Thursday, October 24, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Grace Ross: Should Lauren Be Homeless?
Grace Ross: Should Lauren Be Homeless?
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
She came over to us during our protest demanding an end to the shutdown of the Federal Government.
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What had grabbed Lauren’s attention were the words “shelter” and “homeless”. She had very meekly asked me if she could pick up a sign and then stood with me through the rest of the protest - occasionally tapping my hand to get my attention so that she could talk with me a little bit.
Lauren was brave and was willing to share with me (with tears in her eyes) what is a very painful and difficult situation.
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Clothed from head to toe in a purple outfit and so thrilled to stand with us at our protest, Lauren is 3 years and some months old.
How she understood the words “shelter” and “homeless”, how she understood the injustice of a family not being able to have a place of their own at the age of 3.5 is stunning.
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Worcester: take a stand on Foreclosure Mediation!
Comment posted to
Worcester manager asks for delay on foreclosure measure until Springfield settles suit
..............................
Some here are arguing from one side or the other of the Liberal-Conservative split: individual vs. social responsibility.
It's like asking "Are you on the side of hot or cold?" Which looks better depends on where you'e standing, but the issue can never be resolved. It's just endless distraction and entertainment.
Yes some people abuse the law. Yes people should take contracts seriously. Yes some people bought houses they couldn't handle. We go to every door listed for foreclosure in Worcester. We see it all, and we judge no one. We invite all to join us in fighting for their homes.
We choose a side, not because we're against individual responsibility or want a "nanny state", but because homeowners and communities face a huge imbalance of power, power that is being abused wholesale, and it's only through mutual support, building commitment to each other and engaging the whole community that we can win.
The giant "too big to fail" banks, their "too big to jail" owners and officers, the corporations they control and the Congress and politicians they own are running rough-shod over us in so many ways. The homeowners they're dispossessing are facing the brunt of the attacks.
Deserving or undeserving, the banks make no distinction, and neither should we. We ask only "will you stand and fight with us?" - and let them sort themselves out.
We still have the power to beat the "banksters" in state and local courts, city councils and state legislatures. Step by step, homeowners and community defenders have been beating them back. Our City Councilors stand with the homeowners, ready to pass a well-crafted Mediation Ordinance that will help restore the balance.
The City Manager is again telling them not to pass it, not to challenge the power of the banks until other cities can prove it's safe. Let Springfield, Lynn and Brockton fight our battles for us!
In the meantime, hundreds of Worcester homes are being lost, and new storm clouds are gathering.
Worcester manager asks for delay on foreclosure measure until Springfield settles suit
By Nick Kotsopoulos, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
http://www.telegram.com/article/20131021/NEWS/310219928
..............................
Some here are arguing from one side or the other of the Liberal-Conservative split: individual vs. social responsibility.
It's like asking "Are you on the side of hot or cold?" Which looks better depends on where you'e standing, but the issue can never be resolved. It's just endless distraction and entertainment.
Yes some people abuse the law. Yes people should take contracts seriously. Yes some people bought houses they couldn't handle. We go to every door listed for foreclosure in Worcester. We see it all, and we judge no one. We invite all to join us in fighting for their homes.
We choose a side, not because we're against individual responsibility or want a "nanny state", but because homeowners and communities face a huge imbalance of power, power that is being abused wholesale, and it's only through mutual support, building commitment to each other and engaging the whole community that we can win.
The giant "too big to fail" banks, their "too big to jail" owners and officers, the corporations they control and the Congress and politicians they own are running rough-shod over us in so many ways. The homeowners they're dispossessing are facing the brunt of the attacks.
Deserving or undeserving, the banks make no distinction, and neither should we. We ask only "will you stand and fight with us?" - and let them sort themselves out.
We still have the power to beat the "banksters" in state and local courts, city councils and state legislatures. Step by step, homeowners and community defenders have been beating them back. Our City Councilors stand with the homeowners, ready to pass a well-crafted Mediation Ordinance that will help restore the balance.
The City Manager is again telling them not to pass it, not to challenge the power of the banks until other cities can prove it's safe. Let Springfield, Lynn and Brockton fight our battles for us!
In the meantime, hundreds of Worcester homes are being lost, and new storm clouds are gathering.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Homeowner's fight for right to buy home back from Freddie Mac
My comment on article in T&G:
Freddie Mac stalls on family re-purchase of home in foreclosure
http://www.telegram.com/article/20131020/NEWS/310209933
............................
