Matt Weidner – Fighting For The American People

Posts Tagged ‘foreclosure attorney’

I left court the other day after a particularly bruising hearing and thought to myself, “I’m now starting to understand what it must feel like to be a minority.”

Now I’m not going to overstate this, I’m not suggesting that I’ll ever know the full breadth and depth of the horror and inhumanity that is our national history or racism, but the whole experience of walking into an environment where no matter how hard you work, no matter how right you are, the deck is still stacked against you.

I remember years ago someone explained the lasting impact of generations of racism.  It was described as having your legs tied up and hobbled for years, then having the binds removed just before you lined up on the track to start the race.  The gun goes off and the race starts…everyone’s equal right?  Same track, same distance….all the runners are equal, right?  Of course not.  Generations of hobbling make the race inherently unfair.

So I walked into a hostile courtroom and as usual, I had page after page of motion and caselaw highlighted…the facts and law totally on my side.  But after I made my argument…the argument that was totally one sided…..my side….I lost.

I couldn’t believe it.  But then I’ve been there countless times before.

It’s time we all look around us.  At our neighbors, at our co-workers, at the people that are passing us on the street.  We are all different colors. We have dramatically different social, economic, religious and political backgrounds.  But the fact of the matter is, the dyed in the wool lower middle class rebel flag waving pick up truck driver has so much more in common with his inner city, tinted window low riding brother than he has with any of those political leaders that inflame the us v. them divide.

That’s a reality that we all have to start to really consider on a very deep and humanistic level.  When you’re down on your luck, way, way down on your luck…look into the eyes of those around you who are suffering.  Break through the decades of learned divide and separation.  Sit down on the same level and share together the stories of suffering, the sense of betrayal and abuse.  We’re all in this together. Brothers and sisters who must stand together and form unions of mutual protection and support.

I urge you all to search the speeches of Martin Luther King on YouTube.  Just search a few speeches and listen to them in a quiet place.  Listen carefully to the words, the language, the tone and inflection. Breathe in the heart and the soul and the solid as granite resolve in those eyes and those words.  Look at the intensity in the eyes, the passion in the soul.  Carl Jung spoke of the Collective Unconscious, the shared identify of all humanity.  Seek that out as the message behind all of this.

Now, on your way over to Youtube, let me share with you an inspiration I found. My beautiful sister who shared with me her love and joy…

YOU TUBE

LINK HERE

The fact is foreclosure will happen anyway, no matter who holds the note, Passidomo said. The reality is the borrower borrowed something from someone, and didn’t pay his debt, she said.

The most offensive thing about this quote is it’s coming from someone who wants to give away homes to banksters who are far more guilty than the homeowners they wan to throw into the street…

MORE HERE

From Abigail Field:

A shocking aspect of the proposed foreclosure fraud settlement among Bailed-Out Banks, the state attorneys general, and the Feds has rightly gotten a lot of attention, namely the Bailed-Out Banks’ ability to use other people’s money to pay their “penalty.” I confess, when I first heard about it, I figured it was a testament to the federal government’s craven capitulation to the Bailed Out Banks. (Let’s call them the B.O.B.s, rhymes with S.O.Bs.) But now I know it’s much worse than that, thanks to excellent reporting by David Dayen. The federal government really wants the B.O.Bs to use pension fund money to pay their “penalty.”

Now, readers know I’m not exactly a Pollyanna, but I feel like one now. See, I thought our federal government understood that the right way to penalize someone with a fine was to actually make them pay the bill. I thought the feds realized the best way to punish the banks was to have them cough up cash into a BP spill-type fund, and have 50 special masters (one per state) use it to pay down mortgages, thereby punishing banks and helping homeowners. I just figured the Feds had rushed things so much, doing essentially no investigation, that they didn’t have the goods to leverage a better deal. But no. The Feds see the banks’ ability to spend firefighters’, teachers’ and cops’ money as a design feature, not a flaw.

ABIGALE FIELD

It looks like the Florida House of Representatives will move on Wednesday, February 8 to hear the Florida (un)Fair Foreclosure Act.

