Mojo reports that Mitt Romney worked at company that disposed of dead aborted babies

I knew something like this would come up!

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney’s exit from Bain.

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

This will not help Romney one bit. I could sit here and yowl on about how much Romney likes money, more than Babies. But, honestly, I do not know that to be true and I just cannot and will not liable a man who I know nothing about. I did that sort of thing with Bush, when I was on the left, and you know what? I looked like an idiot for it. So, I am not playing the left’s game for them. I just believe that Christians would like to know about this, which is why I am publishing it.

Others: Washington Post, Salon, Cognitive Dissidence, PERRspectives, ThinkProgress, TBogg, Daily Kos, New York Magazine, Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, US Politics, Mother Jones and The Huffington Post

As much as I hate to admit it, Libby Spencer has a point

…and no I don’t mean the one on the top of her head either…. 😉 😛

As you know, I am not a big fan of the previous President. In fact, his stupidity got me to start blogging — That was in 2006 — 8 Years ago. WOW. Makes me feel old. 😯

Anyhow, reacting to the news today and Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to it, Progressive blogger Libby Spencer says:

To which one can only reply, “Why the hell didn’t you do it?

Talk is cheap. If Pelosi’s Congress had actually pursued charges against the very real criminality in the Bush White House and had Rove’s pudgy ass frogmarched down Capitol Hill, it might have made the thieves and scoundrels think twice before embarking on their next caper. And even if it didn’t stop the GOPers, it would have at least made clear Democrats were as willing to fight as hard against the GOP agenda as the left did to put them into a majority.

That they didn’t is at least partly why they’re struggling right now to recapture the enthusiasm of the base.

via The Impolitic: Contemptible Congress.

I have to give the woman credit, when she is right — she is right. The no-nothing Democrats, during Bush’s term is why there was a good deal of lackluster support of the Democrats, during the era of Bush. This is why Obama shot forward, because the Democrats knew that if they did not pick someone like Obama, that they would lose to the Republican again in another election. This is sort of the problem that they have right now; just like during the Clinton era — their President is in trouble and the bench is empty. Except, back then they did have Gore, and Edwards and Hillary and Kerry. Now…. they have nobody at all.

It should be a lesson to them, overreach, when it suits your own political interests is never, ever a good idea. Yes, I know the Republicans have done it too and they paid for it in elections too. Now, it is the Democrats turn. I predict that this election coming in 2012 is going to be a wake up call for the Progressive community and to the Democratic Party. They are going to have to make some tough decisions about the future of that party. Because America is not happy with them, neither is their base. The old way of doing things in that Party is not going to work anymore. They need new ideas. The Democratic Party needs to come back to center and start over. This far-leftist way of doing things as failed and failed badly.

It is time for that party to change, and quickly, before that party is relegated to the dustbin of history.

Why Scott Walker Won and the Democrats in Wisconsin lost

I was going to try avoid writing about this, but I am seeing some rather silly stuff being written about this win; So, I thought I would offer my thoughts as a former Democratic Party voter. Update: Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post hits the post a bit, but fails, as most progressives do; to see the full picture.

Putting it plain and simple, The Democrats in Wisconsin picked a fight that they could not win. — They were outspent, out-organized, and out-boxed; the Democrats had zero chance of winning this recall election at all. But yet, they still decided to fight for a recall election. They should have taken their cues from Michigan and left well enough alone. The Democrats in Michigan tried unsuccessfully to get Governor Snyder recalled here twice and both times they failed horribly. This is because residents of Michigan knew that the former Governor of Michigan was a incompetent moron who could not Govern worth a damn and they did not want a Democrat back in office again. Thus, the Democrats wisely dropped the issue and decided to try and win the 2012 election. Wisconsin should have followed their lead, but they did not and decided to try and force their hand and failed.

Mother Jones has some good ideas as well:

1) Campaign Money is King

Walker crushed his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in the political money wars. The governor raised $30.5 million while Barrett pulled in $3.9 million—a nearly 8-to-1 advantage in candidate fundraising. Walker banked on in- and out-of-state donors, including heavyweight GOP contributors such as Houston homebuilder Bob Perry and Amway heir Dick Devos. Walker was able to raise so much money because of a quirk in state law that lets candidates potentially facing a recall raise unlimited funds for their defense. (The normal limit for individual donors in $10,000.) Barrett did not get to raise unlimited funds in his recall campaign—which placed him at a great disadvantage.

