vazquez, “We don’t believe that politicians from either party are going to make things better for us.”

The “we” he’s referring to is a movement that goes by names like “General Assembly” and  “Occupy Wall Street”.  Vazquez says its aim is to create a participatory democracy.

Should Blacks Answer Obama’s Call To March By Joining ‘Occupy Wall Street’?

N A ROUSING SPEECH delivered at the 41st Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference, President Obama urged African Americans to keep the faith as African Americans struggle against a 17 percent unemployment rate and 40 percent poverty rate for their children.

snip

Obama said he was “going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now… [but] I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on.”

As it happens the most potent protest to occur in recent decades is occurring at this moment in New York where ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is calling attention to the U.S.’s “corporate greed and corrupt politics.” Eighty protesters were arrested Saturday.

‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters Regroup at Liberty Plaza With Pizza, Tales of Battle

The Observer arrived at Liberty Plaza-the site of the camps, kitchen and “media tent” holding up the backend of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest that has been going for six days-just after 3:30 p.m.

Today’s march, which started on Wall St. and headed up to Washington Square Park and then to Union Square-was winding its way back, having lost a few dozen good men to police custody, a.k.a. an out-of-service MTA bus. A protester, Josh Lewis, is tweeting from zipties on the bus, which he reports made its way eventually to 1 Police Plaza.

If you can’t be there in person: DONATE

Sep 25 2011

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: This week White House advisor David Plouffe will discuss the president’s job plan.

George Will, former Obama economic adviser and University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee, top investment manager PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian, and Chrystia Freeland of Thompson Reuters debate whether the world is on the cusp of a double-dip recession.

Republican strategist Mary Matalin, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and ABC News Political Director Amy Walter join George Will to debate which GOP candidate came out on top and whether any of them has what it takes to challenge President Obama.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: This Sunday DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and

RNC Chair Reince Priebus join Bob to debate the state of the Obama presidency and the economy.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent, Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish,

Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst and Michael Gerson, The Washington Post Columnist will discuss:

Obama wants to repeal the Bush era tax cuts for those making more than $250K

Is Perry losing steam? Was Thursday’s debate a turning point for Romney?

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and NYC MAyor Michael Bloombreg are guests.

Former Secretary of Education, William Bennett; former Secretary of Health and Human Services and current president of the University of Miami, Donna Shalala;   PBS’s Tavis Smiley; and the CEO of the Special Olympics, Tim Shriver will discuss eduation.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: White House senior adviser, David Plouffe is making the morning rounds.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander ()R-TN) will discuss the latest funding hostage situation.

Indiana’s Republican Governor Mitch Daniels will discuss the Republican 2012 field of candidates.

USA Today’s Washington bureau chief Susan Page and TIME Magazine’s deputy bureau chief, Michael Crowley will join the conversation about the latest poll that shows a majority of Americans blame President Obama for the country’s teetering economy.

William Rivers Pitt: Class Warfare My Ass

I have been saying this for years upon years, but it bears repeating: the most awesome, fearsome, and effective weapon in the arsenal of the modern Republican Party is their total, utter and complete lack of shame.

That weapon – the ability to say or do anything, literally anything, even as it flies in the face of on-the-record comments made just the day before, or contradicts thousands of votes cast in congresses past – is the equivalent of a battlefield-deployed tactical nuclear weapon. It clears the field, but good, and if everything is ashes in the aftermath, so be it. So long as effective spin makes the news cycle, it’s a victory for them, and screw the people who get hurt.

Rachel Lewis: Wall Street Vampires

Vampires. Thieves of the night. As sunlight is said to be deadly to them, these mythical creatures venture out to drain the blood from their innocent victims only when it is dark outside.  Judging by the reactions of Wall Street to Public Citizen’s attempt to shine a light on their industry, it seems sunlight kills more than vampires though. Lady Liberty can’t help but wonder if the Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan et al crew are trying to audition for the next season of True Blood . . . or, more likely, they have something to hide.