Juan Alvares is a great speaker and sharp as a tack in his native Spanish, but has had a hard time due to his very limited skill with English. Translators have sometimes failed to communicate the meaning of what bank lawyers, judges and even his own lawyers said to him. He's been an inspiration to all of us with his willingness to bounce back from every setback and keep on fighting, and his standing up for other homeowners and tenants fighting to stay in their homes after foreclosure.
In the original move against him, three different entities filed competing foreclosures at the same time. A good legal defense coupled with a media strategy could have made a laughing-stock of them and forced a fair loan modification settlement, but this is not the kind of standard move that charity lawyers are generally willing or able to make.
Those standard moves, designed for a time when mortgage and foreclosure law was well established and the motives of the parties involved were reasonably transparent, now generally only get the homeowner a delay and a better "cash for keys" deal. Every law on the books is being flouted by these vast entities masquerading as banks, and nothing is what it seems. Juan's story shows the need for creative and aggressive strategies, and for lawyers seeing themselves as partners in a movement alongside their clients.
The fact that Juan is now dealing with Freddie Mac is a case in point. The original confusion may have been caused by Freddie already being involved as the real owner behind the scenes. And Freddie, like the big private banks, has not been honestly negotiating loan modifications. We can only guess at their real motives.
Jon Marien is right in calling the unlawful refusal of Freddie Mac to sell to BCC or anyone else who might sell back to the borrower an effort to punish them. I'd use the word "terrorize".
Fannie and Freddie are owned by us, the American people. We have a right to demand and expect better!
Freddie Mac stalls on family re-purchase of home in foreclosure
By Paula J. Owen, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
http://www.telegram.com/article/20131020/NEWS/310209933
............................
Juan Alvares is a great speaker and sharp as a tack in his native Spanish, but has had a hard time due to his very limited skill with English. Translators have sometimes failed to communicate the meaning of what bank lawyers, judges and even his own lawyers said to him. He's been an inspiration to all of us with his willingness to bounce back from every setback and keep on fighting, and his standing up for other homeowners and tenants fighting to stay in their homes after foreclosure.
In the original move against him, three different entities filed competing foreclosures at the same time. A good legal defense coupled with a media strategy could have made a laughing-stock of them and forced a fair loan modification settlement, but this is not the kind of standard move that charity lawyers are generally willing or able to make.
Those standard moves, designed for a time when mortgage and foreclosure law was well established and the motives of the parties involved were reasonably transparent, now generally only get the homeowner a delay and a better "cash for keys" deal. Every law on the books is being flouted by these vast entities masquerading as banks, and nothing is what it seems. Juan's story shows the need for creative and aggressive strategies, and for lawyers seeing themselves as partners in a movement alongside their clients.
The fact that Juan is now dealing with Freddie Mac is a case in point. The original confusion may have been caused by Freddie already being involved as the real owner behind the scenes. And Freddie, like the big private banks, has not been honestly negotiating loan modifications. We can only guess at their real motives.
Jon Marien is right in calling the unlawful refusal of Freddie Mac to sell to BCC or anyone else who might sell back to the borrower an effort to punish them. I'd use the word "terrorize".
Fannie and Freddie are owned by us, the American people. We have a right to demand and expect better!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Clueless winner of phony Nobel Prize pins tail on donkey
A comment on:
By John Christoffersen, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.telegram.com/article/20131015/NEWS/310149727
..........................
Alfred Nobel specified that no new categories of prizes would be added to the ones he established. One field set up a prize named after Nobel anyway, Economics. After firing large numbers of economics professors in the '50's, just about everyone that made any sense, the survivors and their patrons urgently needed to do something to make themselves and their profession look smart and important.
This article about Robert Shiller caught my attention with its headlining of Schiller's claim that rising inequality is a problem. Does he mean that it's not just a moral or political problem but an economic one? Reading this article I see no indication that he has a clue as to why that would be so or how he came to that conclusion.
Worse, it appears that Shiller is clueless about pretty much everything - except maybe "empirical analysis of asset prices" - and honestly, I'd take a good look under the hood before I bought even that from him. Perhaps this article misrepresents him, but from it he seems blissfully unaware that our financial system and the dollar itself are teetering at the edge of the abyss, discounting the danger posed by the US flirting with a default on the debt. He suggests the stock market (being kept alive by the Fed openly pumping a trillion dollars a year of funny money into it) is "moderately overpriced" but "no big deal".
And he can say - apparently with a straight face - that "regulated properly, finance is 'at the core of our civilization'."
But now he can make inane and ignorant pronouncements like this and get taken seriously - because he is a Nobel Laureate, just like President Obama!