All that money helped Walker pound Barrett in the ad wars. An analysis by Hotline On Call found that Walker and his GOP allies outspent Barrett and his backers 3-to-1 on TV ad buys in the three months before Tuesday’s recall. The dark-money-peddling Republican Governors Association itself spent $9.4 million to keep Walker in office.

Just as the political money advantage proved crucial to labor’s win last year in repealing Ohio’s anti-union SB 5 law, campaign cash appears to have played a pivotal role in the GOP’s Wisconsin wins .

2) The Candidate

Filing nearly one million signatures to trigger a recall election, Democrats and union leaders and members had their sights trained on the governor. The recall election’s Democratic primary forced them to take their eyes off the prize. A primary fight between Barrett and former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk splintered the labor movement. The major unions endorsed Falk early on, sometimes over the opposition of their own rank-and-file. Several other unions held out until late March, when Barrett entered the race, and then endorsed the mayor. This primary drama knocked the anti-Walker effort off course for weeks, if not a month, in a race where every single day counts. It divided a unified movement into Barrett supporters and Falk supporters.

3) No New Ground

Democrats and labor unions touted their massive get-out-the-vote operation, which was supposed to tip the scales in their favor. Turn-out was way up in the elections, at 2.4 million, but the left failed to win over the types of people who elected Walker in 2010. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelnotes, Walker’s Tuesday win is a mirror image of his 2010 victory—just with more voters. He won men and lost women; won independents and lost moderates; and won suburban and rural voters but not urban voters.

More notably, Walker won 38 percent of votes from union households—an increase of 1 percent from 2010. Remember, union members or their spouses didn’t know in 2012 that Walker planned to target them after the election with his anti-union “budget repair” bill curbing collective bargaining rights. Yet 16 months after Walker launched his attack on unions, just as many people in union households voted for him. The unions failed to rally their own ranks.

My thoughts on the Unions — One of the main reasons why the unions failed; not because of a lack of members or money. The unions failed because for the following:

They over played their hand, by storming the capital building and occupying it. This made them look like total buffoons in the eyes of the people, not mention the heavy handed tactics that were on par with communist gulags.
The second reason is a rather simple one; not all union members are on board with the progressive movement, just because someone has a union card, does not necessarily make him a Democrat. Some union members are free thinkers and some of them resent being culled in together with the socialist crowd.
The last reason is this; some union members are just not happy with the Democratic Party and with Obama. I believe Obama fatigue played a big part in the loss in Wisconsin. I believe it will also play out in November as well.

Needless to say, Scott Walker won big and the Unions and Democrats lost big. The results of this will be far-reaching and the Democrats in Wisconsin would be wise to lay low and try to hang on in 2012. But if they do not, they should learn the lessons of the massive over-reach that took place in Wisconsin and with the Democratic Party as a whole. However, knowing Democrats like I do; they will not learn a thing from this.

Artur Davis writes one of the most honest articles I have read in a long time

If I ever had the chance to meet this young man, I would thank him for his bravery. This man gets it, and he sees that the Democratic Party is totally broken. I saw it in 2007 and decided that I just could not support them any longer. This was way before the huge economic melt down of 2008. After that, the deal was sealed for me. Never again would I vote for that party.

So, my hats off to this man for seeing that too:

And the question of party label in what remains a two team enterprise? That, too, is no light decision on my part: cutting ties with an Alabama Democratic Party that has weakened and lost faith with more and more Alabamians every year is one thing; leaving a national party that has been the home for my political values for two decades is quite another. My personal library is still full of books on John and Robert Kennedy, and I have rarely talked about politics without trying to capture the noble things they stood for. I have also not forgotten that in my early thirties, the Democratic Party managed to engineer the last run of robust growth and expanded social mobility that we have enjoyed; and when the party was doing that work, it felt inclusive, vibrant, and open-minded.

But parties change. As I told a reporter last week, this is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party (and he knows that even if he can’t say it). If you have read this blog, and taken the time to look for a theme in the thousands of words (or free opposition research) contained in it, you see the imperfect musings of a voter who describes growth as a deeper problem than exaggerated inequality; who wants to radically reform the way we educate our children; who despises identity politics and the practice of speaking for groups and not one national interest; who knows that our current course on entitlements will eventually break our solvency and cause us to break promises to our most vulnerable—that is, if we don’t start the hard work of fixing it.

via A Response to Political Rumors | Official Artur Davis.