Remember that big gas price spike back in 2008? Well, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, didn’t buy the reasons offered for it then, and he didn’t buy it this spring either when he spoke with then-MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur for a segment properly entitled, “Rigged Game.” Uygur’s first question, “Is it possible that speculators are driving up the gas prices?” Slocum’s reply-“Absolutely.” At the time President Barack Obama, responding to the media frenzy over gas prices, announced the formation of a task force to look into what was driving the increase. Slocum explained to me that this was many months ago and so far, “not a peep” has been heard from this investigative team.

Dave johnston: Conservatives Say It Out Loud: They Hate Democracy

The roots of today’s toxic conservative movement lie in Ayn Rand’s teaching that wealthy “producers” — now called “job creators” — should be left alone by the government, namely the rest of us. The rest of us are “freeloaders,” “moochers,” “leeches” and “parasites” who feed off these producers and who shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions to collect taxes from them or regulate them or interfere in most other ways. The Randians hate democracy, and say so, declaring that “collectivism” sacrifices individual rights to majority wishes.

Maureen Dowd: Fed Up With the Author of ‘Fed Up!’?

IN a flash, Rick Perry has gone from Republican front-runner to cycling domestique, riding in front of the pack and taking all the wind – or in this case, hot air – to allow the team leader to pedal in the slipstream.

In the debate on Thursday night in Florida, as Perry grew more Pinteresque, lapsing into long, paralyzed pauses, Mitt Romney grew less statuesque, breaking his marble mold and showing a new sarcastic streak.

Sep 24 2011

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Katrina vanden Heuvel and Robert Borosage: Can a Movement Save the American Dream?

On October 3 activists from across the country will gather in Washington at the Take Back the American Dream conference, in the belief that only a citizens movement can save an American dream that grows ever more distant. In the face of a failed economy and a corrupted politics, the only hope for renewal is that citizens lead and politicians follow.

The modern American dream was inspired by a growing middle class that was the triumph of democracy after World War II. Its promise was and is opportunity: that hard work can earn a good life-a good job with decent pay and security, a home in a safe neighborhood, affordable healthcare, a secure retirement, a good education for the kids. The promise always exceeded the performance-especially with regard to racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and women-and America never did as well as Europe in lifting the poor from misery. But a broad middle class and a broadly shared prosperity at least provided the possibility of a way up.

George Monbiot: A Billionaires’ Coup in the US

The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare

There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.

So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.

Matthew Rothschild: Citizens Rise Up Against “Citizens United”

I was speaking in Milwaukee the other night to a great group of peace activists, and in the question and answer period, we started talking about what could be done to change our foreign policy and bring about peace and social justice.

One thing I said we needed to do was to amend the Constitution to overturn the horrible Citizens United decision of 2010 that said corporations are persons, and corporations can spend unlimited funds to influence the outcome of an election.

I said we have no chance of having democracy in America so long as that decision stands, so I urged people to pass a resolution in their city or county to do just that, kind of like what we did during the Nuclear Freeze movement.

Little did I know that there were people in the audience who were already on the job. They’re trying to pass just such an initiative in West Allis, Wisconsin.

George Zornick: The Funding Standoff and the GOP’s Refusal to Learn From Hurricane Katrina

Sometime next week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will officially run out of money if Congress doesn’t act. Unprecedented demands and gamesmanship by Republicans in the House of Representatives are threatening a funding bill for the agency, along with disaster relief for Americans affected by the recent hurricanes. Watching the spectacle unfold, it’s impossible not to marvel at short Republican memories-it wasn’t that long ago that playing politics with FEMA proved disastrous for the GOP.

By many accounts, the federal government’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans was a turning point in George W. Bush’s presidency. His administration was shown to be incapable of even basic functions of government-helping desperate citizens in desperate need following a natural disaster. After they left the White House, several Bush aides acknowledged that this was the moment that the Bush presidency was irredeemably lost

Danah Boyd and Alice Marwick: Bullying as True Drama

THE suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, the 14-year-old boy from western New York who killed himself last Sunday after being tormented by his classmates for being gay, is appalling. His story is a classic case of bullying: he was aggressively and repeatedly victimized. Horrific episodes like this have sparked conversations about cyberbullying and created immense pressure on regulators and educators to do something, anything, to make it stop. Yet in the rush to find a solution, adults are failing to recognize how their conversations about bullying are often misaligned with youth narratives. Adults need to start paying attention to the language of youth if they want antibullying interventions to succeed.