The bill number currently under consideration is Committee Substitute for House Bill 213.  Please take the time to read the bill in full here.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE CLICK HERE AND CALL THESE LEGISLATORS

It is expecially important to call the chairperson Dorothy Hukill and make sure she knows this is a bad, bad bill:

Capitol Office
204 House Office Building
402 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300
Phone: (850) 488-6653

But make sure you hit all the legislators on the committee.  They need to know that this bill it toxic and will be very, very controversial. It is still being amended and more bad news is being thrown into this every day.  The bottom line is it is a reward to the banksters that caused all this mess, paid for by the little guy.

Among the most disturbing aspects is that it would turn some foreclosures into “show cause” proceedings that could deprive a homeowner of the right to raise defenses and could result in a sale in as little as 90 days!

The bill would require some Defendants to make payments to the pretender lender as a condition of having their voice heard in court.

The bill would apply to all foreclosures currently pending

DO IT CALL THE MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE BEFORE WEDNESDAY

Attorneys General from all across the country have been under intense pressure by the Obama Administration to accept the terms of the Very Bad Bank Bailout by tomorrow, February 6, 2012.

Word on the street is that there was a conference call scheduled this weekend between all of them to hammer out the details, twist arms, make promises, blackmail and extort.

It is also confirmed that the Obama Administration’s key man i the deal Shawn Donovan, aka Napolean Dynamite had a conference call with activist groups where he explained that the money to pay for the bank bailout bill would come not from the banks but from the investors in the mortgages, which means the 401ks, retirement and investment accounts of little folks like me and you.

HUH? Come again?

Wait just a cotton pickin’ minute here. How can ReTHUGliCON attorney generals like Florida’s Pam Bondi be screaming at other attorney generals like California’s Kamela Harris a Democrat to take a deal that amounts to nothing more than a federal taking of private property with no compensation?

Huh?  Come again?

I checked my “Being a Republican For Dummies” book and being opposed to things like that were covered in the first chapter.  Well, go ahead and read along here folks, cause this is really, really ugly….

In case you had any doubts about what the mortgage settlement was really about and why banks that were so keenly opposed to it are now willing to go ahead, the news of the last two days should settle any doubts.

As we had indicated earlier, one of the many leaks about the settlement showed that there had been a major shift its parameters. Of the $25 billion that has been bandied about as a settlement total for the biggest banks, comparatively little (less than $5 billion) is in cash. The rest comes in the form of credits for principal modifications of mortgages.

Originally, that was originally to come only from mortgages held by banks, meaning they would bear the costs. The fact that this meant that whether a homeowner might benefit would be random (were you one of the lucky ones whose mortgage had not been securitized?) was apparently used as an excuse to morph the deal into a huge win for them: allowing the banks to get credit for modifying mortgages that they don’t own.

The first rule of finance (well, maybe second, “fees are not negotiable” might be number one) is always use other people’s money before your own. So giving the banks permission to modify loans they don’t own guarantees that that is where the overwhelming majority of mortgage modifications will take place, ex those the banks would have done anyhow on their own loans. And the design of the program, that securitized loans will be given only half the credit towards the total, versus 100% for loans the banks own, merely assures that even more damage will be done to investors to pay for the servicers’ misdeeds.

Let me stress: this is a huge bailout for the banks. The settlement amounts to a transfer from retirement accounts (pension funds, 401 (k)s) and insurers to the banks. And without this subsidy, the biggest banks would be in serious trouble

Why? As leading mortgage analyst Laurie Goodman pointed out in a late 2010 presentation, just over half of the private label (non Fannie/Freddie) securitizations have second liens behind them (overwhelmingly home equity lines of credit). Moreover, homes with first liens only have far lower delinquency rates than homes with both first and second liens. Separately, various studies have found that defaults are also correlated with how far underwater a borrower is. If a borrower is too far in negative equity territory, it makes less sense for them to struggle to stay current, no matter how much they love their home.

FROM NAKED CAPITALISM