I have to agree with the man; he is right. The Democratic Party used Barack Obama to get elected, because they had no one else. They threw off Clinton, because they chose identity politics over experience. You see, I remember 2000 and 2004. In 2000, the Democratic Party used a elitist out of touch buffoon, who could not get elected Mayor of a City; much less a President. Al Gore might have been from the south, but he lacked Bill Clinton’s likeability. In 2004, The Democratic Party ran a out of touch, elitist, limousine Liberal who, again, was seen by most as stiff and not of the people. Which he really is not, John Kerry is an incredibly wealthy man.

So, in 2008, the Democratic Party basically had Clinton, Edwards, Biden and yes, Obama. There were people in the Democratic Party, who did not want the Clintons back in the White House at all. So, the party rallied behind Obama for a number of reasons. Yes, race was one of the bigger reasons. Also too, I tend to believe that there were people, who Clinton “did dirty” back during his term in office and they wanted revenge; and revenge they got.

It was with the election of President Barack Obama that the Democratic Party went from being a party of the “New Left” to being a party of the “Neo-Left.” That was the whole changing of the guard within the Party. Saul Alinsky’s dream was finally realized. This is the change that Artur Davis is referring to and it is one that is only going to drive more and more people away from the Democratic Party and I do not mean just white people. Minorities, including blacks, are going to wake up and see that they being played like fiddles in that party. The quicker the better, if you ask me.

All what I wrote above, Reagan knew, long ago — he saw the changes that were happening behind the scenes and promptly changed his political stance. Mainly because he saw what was coming down the pike. Reagan saw that the Communists were changing tactics and embracing “social justice” as opposed to party loyalty. So, he left and embraced his Midwestern upbringing. The truth is Reagan did not change; The Democratic Party changed and they have since gotten totally worse.

Again, Kudos to Mr. Davis and I hope he comes to embrace what he knows to be right.

Government Records $229 billion deficit for a month

Elections matter folks, this is why. Greece, here we come!

The U.S. government just notched its highest ever monthly deficit, with the red rink running to an estimated $229 billion in February.

The Congressional Budget Office, in a preliminary analysis, reported that the February 2012 deficit broke last year’s monthly record of $223 billion.

The office attributed the shortfall in part to a decline in revenue — mainly because of a $25 billion increase in income tax refunds thanks to disbursement timing issues.

According to the CBO, processing delays pushed refund payments that would have been distributed in January off into February. And the additional day in February this year allowed for extra refunds to be distributed during the month that otherwise would have been paid out in March.

The CBO projected that for the first five months of the fiscal year, the federal government is running a $578 billion deficit.

The projected deficit this year is once again projected to top $1 trillion

via Government Records Highest-ever Monthly Deficit | Fox News.

The only thing I can truly say about this one is this; elections matter. This is what happens when you put progressives and moderate Republicans in Government, they spend on your dime and you get stuck with the tab and most usually, you do not get a thing for it in return. This is why we have to get people elected to political office, in City, State and Federal levels; who at the very least, have the American people’s interests in mind and not their own political fortunes in mind. Because when the political veterans are running the show; both Republican and Democratic Parties; this is what you get —- Debt.

China cannot buy our debt forever, or eventually they will own this Country. Not to mention, China is not exactly a free Country. All China would have to do, is tell the United States that they will not be buy anymore of our debt and we, as a Nation, would be history. We, as Conservatives have no one to blame, but ourselves for this fine mess. The Republican Party elected a moderate Republican by the name of Richard Nixon, who wanted so badly to make a name for himself and that idiot liberal Republican just had to go to China and normalize relations with those Communist bastards. Which is pretty darned ironic, considering what the Communists in China did to John Birch. This is one Conservative who felt Watergate was nothing more than sweet justice. (…and No, I am NOT being snarky!)

This why we the American people, the silent majority; need to vote differently this coming November. Our Nation’s future might just depend on it.

I voted for Ron Paul in Michigan’s Primary

Yes, I voted for him in the primary. I had to, I would be sinning otherwise.

I know that Ron Paul will not win the primary race here in Michigan. I also know that Ron Paul will not be nominated as the Republican Party’s choice for candidate for President of the United States of America. However, I voted for him in the Primary here in Michigan. Please, allow me the time to explain why.