Jamey recognized that he was being bullied and asked explicitly for help, but this is not always the case. Many teenagers who are bullied can’t emotionally afford to identify as victims, and young people who bully others rarely see themselves as perpetrators. For a teenager to recognize herself or himself in the adult language of bullying carries social and psychological costs. It requires acknowledging oneself as either powerless or abusive.

Dana Goldstein: The Future of No Child Left Behind

This morning President Obama will announce that due to the intransigence of Congress, the administration is moving forward unilaterally to reform No Child Left Behind. In what is being referred to as the “waiver process,” the Department of Education will offer states the opportunity to ignore some of the law’s most absurd dictates-for example, that every single student be “proficient” in math and reading by 2014, regardless of whether a child is disabled or fluent in English-in exchange for embracing a narrower reform agenda.

The administration’s preferred reform strategies are no surprise, since they were also part of the earlier Race to the Top and School Improvement Grant programs. They include asking states to embrace the new Common Core curriculum standards in high school math and English; using student performance data-often standardized test scores-to evaluate teachers and principals; and overhauling underperforming schools by replacing the principal or significant portions of the teaching force. States will also have the option of closing schools down entirely and “restarting” them under different management, sometimes a charter school operator.

Sep 23 2011

If This Were The Tea Party

The silence of the traditional media on the Wall St. protest that has been going on for a week is deafening. As Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore point out of this were the Tea Party, it would be all over TV and the papers. Last, Mr. Moore expresses his outrage of over the murder of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia and his support of the Innocence Project and Get Out the Vote in Georgia.

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Click on image to enlarge

Sep 23 2011

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Eugene Robinson: ‘Probably’ Isn’t Good Enough

The death penalty is a barbaric anachronism, a crude instrument not of justice but of revenge. Most countries banished it long ago. This country should banish it now.

The state of Georgia was wrong to execute convicted murderer Troy Anthony Davis as protesters and journalists kept a ghoulish vigil Wednesday night-just as the state of Texas was wrong, hours earlier, to execute racist killer Lawrence Russell Brewer.

Paul Krugman: The Social Contract

This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.”

It was, of course, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it’s people like Mr. Ryan, who want to exempt the very rich from bearing any of the burden of making our finances sustainable, who are waging class war.

Robert Sheer: Murder Is Good Politics, Bad Justice

I don’t know if Troy Davis was innocent, but I do know that the evidence for demanding a re-examination of his conviction, including the recanted testimony of most of the witnesses against him, was overwhelming. But of course that is now beside the point, which is exactly what is so wrong about the use of the death penalty. No matter what evidence of innocence might be produced in the future, it is of consequence no longer.

That is a compelling argument against the death penalty-no room for correction-but there are others. The most egregious argument for capital punishment is the claim that the finality of officially condoned killing is a necessary guarantor of civilized order. Egregious because it is not possible to make that case without explaining why most of the democratic societies that we admire shun the death penalty as contrary to their most deeply held values.

David Sirota: Two Heads of One Political Monster

By now, probably everyone reading this is already sick of America’s quadrennial political spectacle-the one in which politicians and media outlets ask us to believe that there remain vast differences between our two political parties. It’s like cheaply staged pornography on a red and blue set, with words like “polarization,” “socialist,” and “extremist” comprising the breathless dialogue in a wholly unconvincing plot.

Some of this tripe can be momentarily compelling, of course. And as the 2012 election climax draws nearer, many Americans will no doubt submit to the fantasy. But before that happens, it’s worth looking a few levels beneath the orgiastic presidential campaign for a last necessary dose of nonfiction, if only to remind us that the parties are often two heads of the same political monster.

John Nichols: GOP Debaters Needn’t Worry: Obama’s No Socialist

Asked whether Barack Obama was a socialist — as Texas Governor Rick Perry, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have all agreed is most certainly — former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tried to talk his way around the most predictable question of Thursday night’s Fox News/Google debate.