Nobel-winning economist warns: Rising inequality a problem
By John Christoffersen, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.telegram.com/article/20131015/NEWS/310149727
..........................
Alfred Nobel specified that no new categories of prizes would be added to the ones he established. One field set up a prize named after Nobel anyway, Economics. After firing large numbers of economics professors in the '50's, just about everyone that made any sense, the survivors and their patrons urgently needed to do something to make themselves and their profession look smart and important.
This article about Robert Shiller caught my attention with its headlining of Schiller's claim that rising inequality is a problem. Does he mean that it's not just a moral or political problem but an economic one? Reading this article I see no indication that he has a clue as to why that would be so or how he came to that conclusion.
Worse, it appears that Shiller is clueless about pretty much everything - except maybe "empirical analysis of asset prices" - and honestly, I'd take a good look under the hood before I bought even that from him. Perhaps this article misrepresents him, but from it he seems blissfully unaware that our financial system and the dollar itself are teetering at the edge of the abyss, discounting the danger posed by the US flirting with a default on the debt. He suggests the stock market (being kept alive by the Fed openly pumping a trillion dollars a year of funny money into it) is "moderately overpriced" but "no big deal".
And he can say - apparently with a straight face - that "regulated properly, finance is 'at the core of our civilization'."
But now he can make inane and ignorant pronouncements like this and get taken seriously - because he is a Nobel Laureate, just like President Obama!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Letter to a Patriot: New World Order
I found this - a real turning point:
China Calls For New Reserve Currency, And New World Order
China's NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEW WORLD ORDER YOU FEAR - THE NEW WORLD ORDER OF NSA SPYING, DETENTION CAMPS, BLACK HELICOPTERS AND BIG BROTHER. That one is already here, organized and ready. It's centered in Washington, New York, London and Zurich and has its tentacles all over the world. It's in the process of shedding its disguises.
The '"New World Order" China's calling for is a currency and economy that's beyond the control of the giant US, British and Swiss banks. Calling on the rest of the world to escape of the rule of the Rockefellers and Mellons, Rothschilds and Morgans.
It's really a call for an "Anti-New World Order"'
China's calling for this now because a collapse of the dollar is inevitable - and close. Actually, it's already happening.
It's been coming on for a long time, driven by the logic of greed that's built into the very heart and guts of our system.
And it leaves us behind in "the belly of the beast", to survive, to break free from its power, to save ourselves, and perhaps to save the world from its death throes.
My prediction: The False Patriots will try to conflate China's call for a New World Order with Big Brother, and will try to lead us back into line, unite against the foreign "threat" of China, Russia, Iran and Brazil - and against the internal "threats" of undocumented immigrants and unions.
Maybe they'll have their pet terrorists fly some airplanes into skyscrapers to scare us back into line, or worse.
The True Patriots will be the ones who remember where our real enemy lies. Here. In America. Not in the cities, the immigrant ghettos, the union halls and community groups, but at the top, in the Boardrooms of the Great Banks and Corporations.
They understand in their guts that the true face of our enemy is not Republican or Democrat, black or immigrant, but Plutocrat - the rule of the rich and powerful. The billionaires that have no loyalty to any nation or people, who have far more in common with Saudi princes and Swiss bankers than with us. Who "play with us ... like we're their little toys."
The True Patriots will be the ones who are organizing the people for survival and defense - all the regular people. Know them by their instinct for unity and solidarity.
The greatest fear of the False Patriots is that we won't believe their lies anymore. Know them by who they call traitors.
A good touchstone: where do they stand on Edward Snowden? If they call him a traitor, or even suggest he might be, get away from them!
The greatest weapon of the False Patriots is to get us fighting and hating each other. Know them by who they call enemies.
A good touchstone: they may come from an anti-immigrant, anti-union tradition, but are they offering to lead us in battle against the immigrants and unions now?
We see a lot of organized groups, good people pledging to stand together. But the sad fact is that most of our people are not organized, and many of our groups are fighting each other.
This is no time for spectators, no time for fighting over who will get which piece of the carcass.
Our real power lies in the unity and solidarity of all the regular people.
We have a lot of work to do, a lot of learning and a lot of teaching.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Rally in Daily Worcesteria
Activists rally to end government shutdown
by Walter Bird Jr., Daily Worcesteria Blog · 10/10/2013
"[This rally and march has] quite a list of demands," Horton acknowledges, "and we could go on. But it's no longer working to pick one issue, like job creation or food stamps, and just fight for that. With everything, everyone's needs and issues on the block at once, the only thing that makes sense is for all the groups and people fighting on each of these issues separately to come together to demand a complete change in government priorities."
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