There are a number of reasons why and they are the following:

Spending: Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich all talk a mean game about cutting spending out of one side of their mouths, and out of the other, they all speak of strengthening our Military and of future conflicts with Iran.
Religion: I realize that Religion is not supposed to be a litmus test for Presidential elections. However, I believe that Religious influence is an issue in selection of one’s vote. It is a fact that Mitt Romney is of the Mormon faith. It is a fact that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are both of the Roman Catholic faith. As a Protestant Christian, as a Fundamentalist Christian and as an Independent Fundamental Baptist, I must unequivocally say that I do not consider Mormons or Roman Catholics to be true born again Christians at all. I realize that this position might offend some, to them I simply say; I must follow what I know in my heart and soul to be right. I believe a vote for any of these other three men would be a slap in the face to the Almighty God and to his Son Jesus Christ, who came to save and deliver all from the bondages of sin and from false Christian doctrine; including Mormonism and Roman Catholics. Furthermore, I could think of no greater grievous Sin than to vote for a man, of whose religion is, what my Religious convictions consider a false form of Christianity.
Wars: As someone who spent over 7 years blogging against a war in Iraq, of which I felt was very unjustified and quite immoral — I just cannot support Republican candidates who wish to steer us into further conflicts in the Middle East. This not to say that I do not support Israel, anyone who reads this blog, knows that I totally support the idea and preservation of the Jewish State of Israel. However, I am wholeheartedly opposed to the continuation of fighting Israel’s battles for them. I believe that the United States of America needs to stop being the World’s police officer and let these Countries fend for themselves. Furthermore, I believe that the United States of America needs to stop funding the feud between the Arabs and Jews, which the United States has done for years.

For these reasons and for these reasons alone, I have cast my lot to the man, who I feel best represents my beliefs as an American, as a Christian, and as a libertarian-minded Conservative. I feel personally that any other sort of a vote would be Anti-Christian and Anti-American. This is not to say that I do not have some minor differences of opinion with the Representative from Texas; I do have a few. However, I am not, as some are, to toss out the proverbial “baby with the bathwater.” Because of this, I have voted for and will continue to support Ron Paul for President of the United States in 2012.

These Statements are true and are a true representation of my political positions and opinion.

Signed,

Charles Patrick Adkins

Owner and Publisher

Thought and Rantings

Http://www.thoughtsandrantings.com

KJV Hosting and Web Design

http://www.kjvhost.com

Detroit’s Autorama is in town

Now here is something that makes me get a bit nostalgic:

Now that Detroit has had a month to bask in the future of what the automotive industry has to offer, the Motor City will now take a look at its past.

The 60th annual Autorama begins noon Friday and runs through Sunday at Cobo Center, One Washington Blvd. in Detroit.

Around 100,000 people are expected at the annual car event, which will feature about 1,000 exhibits with celebrities, attractions, beer and — of course — more than 700 hot rods, classic cars and customized vehicles.

via 2012 Autorama Detroit: Motor City revs up for ‘America’s greatest hot rod show’ | MLive.com

When I was a little kid, my Father and I would always head to Cobo Hall in Detroit every year to go to this show. It was like a year religious pilgrimage for us. Some years, like back in the 80’s, my cousins, my Mom, and her sister and hubby would trek down to the show. Back in the 80’s stars from shows like “The Duke of Hazzard” would be there. People like Tom Wopat, James Best — who played Roscoe P. Coltrane — were there. What I remember the most, was the walking; we would walk that entire show, all rooms, upstairs and downstairs of that hall and look at everything. We used to go to the auto-show as well; it was fun time. I remember getting my picture taken in the car from the T.V. Series “Knight Rider,” You know K.I.T.T.? I got it taken in the car from the first season and I believe the second season. It was a Polaroid, and it cost my Dad five bucks.

My Dad, because he worked at General Motors, used to get free tickets to all of those shows. I miss those old days; they were the “magic years” for me as a kid. Sadly, we stopped going to those shows, mainly because it was such a pain in the rear to get down there and the walking was not easy on my Dad or me, as we both got older. In addition, in addition, we started hearing about incidents happening at those show, shootings, robberies, and so forth, so we just quit going. I went to an Auto Show once, by myself, back in the days when I was actually working. I actually found a good parking spot on the roof of Cobo, I went inside, and the place was heavily crowded. I went and looked at a few cars, fought my way through the crowd; and finally got disgusted and left. After that, I never went back. In addition, people were rude, and one person even hurled a racist remark at me, for simply being in his way. Naturally, he was black and I was white; so in that City, this was considered normal. This was, for what it might be worth, in the 1990’s. Things changed in 10 years, I suppose.