But he more or less “went there.”

“What President Obama is, is a big-spending liberal,” Romney replied. “He takes his political inspiration from Europe and from the socialist democrats in Europe. Guess what? Europe isn’t working in Europe. It’s not going to work here.”

A few minutes later, Gingrich went all in, decrying “Obama’s socialist policies.”

So there you have it. Obama’s a socialist, right? Wrong.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: When Socialism Saves Capitalism

Washington – Have you noticed that one of the Obama administration’s most successful programs is also its most “socialist” initiative?

OK, the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler was not socialist in the classic sense: the government was not looking to hold onto the companies over the long run. Their turnaround was accomplished in significant part by tough, capitalist management steps.

But, yes, this was socialism — or, perhaps, “state capitalism” — because the government temporarily took substantial ownership in the companies when no one in the private sector was willing to put up enough capital to prevent them from going under. Today, the companies are thriving.

More than that: the auto industry exemplifies how unions can do their best to protect the interests of their members while also ensuring the prosperity of the companies that employ them.

Sep 22 2011

Another Attorney General Joins Foreclosure Fraud Investigation

There have been a couple of new developments in the foreclosure fraud investigation that was initiated by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. The coalition of state AG’s who want a real criminal investigation and oppose the 50 state settlement proposal of Iowa AG Tom Miller has grown by one with Kentucky’s AG Jack Conway adding name. From David Dayen at FireDogLake:

The latest AG to stand with Schneiderman and against the attempts to whitewash the fraud of the big banks is Kentucky AG Jack Conway. He is up for re-election this year, and is known nationally by virtue of his unsuccessful challenge to Rand Paul for Senate in 2010. Conway, in conjunction with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, sent an email to supporters aligning himself with Schneiderman.

   The same Wall Street banks whose irresponsible actions led to our nation’s economic collapse are now pressuring all 50 states to give them legal immunity. The banks want to block any criminal or civil accountability for actions that have yet to be investigated.

   Attorneys General from Delaware, Minnesota, Nevada and New York have been fighting back. Today, I want to make a clear statement in support of Wall Street accountability and against immunity for banks – and I ask you to join me on this statement:

   “Today’s economic crisis was caused by Wall Street acting improperly. Every American has paid the price – with families losing their homes, investors losing their money, and many Americans losing their jobs. There should be absolutely no criminal or civil immunity given to banks for activity that has not yet been investigated.”

Several things are important here. Kentucky didn’t really have a big housing bubble – Conway is supporting this on principle, rather than in service to a wide swath of dispossessed and struggling borrowers who are victims of fraud. Second, he writes this in the context of an election which has tightened up minimally. So he obviously finds this to be a winning issue on the campaign trail. Third, it would be tempting to just ignore a proposed settlement that isn’t going to happen. Conway sees political advantage in stamping on this process, which is already flailing.

In another development in Nevada, an attorney has filed criminal charges against Wells Fargo accusing the bank of forging loan documents:

In court papers filed this month in Clark County District Court, attorney Dave Crosby alleged bank employees committed forgery and fraud in making a $350,000 loan to a father of four who was unemployed at the time.

“They forged signatures, they backdated documents,” Crosby said. “We’ve got them cold.”

Crosby said the bank has presented two deeds of trust for the same property. One bears the signature of Olivia A. Todd, who on Jan. 27, 2010, was identified as an assistant secretary with MERS, Inc., a mortgage servicer from the Phoenix area and a co-defendant in the lawsuit.

But on Feb. 16, 2010, Todd’s signature appears on a second deed of trust, where she is identified as the firm’s president. Both assignments were notarized as authentic, Crosby said in court papers.

Crosby made his allegations in a request to have a judge review three failed mediations between him and his clients, Ryan and Mical Henderson of Las Vegas, and lawyers with Wells Fargo, formerly Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

Buried deep in the story was this interesting note:

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is expected to file criminal charges against bank and title company employees, as well as notary publics, over allegations of robo signing.

The paltry deal of $20 billion by AG Miller that would let the banks off the hook for most civil and criminal liability seems hardly adequate when you really examine the scope of the fraud nation wide.  

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