Another Republican talking point about Obama’s healthcare law proven wrong

This is good news for people like me, who will soon be working for a living again, and will most likely need help from this new healthcare law.

The Story:

One of these days, a dire prediction about Obamacare will come true. Today isn’t it.

The Administration on Thursday released new information about the “Federally Facilitated Marketplaces.” Under Obamacare, every state must have an exchange—a place where people without employer-sponsored insurance can find insurance. Some states are running their own exchanges. Others are asking the federal government to do most, or all of, the work. Those federal-run exchanges are the FFMs.

To be successful, exchanges must have enough plans to generate some competition. The whole idea of the exchanges is to let people shop around, seeking the best combination of benefits, service, and prices—just as they might shop for a car, an accountant, or any other good or service. Yes, that’s probably more of a conservative idea than a liberal one. But, for competition to take place, insurers must participate. And conservatives have predicted the insurers would stay away, because of Obamacare’s supposedly onerous regulations and a fear that the whole system is doomed to collapse.

Even liberals like me have worried how the insurers might act—and, sure enough, some carriers really do seem wary. But plenty aren’t. On Thursday, the administration announced it expects the FFMs to have more than sufficient competition. At least one new insurer will be offering plans in about three-fourths of the FFMs, according to the administration, and 90 percent of “target enrollees” (people the administration is hoping will use the exchanges) will be able to choose from at least five different insurers. Given the poor state of competition that exists in many states today, the administration says, that’s a big improvement.

The data is preliminary and sketchy—and the improvement may not be as dramatic as the administration made it sound. “I would characterize it as modest plan competition,” Caroline Pearson, vice president for health reform at Avalere Helath, told Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post. “In most markets, there seems to be a bit more choice than what’s available in the market today. But we’re certainly not seeing a wild influx of plans into the market.”

via Obamacare Insurance Options: Looks like exchanges will have plenty | New Republic.

Believe me when I tell you, I am not a huge fan of President Obama and I was not too keen on the idea of “Obamacare.” However, I will tell you this, if anyone knows all about the cost of rising healthcare in this Country — It would be me. I had to cancel my health insurance that I was getting through the COBRA program. It just kept going up and finally, I simply decided to stop putting out that kind of money; and this was back when I was working full-time as a straight truck driver.

Needless to say, I am glad to hear that the Republicans might just be wrong on this little issue here. 😀

Oh, and by the way, I have some pretty darned good reasons for feeling this way too. 😡

Others: News Desk, The Plum Line and Wonkblog

Health issues preventing me from going back to work

Believe it not….

As I wrote awhile back, I have wanted to go back into driving truck for a living. Well, I went today for my DOT physical and I got a bit of a surprise. I had sugar in my urine. So, I had to stab my finger and check my blood. My blood sugar was 275, DOT rules say nothing over 200. My Blood pressure was 160 over 100. For DOT regs, it must be no more than 140/90.

I was wondering why I was having headaches here as of late. I found my answer —- blood pressure. 🙄

Needless to say, I have a doctor’s appointment coming up next Wednesday at 2:00pm. As I have to see what on earth is going on here. I guess sitting around for 10 years doing nothing but writing has taken its toll on the ol’ body here. One thing I will mention, Diabetes does run on both sides of my family. I was hoping it would skip over me; I guess it is what they say, hope floats. 🙄

So, my DOT thing is on hold, till I can either get this under control or something.

Also too, full disclosure with me here: I went online today and applied for STATE medical insurance help. I won’t take federal, unless I absolutely HAVE TO do it. But, now; I will be blunt with everyone: This sugar in the blood and high blood pressure stuff is NOT anything to play around with and I am not getting any younger.

So, honestly, I do not give two flips where it is coming from. I want to live and be healthy. So, at the point, politics is not in my realm of view at the moment. Sorry, but I am not dying young, just so I can say, “Screw the Government!” Why I see it, if the Republicans think that my dying young is somehow or another preserving some sort of freedom, then they can just go jump in the lake and I will call myself a Democrat again. I did not like Obama, for many reasons. His wanting to help people, like me, be taken care of, was not one of them. I am not much into “Mob Rule” at all, but I am not dying so some wealthy Republican can feel good about himself. If you know what I mean and I think you do! 😀

Anyhow, I will everyone posted on this. Needless to say, this was a huge shock to me. The last time I took a DOT physical, I passed with flying colors —- this was in 2003, 10 years later and now this; it sickens me a bit. For years, I was the epitome of health and now….this. 🙁 It was not the way I thought my life would turn out, that is for sure.

