Obama omnibus mortgage settlement sets cost of doing business at $2,000 per loan – if the business is fraud, forgery, looting, bailouts and worthless ‘legal’ contracts

[Note: Before the advent of modern contract law, justification of contractual obligation was derived from appraisal of “the inherent justice or fairness of the exchange”, (http://tinyurl.com/79hnxkw) so if business and government are going to enable by inaction and ‘moral hazard’ widespread conduct that undermines contract law as the foundation of the US legal system, then we should adopt new standards:http://tinyurl.com/833c5sh]

We’ve now set a price for forgeries and fabricating documents. It’s $2000 per loan. This is a rounding error compared to the chain of title problem these systematic practices were designed to circumvent. The cost is also trivial in comparison to the average loan, which is roughly $180k, so the settlement represents about 1% of loan balances. It is less than the price of the title insurance that banks failed to get when they transferred the loans to the trust. It is a fraction of the cost of the legal expenses when foreclosures are challenged. It’s a great deal for the banks because no one is at any of the servicers going to jail for forgery and the banks have set the upper bound of the cost of riding roughshod over 300 years of real estate law.

http://tinyurl.com/79spced

Mortgage settlement is too little, too late for many

To underwater homeowners such as Samuel Guzman, whose three-bedroom Westminster home was foreclosed in August, it’s all “too little too late.”

“It’s not going to solve the problem,” said the hairdresser, who along with four family members is trying to avoid eviction. “It’s not going to make things right.”

The sentiment was echoed outside a downtown Los Angeles building where California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris announced the state’s role in the settlement. About 100 Occupy L.A. activists assembled to deride the deal, calling the government a “sell-out” that lets banks “off the hook.”

http://tinyurl.com/83zvtlu

Occupy Seattle vows counter-protest against Westboro Baptist church followers who will picket funeral for murdered children

A notoriously anti-gay church plans to picket Saturday’s funeral for Charlie and Braden Powell and will be counterprotested by Occupy Seattle.

Margie Phelps, daughter of the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church’s founder, tweeted Wednesday night that the church will attend the boys’ memorial service. The protest is to “remind” Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire “they died because of her rebellion,” a reference to her support of same-sex marriages.

Charlie Powell, 7, and Braden Powell, 5, were killed Sunday after their father, Josh Powell, blew up his house when they were dropped off for a supervised visit.

Word of Westboro’s plans spread quickly online and Occupy Seattle sounded a call for its members to counterprotest the church. The group’s Facebook page said the church “has decided to capitalize on these sad events by bringing their unique brand of hate to Washington.”

Occupy Seattle said its members don’t intend to disrupt the funeral, but want to “protect it from Westboro’s abhorrent message.”

http://tinyurl.com/6wdjpgt

US jobs gap between young and old is widest ever

Squeezed by a tight job market, young Americans are especially struggling. They have suffered bigger income losses than other age groups and are less likely to be employed than at any time since World War II.

An analysis by the Pew Research Center, released Thursday, details the impact of the recent recession on the attitudes of a generation of mostly 20- and 30-somethings.

With government data showing record gaps in employment between young and old, a Pew survey found that 41 percent of Americans believe that younger adults have been hit harder than any other group, compared with 29 percent who say middle-aged Americans and 24 percent who point to seniors 65 and older. A wide majority of the public — at least 69 percent — also said it’s more difficult for today’s young adults than their parents’ generation to pay for college, find a job, buy a home or save for the future.

http://tinyurl.com/7ep9j3v

Occupy the Human Rights Campaign

Goldman Sachs is unworthy of the Corporate Equality award because it has produced and perpetuated economic, gender, and racial inequality through irresponsible financial practices. But why should economic, gender, racial, and economic inequality matter at all to the Human Rights Campaign? The simplest reason is that there are LGBT people of all races, genders, and classes, and the HRC cannot expect support from people whom it liberates in some ways but oppresses in others.

http://tinyurl.com/79ls4hm

CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference] Set to Host White Nationalist Leader

Following speeches from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Michele Bachmann, CPAC is hosting the panel “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity” with Peter Brimelow, the founder and head of VDARE.com.

VDARE is a White Nationalist website, run by Brimelow, which frequently publishes the works of anti-Semitic and racist writers and is named after Virginia Dare, who is believed to be the first child of English parents born in the Americas. Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, expresses his fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He also said that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.”

VDARE has published the work of people like Robert Weissberg, who says that black and Hispanic students are responsible for problems in the American education system, Marcus Epstein, the Youth for Western Civilization leader who karate-chopped a black woman after calling her a “n****r” (he later pled guilty to assault), and J. Philippe Rushton of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund.

http://tinyurl.com/7z6l9rk

Somerville among suburbs where Occupy movement goes grass-roots

”We need to build a mass movement in order to change things,” said Rob Talbot, who regularly holds an Occupy Salem sign in downtown Salem on weekends. ”People in the suburbs are realizing that they have to be involved, too. Right now, the corporate influence over politics is extreme and human needs are not being met, and they won’t be until the people stand up together and say we need a change of course.”

http://tinyurl.com/6umlps8

UK austerity movement succeeds in cutting disability benefits with a hate campaign

The government’s focus on alleged fraud and overclaiming to justify cuts in disability benefits has caused an increase in resentment and abuse directed at disabled people, as they find themselves being labelled as scroungers, six of the country’s biggest disability groups have warned.

Some of the charities say they are now regularly contacted by people who have been taunted on the street about supposedly faking their disability and are concerned the climate of suspicion could spill over into violence or other hate crimes.
. . .

Scope’s regular polling of people with disabilities shows that in September two-thirds said they had experienced recent hostility or taunts, up from 41% four months before. In the last poll almost half said attitudes towards them had deteriorated in the past year.

Some disabled people say the climate is so hostile they avoid going out, or avoid using facilities such as designated parking bays if they “don’t look disabled”.

http://tinyurl.com/7et2stv

What the Boomers economic war against the Millenials has wrought

Way back in 1892, Friedrich Engels knew that success was the real curse of the USA. And that a powerful, anti-capitalist left could never take off in this country until the game stopped paying out: “Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America.”

Sound familiar? That’s what Occupy is for most of us-a guttural roar that capitalism will not do. The Boomers are right that it all smacks of entitlement. We are entitled. The world, and this country in particular, is awash in capital. With the billions floating in and out of this city every day, it’s amazing that you can walk around Manhattan and not end up with at least a grand worth of cash sifting around in your shoes like beach sand. The big lie is that the coffers are empty and budgets must be balanced. What a fucking joke. American workers have spent hundreds of years building this country and amassing this wealth, and it’s about time we claimed the vast majority of it.

But batten down the hatches, because if there’s one thing they’ve made abundantly clear, the Boomers are going to cling to life and power until the very last EKG blip, fleecing us all the while. Conservative apostate David Frum recently characterized the contemporary GOP’s platform as “a going-out-of-business sale for the Baby Boomer generation.” Which is pretty much the Democrats’ platform too. They just have better table manners.

http://tinyurl.com/7h697wu