U.S. cities struggle with blighted bank-owned homes

Across America, bank-owned, blighted houses sit untouched, sometimes for years, disfiguring what in many cases are already troubled neighborhoods. Activists say the problem is particularly acute in minority areas. And many cities do not have the resources, the will or the power to force banks to maintain their properties.

http://tinyurl.com/7pcf8vc

Overdraft fees cost Americans $29.5 billion in 2011

http://tinyurl.com/6wns5ks

Mop-Up Operations Resume As Voters Reject Public Pensions, Worker Rights, Liberalism

The states and localities suffering from budget crises are having problems because Wall Street blew up the economy, and in many cases, ensnared these municipalities in extremely bad deals.  The wealth of taxpayers was and is being transferred to banks.  In 2008, the choice before Bush, and then Obama, was clear.  They could hand taxpayer resources to Wall Street and oversee a series of budget crises in states and localities, with the opportunity for later privatization of public assets and the breaking of public sector unions.  Or Bush, and then Obama, could crack down on Wall Street, and make sure that bailout monies went to states and localities, and, with record low interest rates, spur tremendous investment in new energy, infrastructure, and education initiatives.  It was a choice.  Bush picked Wall Street.  Obama also picked Wall Street, with public sector unions supporting Obama like turkeys cheering on Thanksgiving.

Now voters are making their own choice.  Once again, this is a direct consequence of how Barack Obama has led the Democratic Party and redefined liberalism, into a party and an ideology that is defined by wage cuts, foreclosures, debt, and acceptance of dramatic political and economic inequality.  Voters don’t want to pay for a government and for government workers who they perceive as out of step with their interests.

http://tinyurl.com/6nngf2p

U.S.: Second-highest child poverty level

A UNICEF study of 35 developed countries found the United States had the second-highest rate of child poverty after Romania.

The study – -titled Report Card 10 — found the child poverty rate in Romania was 26.5 percent. The U.S. rate was 23.1 percent, followed by Latvia and Bulgaria at 18.8 percent, Spain at 17.1 percent and Greece at 16 percent.

Iceland had the lowest child poverty rate, 4.7 percent, followed by Finland at 5.3 percent, Cyprus and the Netherlands at 6.1 percent and Norway at 6.3 percent.

http://tinyurl.com/7fr88b2

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 6/9/12” »

Feed the Hood delivers to JP’s needy

An activist who distributes food to needy Jamaica Plain residents is planning a “legendary” fund-raiser in Roxbury to continue his efforts to feed JP’s hungry.

Organizer Jamarhl Crawford is bringing the Last Poets, a group of poets and musicians originally organized during the 1960s, to Roxbury to raise funds to continue his work with the Feed The Hood and Fill Your Fridge programs.

In Feed the Hood, Crawford and his helpers buy good-quality, healthy food and cook it either at home or at a near-by church. Then they drive around, handing the food to those who need it, mostly the city’s homeless population.

http://tinyurl.com/6uvmlwx

Wall Street CEO pay rises 20 percent in 2011, despite losses in corporate value

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the subsequent Occupy movement and the protests against the 1 percent, you might think that financial corporations would rein in the multi-million dollar salaries paid to their CEOs.

Instead, compensation to the best-paid CEOs at the largest U.S.-based financial companies collectively rose by an average of 20.4 percent in 2011, according to a new report from Bloomberg Markets magazine. This rise is even more surprising in light of the fact that 33 of the 50 biggest financial companies had negative share returns in their 2011 fiscal years. High-level investment managers maintain that many of the CEOs of companies with underwhelming stock performance are overpaid and warn that the controversy over executive pay in the financial industry will not be resolved until shareholders hold executives fully accountable for their under-performance.

http://tinyurl.com/7eauhfh

Judge Upholds Ban on NDAA Detentions – Rejects Obama Call to ‘Reconsider’ Decision

Judge Katherine Forest has upheld her previous ban on the use of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provisions that allowed the president to summarily detain “terror suspects” in military custody for indefinite periods of time with no legal oversight.

In her initial ruling, Forest had accepted the arguments from a number of political dissidents, including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, that they had a reasonable fear that they could be disappeared off the street and held in military custody for constitutionally protected political speech. The Administration did not argue that they wouldn’t be detained, but insisted that since they hadn’t been detained yet they had no standing to contest the law.

http://tinyurl.com/75hrnyu

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 6/8/12” »

This is What Plutocracy Looks Like: Walker Rides Huge Funding Edge to Victory

On Tuesday night, with Gov. Scott Walker’s re-election in a special recall vote, Wisconsin learned a brutal lesson: “This is what plutocracy looks like.”

Thousands of union members and other Wisconsinites have been fighting for the last 16 months when Walker, in his own words, decided to “drop the bomb” and cripple the operations of almost all public employee unions by introducing Act 10. This triggered a massive upsurge by labor and its allies to restore worker rights, strengthen plundered public institutions like education and healthcare, and to revitalize democracy. Activists gathered over 1 million signatures on petitions to trigger the recall vote during the coldest days of last winter.

But their vision of a new progressive era for Wisconsin has been turned upside down-at least temporarily-by a tidal wave of money from billionaire CEOs and corporations that swept Walker to victory.

http://tinyurl.com/7oycnfs

Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage

It’s not complete to say this is just Obama’s doing.  Obama has done everything he’s done with the support of labor leaders, Democratic supportive groups like Moveon, foundations, liberal pundits, African-American church networks, feminist groups, LGBT groups, and technology interests.  Any of these could have stopped him by withdrawing support and overtly attacking him, but only the LBGT community fought for their rights.  This American labor bureaucracy, which simply does not strike and therefore has no leverage against capital, operates largely as a group of fragmented business unionists.  Unfortunately, business unions don’t exist when business decides it doesn’t want unions.  And that’s what global business elites have decided, as this piece published on this very site titled The Liquidation of Society versus the Global Labor Revival shows.

http://tinyurl.com/bovgaku

Does Sallie Mae Want Students To Default ?

Lenders are paid full book value on defaulted loans (principal plus interest).  For defaulted loan collections, collectors get to keep 25 cents on every dollar collected.  If the loan is rehabilitated, the new, much larger, loan is sold, and the guarantors get paid (in addition to 10 months of payments that go straight into their pockets) something like 18%  of the inflated balance.

For lenders who only lend to students (and don’t guaranty, or collect on defaulted loans), they lose no money on a default. The money they are reimbursed can (and is) immediately used to fund another loan.  Therefore, these lenders, fiscally, have a neutral outlook about defaults (i.e. they don’t care one way or another if a loan defaults).

http://tinyurl.com/dy2kxhp

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 6/7/12” »