What started as a conversation on Facebook between two St.Louisans, Craig Schneider and Tom Appelbaum, sparked into the first “Welcome Home” Parade for U.S. troops after leaving operations in Iraq. Veterans and those supporting them traveled from all over the country to show their thanks and welcome them home.

(more…)

Kathleen Willey, the former White House volunteer who accused President Clinton in 1998 of sexually harassing her in 1993, is trying to expose potential robo-signing foreclosure fraud from her home state of Virginia–and she’s already gone on national television to get the word out to her fellow Americans.

Foreclosure proceedings were commenced against Willey in 2010, but Willey was able to stop the expedited 14-day foreclosure process by filing a fraud suit against her lender, One West Bank. In an exclusive telephone interview with Big Government from her Richmond based home, Willey told me the following:

I applied for a modification back in 2009. My bank was IndyMac, which was the very first bank the feds seized in 2008. Then they turned it around and sold it to George Soros and Larry Dell for a song. So, the two of them–big Obama contributors–they bought that bank.

(more…)

An e-mail exchange detailing a conference call between members of the Occupy Wall Street media team exposes the level of coordination happening to attempt to save face over a recent New York Post story that exposed how Occupy had taken over a foreclosed home despite the owner’s wishes. Almost concurrently with Big Government’s report on the story yesterday, the #Occupy media team was having a confab in crisis management that would make any Fortune 500 company blush.

The media team takes a smart strategy and realizes that attacking the owner of the house directly is probably a bad move. However, behind the scenes they can’t help trashing him and calling him dishonest…

“Post story, owner made several claims, most of them false.  Says OWS won’t let him into his house.”

Despite this insult, the back-and-forth reveals that there are actually negotiations going on back-and-forth between Wide’s attorney and Occupy Wall Street.

1.  Premo: one question – meghan hasn’t been able to get in touch with Wise’s lawyer since the new year?  El: don’t think she’s been trying actively to get in touch with him.  Now that the article has come out that changes the negotiation.

2. [ed note: this line blank in original email]

3.  El: the last meeting did go well, Wise wasn’t there but his lawyer was.  Lawyer agreed to speak with Wise about working with us, agreed that the best solution would be to work with us to transition it to a community land trust, and fight the banks to reduce his debt so that he can become a home owner again.

Will the public and the lenders be made aware that there is a behind the scenes shakedown via media exposure being worked out here? The homeowner is trying to play on sympathy to get back his foreclosed property and Occupy Wall Street wants to gain positive media exposure, even though they were squatting in someone else’s private property.

(more…)

It is more common everyday. A man buys a house, the market collapses and suddenly his house is worth less than the mortgage, then he loses his job until, as a single father, he finds himself in foreclosure with no place to raise his two preteen daughters. It’s a case made for the Occupy Wall Street movement to swoop in and right wrongs, right? Maybe not because the OWSers in New York stole this poor guy’s home away from him in order to give it to one of their own members. Confused? Read on.

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.

(more…)

In the face of strong national consumer spending and private sector employment gains, State Controller John Chiang released California’s December financial statement showing the General Fund is running a staggering cash deficit of $21 billion on an $88.5 billion budget. This imploding financial condition is a reflection of how California’s high businesses taxes and excessive regulations are accelerating the trend of businesses abandoning the state. According to Chiang:

“While we saw positive numbers in November, December’s totals failed to meet even the latest revenue projections. Coupled with higher spending tied to unrealized cost savings, these latest revenue figures create growing concern that legislative action may be needed in the near future to ensure that the State can meet its payment obligations.”

The above are “code words” that the state is financially dysfunctional and getting worse. The December report shows that compared to last year, California revenue, at $39.4 billion, is down by 11.2% due mostly to a 26.4% nose-dive in sales tax collection, and state spending of $52.3 billion is currently running 33% higher than the state’s revenue.

The Controller does not seem impressed that Governor Brown and the California State Legislature’s only solution to fix this budget mess is to relying on voters’ willingness to approve an initiative to raise the already hefty sales tax they pay by 13% and add another surtax on the wealthy to generate $6.9 billion in revenue. Even if the public shocks pollsters and actually passes the tax increase, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) calculated the initiative would only generate $4.8 billion per year. (more…)

Seriously, I’m getting really tired of all the comments accusing my articles of being satirical.  Cut it out.  It’s not funny and you cannot defend the indefensible.   I’m pressing on anyway with my plan for fixing America.

Foreclosures

The housing crisis is completely and entirely the fault of the banks.  I reject the notion that borrowers had any culpability whatsoever.  All those rules and regulations made it necessary to have a Ph.D. to understand all those mortgage documents.  There was too much paperwork for any borrower to actually wade through and read.  And don’t give me the excuse that all that paperwork was the result of government regulation.  We needed all that paperwork so that banks wouldn’t take advantage of borrowers.  And even though we had all that paperwork, they still took advantage of borrowers.  Everybody knows that nobody reads contracts, so saying that it was the borrower’s fault for signing something they didn’t understand makes no sense.  The borrowers were all duped into signing all that mortgage paperwork and didn’t understand that mortgage rates would reset and that they couldn’t afford to own the home.  Besides, the housing bubble was so out of control that who could blame a borrower for wanting to cash in?  Everybody else was!