The bottom line is this; if you do not mind crowds, rude people and want to see some nice classic cars, this is the show to see. The cars, of course, come from an era when Detroit was on top of its automotive game. Like good, moral women —-they just do not build them like that anymore.

Bloomberg: Bank deal with make foreclosures to rise

I have already written about this one, so before you read below; read here.

The story: (H/T Jazz Shaw)

The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may result in a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.

Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. With yesterday’s agreement, banks are likely to resume property seizures.

“The best thing about the settlement, frankly, is that it will be done,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Seattle-based Zillow Inc. (Z), a provider of home-sales data. “The shadow of the settlement hung over the market for a year now.”

The backlog of foreclosures has trapped homeowners in properties they can no longer afford, depressed neighborhood prices by increasing the number of abandoned homes and led banks to tighten mortgage credit standards because of uncertainty about the cost of their potential obligations. Foreclosure starts fell 46 percent in December from October 2010, when the investigation into the so-called robo-signing of mortgage documentation began, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc.

via Foreclosures to Climb in U.S. Before Bank Deal Helps Housing Market Heal – Bloomberg.

At the risk of sounding like, of all people, Ron Paul; This is what happens when Government gets involved with the private market. It gets screwed up and attempts to fix it, screw it up even worse! Let this be a lesson to our Government and all involved; do not involve yourself in private markets, like housing. It only messes things up. The sad thing is, a whole bunch of people had to suffer, because a group of liberal elitists decided that a tried and true system just had to be tweeked to give to the “have-nots” and from what I read above, the suffering is just beginning.

My thoughts on the mortgage settlement

You can read about this here, here, here and here.

First of all, let me say this; this issue here, above all of the others, is why I packed it in with the Democratic Party. On top of all of the class warfare, class resentment, racial resentment and everything else; was the realization that I made, that the Democratic Party, starting in 1973 and again in 1993 literally rigged the system to fail. This was by loosing credit restrictions to allow people, who had no business even getting loans, to get credit so easily.

Then once the system failed, the Government, started by George W. Bush in 2008 with tarp loans and the bailing out banks that were “Too big to fail.” Not to mention the fact that the Republicans ripped out regulations that made the whole thing like one million percent worse and when the Republican Congress received a warning that the whole thing was going to collapse, what did they do? They held a hearing and the CEO of Freddy and Fannie played the RACE CARD, they retreated! 😡 I won’t even get into the stupidity of the Federal Reserve, which really made some seriously idiotic mistakes.

Then instead of Obama being smart and saying, “We’re not picking favorites, we are going to allow the market to correct itself.” Instead, he continued the bailouts and even spent more on top of that. Not the mention his attempt to destroy our private healthcare system.

Anyhow, this settlement is not perfect; in fact, it stinks and someone has given a bullet-point list as to why.

This is via Naked Capitalism:

Here are the top twelve reasons why this deal stinks:

1. 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.

2. That $26 billion is actually $5 billion of bank money and the rest is your money. The mortgage principal writedowns are guaranteed to come almost entirely from securitized loans, which means from investors, which in turn means taxpayers via Fannie and Freddie, pension funds, insurers, and 401 (k)s. Refis of performing loans also reduce income to those very same investors.

3. That $5 billion divided among the big banks wouldn’t even represent a significant quarterly hit. Freddie and Fannie putbacks to the major banks have been running at that level each quarter.

4. That $20 billion actually makes bank second liens sounder, so this deal is a stealth bailout that strengthens bank balance sheets at the expense of the broader public.

5. The enforcement is a joke. The first layer of supervision is the banks reporting on themselves. The framework is similar to that of the OCC consent decrees implemented last year, which Adam Levitin and yours truly, among others, decried as regulatory theater.

6. The past history of servicer consent decrees shows the servicers all fail to comply. Why? Servicer records and systems are terrible in the best of times, and their systems and fee structures aren’t set up to handle much in the way of delinquencies. As Tom Adams has pointed out in earlier posts, servicer behavior is predictable when their portfolios are hit with a high level of delinquencies and defaults: they cheat in all sorts of ways to reduce their losses.

