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Category: Politics As Usual
Eminent domain for foreclosed houses
This idea’s been floating around for a while. Banks don’t like it, of course, and neither do investors. Apparently the only people who like it are the homeowners!
Major cities and some wealthy suburbs may have seen a recovery in the housing market, but between the coasts and in smaller towns nationwide, the flood of underwater homeowners continues.
Take Richmond, Calif., for example, where a staggering 46 percent of homes remain “underwater,” meaning borrowers owe more on the mortgage than the house is worth. These communities have needed a solution for years to prevent successive foreclosure waves and save their neighborhoods from a spiral of blight. And maybe they’ve hit on something.
The answer? Eminent domain.
“The banks aren’t helping us, so we’re stepping into the void and making it happen ourselves,” said Richmond mayor Gayle McLaughlin.
McLaughlin became the first U.S. mayor to take steps to use eminent domain authority — seizing mortgages from the lien holder and selling them back to the homeowner at an affordable rate, giving them the principal reduction that will allow them to stay in their home over the long term.
Other cities have flirted with the controversial strategy, which uses capital funding from a for-profit private investment firm called Mortgage Resolution Partners, but Richmond has actually made purchase offers on 624 loans. The servicers had until yesterday, August 13, to agree to the heavily discounted price, which MRP and Richmond determined through a third-party appraiser. No one has agreed to the terms, and so Mayor McLaughlin will go back to the City Council to get approval to begin the eminent domain process. Other cities are watching, seeing if this can be a national model.
But the mortgage industry has decided to make an example of Richmond, prolonging the fight and preventing relief for borrowers. Investor groups representing the nation’s largest holders of mortgage-backed securities, including government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed a federal lawsuit last week against Richmond, arguing that the eminent domain scheme is unconstitutional.
Eminent domain seizures of private property must have a public purpose and must offer just compensation to the property owners. The investors allege in their suit that preventing foreclosures is not a valid public purpose, and they say that the compensation they’re being offered is not just.
“Just.” That’s such a relative term, isn’t it? You might argue that people who bought high-risk, high-yield derivatives might as well have thrown that money on the roulette tables in Atlantic City. You might also argue that anyone who bought such high-yield investments should have smelled a rat — but they were too intoxicated by the smell of all that easy money. Oh well!
Clinton rage
The difference, of course, is that Hillary Clinton (unlike Obama) knows how to take a punch and give back better than she gets. If only for the joy of watching her beat the shit out of the right wing, I might vote for her.
Steve Lonegan
This guy won the GOP nomination for the Senate in NJ. He’s a teabagger cartoon.
Why do you suppose
That Chris Christie and Cory Booker share the same donors?
NJ election today
It’s raining in New Jersey today, and it’s a primary, so turnout will be very low. Your vote will make a difference, so get out and support… well, anybody but Cory Booker.
Morally bankrupt
Philadelphia’s “leaders” who are systematically dismantling our public school system.
Speaking truth to stupid
Avendon has so much great stuff today, I can’t pick one. Go read it all.
Another version of events
Boy, they really convince themselves we don’t have memories, don’t they?
WASHINGTON — A former top aide to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) fired back at the Obama administration this weekend, challenging the president’s assertion Friday that he welcomed a debate on privacy and national security and that Congress had been fully briefed.
Jennifer Hoelzer was a longtime aide to Wyden until recently, and vented her frustration in a way she couldn’t as his communications director or deputy chief of staff. Hoelzer wrote on TechDirt that she was stunned to see President Obama claim he wanted such a conversation after she had worked for years to beg and plead with the administration to declassify material so that an actual debate could take place.
Really, Mr. President? Do you really expect me to believe that you give a damn about open debate and the democratic process? Because it seems to me if your Administration was really committed those things, your Administration wouldn’t have blocked every effort to have an open debate on these issues each time the laws that your Administration claims authorizes these programs came up for reauthorization, which — correct me if I am wrong — is when the democratic process recommends as the ideal time for these debates.
For example, in June 2009, six months before Congress would have to vote to reauthorize Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the Obama Administration claims gives the NSA the authority to collect records on basically every American citizen — whether they have ever or will ever come in contact with a terrorist — Senators Wyden, Feingold and Durbin sent Attorney General Eric Holder a classified letter “requesting the declassification of information which argued was critical for a productive debate on reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.”
Go read the whole thing, it’s terrific. And horrifying.
Anybody but Cory Booker
Many of the NJ voters I know tell me they’ll vote for Cory Booker in the Democratic senatorial primary “because he can win.” But Jersey is a blue state; whoever gets the nomination is likely to win. So why Booker? They like him. They like him the same way people like Chris Christie: They like his personality, and that’s enough.
I’ll be honest: I don’t trust the man. I’m a professional skeptic, and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you why.
Let me put it this way: If you want to risk a Manchurian candidate who, while running as a nominal Democrat, is and has been deeply entrenched with the vulture capitalists and their disaster capitalism education “reform”, grew up in and has never rejected the extreme religious right (while selling himself as gay-friendly, he’s cultivated the same extremist movement that has promoted homophobia in Uganda and benefited from their mythology of Newark’s “transformation,” is steeped in Wall Street money and philosophy and is deeply admired by the usual right-wing think tanks, you should vote for Cory Booker in tomorrow’s NJ Senate primary.
The charming, tweeting Cory Booker (stop me if this sounds familiar) was first identified and mentored years ago by the same elements against which we eternally fight. The Powers That Be, powerful people steeped in sales and marketing, realized how much easier it would be to sell their anti-democratic, un-American agendas if they could recruit some exemplary black Democrats as cover for their packaging of privatized education as the “civil rights issue of our time.” Guess who fits that bill?
And Cory Booker, cheerleader for privatized schools, school vouchers and friend of Michelle Rhee, wants to be president. So he’s happy to take that deal.
There’s more background on Cory Booker than you can absorb in a day, so I’ll just stick to the highlights.
First: Cory Booker is very, very tight with the religious right wing — but he’s also very careful about what he says, since he hopes to run for president and cultivates strong LGBT support. The problem is, he hangs with the Dominionists. Is this a case of “I’ll work with anybody who wants to help my city”, or is there something more?
He’s very religious himself. So where are the lines he won’t cross? Is it okay for Democrats to validate any parts of the right-wing agenda that’s politically convenient?
Continue reading “Anybody but Cory Booker”