So I say that anybody who can’t pay their mortgage should not have to pay their mortgage.  Banks should be forced to modify any loan that any borrower has fallen behind on.  They should modify it so that the borrower can live in the house for as long as they want as long as they can’t pay the mortgage.  The bank never should have approved the loan in the first place, even though the loan documents weren’t necessarily truthful.  The banks should be able to read people’s mind, and since they can’t, they should pay the price.

For everyone who has paid their mortgage on time, why should you get a break for being responsible?

(more…)

From Reboot Congress:

MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) and other leftists held meetings in 2010 to plan their strategy for squatting on properties in the St. Louis area. The video above introduces some of their leaders. A future video will outline MORE’s longterm strategy to acquire residential property through extralegal means like squatting.

Who or what is MORE, you may be wondering. When ACORN was put out of business, the local chapters re-branded themselves. St. Louis’s ACORN chapter became MORE. Even after the re-branding MORE still has ties to communist organizations.

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the Ben Bernanke’s latest comments, the huge foreclosure mess, and Mitch Daniels’ call for new taxes, including a VAT.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates. We’d also like to let you know that we’ve set up a standalone site at CoffeeandMarkets.com for easier browsing of our past broadcasts.

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Bernanke Makes Case for Further Fed Moves to Boost Economy
Foreclosure Crisis Slams Into Banks
Mortgage Lenders Committed Fraud: Rep. Waters
Daniels open to VAT, oil tax hike

Big banks have been under fire for using improper documents to foreclose on homes. Well, Congress stepped in to help, quietly passing a bill that could shield the banks from liability. From Reuters:

The law, the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act,” requires all federal and state courts to recognize notarizations made in other states.

The law specifically includes “electronic” notarizations stamped en masse by computers. Currently, only about a dozen states allow electronic notarizations, according to the National Notary Association.

“CONSTITUENTS” PRESSED FOR PASSAGE

After languishing for months in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill passed the Senate with lightning speed and with hardly any public awareness of the bill’s existence on September 27, the day before the Senate recessed for midterm election campaign.

The bill’s approval involved invocation of a special procedure. Democratic Senator Robert Casey, shepherding last-minute legislation on behalf of the Senate leadership, had the bill taken away from the Senate Judiciary committee, which hadn’t acted on it.

The full Senate then immediately passed the bill without debate, by unanimous consent.

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

One in 10 American households with a mortgage was at risk of foreclosure this summer as the government’s efforts to help have had little impact stemming the housing crisis.

About 9.9 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment as of June 30, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday.

That number, which is adjusted for seasonal factors, was down slightly from a record-high of more than 10 percent as of April 30.

In a worrisome sign, the number of homeowners starting to have problems with their mortgages rose after trending downward last year. The number of homes in the foreclosure process fell slightly, the first drop in four years.

(more…)

Like a phoenix released to spread it wings, ACORN founder and former chief organizer Wade Rathke has been letting it all hang out on his lively, but troubling blog.

He recently attacked no-nonsense Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, lamented the continuing questions regarding ACORN/SEIU involvement in the 2010 census, and even went after me on one occasion.

Now he’s attacking the concept of personal responsibility, something our society is sorely lacking. He’s encouraging homeowners who are falling behind on their mortgage payments to simply walk away from their homes, as if the money still owed is neither their problem nor their concern.

At least his message is consistent, because Rathke has always been the Johnny Appleseed of bad advice when it comes to housing.

(more…)

And then, we drove down to DC…

~~

Read the full transcript and listen to the audio here.

(more…)

A famous community organizer once said, “The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules.  If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them.” Impossible demands can irritate modern leftists in ways nothing else can, whether it’s by banning Lucky Charms cereal because it’s racist against Irish people, calling Planned Parenthood saying you want to donate money for black abortions in the name of Margaret Sanger, or making Sen. Snowe sign an oversized bailout check for a billion dollars to Amtrak, in her own office.

~

The scenario we posed the ACORN Housing employees in Baltimore is due to the application of similar power tactics. We gave ACORN a taste of its own medicine.  ACORN was alleged to be thug-like, criminal, and nefarious.  This criminal behavior was evidenced by a video of Baltimore ACORN community organizers breaking the locks on foreclosed homes.  Instead of railing against their radicalism, it is best to bring out this type of radicalism. Hannah Giles and I took advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply–which they did without hesitation.

Additionally, instead of focusing on foreclosure itself, which has become seemingly as politicized as abortion, we focused on crimes more difficult for the left to defend: trafficking of young helpless girls and tax evasion. The first group represents the severely disadvantaged, the second a threat to the distribution of wealth. (more…)