7. The cave-in Nevada and Arizona on the Countrywide settlement suit is a special gift for Bank of America, who is by far the worst offender in the chain of title disaster (since, according to sworn testimony of its own employee in Kemp v. Countrywide, Countrywide failed to comply with trust delivery requirements). This move proves that failing to comply with a consent degree has no consequences but will merely be rolled into a new consent degree which will also fail to be enforced. These cases also alleged HAMP violations as consumer fraud violations and could have gotten costly and emboldened other states to file similar suits not just against Countrywide but other servicers, so it was useful to the other banks as well.

8. If the new Federal task force were intended to be serious, this deal would have not have been settled. You never settle before investigating. It’s a bad idea to settle obvious, widespread wrongdoing on the cheap. You use the stuff that is easy to prove to gather information and secure cooperation on the stuff that is harder to prove. In Missouri and Nevada, the robosigning investigation led to criminal charges against agents of the servicers. But even though these companies were acting at the express direction and approval of the services, no individuals or entities higher up the food chain will face any sort of meaningful charges.

9. There is plenty of evidence of widespread abuses that appear not to be on the attorney generals’ or media’s radar, such as servicer driven foreclosures and looting of investors’ funds via impermissible and inflated charges. While no serious probe was undertaken, even the limited or peripheral investigations show massive failures (60% of documents had errors in AGs/Fed’s pathetically small sample). Similarly, the US Trustee’s office found widespread evidence of significant servicer errors in bankruptcy-related filings, such as inflated and bogus fees, and even substantial, completely made up charges. Yet the services and banks will suffer no real consequences for these abuses.

10. A deal on robosiginging serves to cover up the much deeper chain of title problem. And don’t get too excited about the New York, Massachusetts, and Delaware MERS suits. They put pressure on banks to clean up this monstrous mess only if the AGs go through to trial and get tough penalties. The banks will want to settle their way out of that too. And even if these cases do go to trial and produce significant victories for the AGs, they still do not address the problem of failures to transfer notes correctly.

11. Don’t bet on a deus ex machina in terms of the new Federal foreclosure task force to improve this picture much. If you think Schneiderman, as a co-chairman who already has a full time day job in New York, is going to outfox a bunch of DC insiders who are part of the problem, I have a bridge I’d like to sell to you.

12. We’ll now have to listen to banks and their sycophant defenders declaring victory despite being wrong on the law and the facts. They will proceed to marginalize and write off criticisms of the servicing practices that hurt homeowners and investors and are devastating communities. But the problems will fester and the housing market will continue to suffer. Investors in mortgage-backed securities, who know that services have been screwing them for years, will be hung out to dry and will likely never return to a private MBS market, since the problems won’t ever be fixed. This settlement has not only revealed the residential mortgage market to be too big to fail, but puts it on long term, perhaps permanent, government life support.

As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.

I have zero to add to this. The only thing I will ask is, who’s paying for all of this? Answer: You and Me — in Taxes. 😡

This is why we need a new political Party to get in there and fix this asinine morass.

Others: (All Liberals BTW…) American Prospect, Washington Post, US Politics, FT Alphaville, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, Wall Street Journal, Time, The Huffington Post, Swampland, ThinkProgress, Prairie Weather, Firedoglake, Business Insider, Financial Times and Discourse.net, ThinkProgress, The Huffington Post, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, Firedoglake, Rolling Stone, The Big Picture, Business Insider, Hit & Run, The Democratic Daily, Zandar Versus The Stupid, Feministing, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/*, No More Mister Nice Blog, Blog of New Orleans, Gambit, emptywheel, The Political Carnival, DealBook, The Page, Booman Tribune and Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, FORECLOSURE FRAUD, Business Insider and Calculated Risk, Washington Post, Daily Kos and Firedoglake, The Atlantic Online

Why are Conservatives having dinner with Bill Ayers?

This bothers me and I will explain under the video: (H/T BreitBart via HotAir.com’s Headlines)

As I mentioned in my previous posting and in the related video; that the only difference between an internationalist Democrat and a Neoconservative is, quite frankly, the R and the D. Not to mention the fact that both take funding from special interest groups. Well, the more I want to believe that these current crop of Conservatives are truly Conservatives, the more that these current crop of Conservatives want to prove my suspicions, that they are nothing more than Trotskyite Conservatives who have much more in common with the far leftists than they would want us to really believe.