Continue reading “Health issues preventing me from going back to work” →

Drop in voter registration in Ohio

Despite what has happened locally here and how I feel about it; I must continue on writing and blogging about what I consider to be important.

It seems that in Ohio, there has been a decline in voter registration, especially in Democratic Party strongholds. This is also signaling a national trend. Here is the Story and Video via Fox News Channel:

The Video:

The Story:

“Don’t boo, vote,” President Obama often says in his stump speech whenever crowds boo a Romney plan.

The off-hand call to vote may be by design. It comes amid a precipitous decline in Democratic voter registration in key swing states — nowhere more apparent than in Ohio.

Voter registration in the Buckeye State is down by 490,000 people from four years ago. Of that reduction, 44 percent is in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

“I think what we’re seeing is a lot of spin and hype on the part of the Obama campaign to try to make it appear that they’re going to cruise to victory in Ohio,” Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman Rob Frost said. “It’s not just Cuyahoga County. Nearly 350,000 of those voters are the decrease in the rolls in the three largest counties, Cuyahoga, Hamilton and Franklin.”

Frost points out that those three counties all contain urban centers, where the largest Democrat vote traditionally has been.

Ohio is not alone. An August study by the left-leaning think tank Third Way showed that the Democratic voter registration decline in eight key swing states outnumbered the Republican decline by a 10-to-one ratio. In Florida, Democratic registration is down 4.9 percent, in Iowa down 9.5 percent. And in New Hampshire, it’s down down 19.7 percent.

“It’s understandable that enthusiasm is going to wane a little bit from that historic moment (in 2008),” says Michelle Diggles, the study co-author and senior policy adviser for Third Way. “You can only elect the first African-American president of this country once.

Of course, there are other reasons why people are just not happy anymore with the Democrats:

One Democratic Party consultant told Fox News that independents in Ohio may be leaning Democratic – an effect that may be tied to the bailout of Chrysler and GM. One of eight people in Ohio work in businesses directly tied to the auto industry. The state has been carpeted with Obama ads that point to his bailout of the industry and it’s managed bankruptcy.

I do not mean to toot my own horn; but in this case, I must. I predicted that stuff like this would happen on my old blog. When the bailouts happened, and when the healthcare bill was pushed through. The truth is Independents are simply running away from Obama. Another thing too that this report did not cover; is that some Democrats are simply not happy with the Obama Administration. This is for a number for reasons: The continuation of Bush’s polices on the war on terror and the war is one. The failure to close the prisons in Gitmo is another. The continuing of the war in Afghanistan is another. Also too, Ohio is also a union State and when Obama’s chief of staff at the time, said “F*** the big three!”, many in Ohio heard about that too. This all makes for a unpopular President.

Also too; the economy in Ohio, here in Michigan; and nationally, just plain sucks. There are many small businesses in Ohio, many of whom are faithful Democrats; and they are just looking at their bottom lines and are looking at this President and wondering, “What on earth are they doing to us?” To be fair, it is not all of Obama’s fault. The Federal Reserve with it’s QE1, QE2 and now QE3 is not helping the situation at all. When the fed prints more money, inflation happens, which drives the prices of everything up and this, in turn, hurts businesses. Which, in turn, hurts the economy. Bill Clinton learned this lesson early on, and made adjustments. Jimmy Carter and this President, did not. For that, they are paying a price at the polls.

I should also mention that this current foreign policy debacle in Libya, and Egypt and the rest of the Arab World is also weighing heavy on the minds of people as well. As it was in 1979, with the Iran hostage crisis. Now, Iran is being a problem again. Which is very ironic.

History has such a strange way of repeating itself.

Videos: Obama in his own words

I saw this over at HotAir.com and I thought I would share it here:

Not that this is anything new really. I have been writing about this crap sack’s lies since 2007 on my old blog.

Here are some more of Obama’s lies:

and they wonder why Joe Wilson said this:

Welcome to reality Democrats! This is what you elected and what you are about to be stuck with, when he LOSES!

Vote for Mitt Romney, he might not be perfect; However he will tell us the truth — whether we like it or not.

Chuck Baldwin minces no words about Paul Ryan

I have to like Chuck Baldwin, he does not mince words:

It has happened again. We go through this every four years, and every four years the vast majority of “conservatives” fall for it. This is such a broken record. What did Forrest Gump say: “Stupid is as stupid does”? And wasn’t it P.T. Barnum who said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”? Well, here we go again.

Neocon RINO George H.W. Bush picks “conservative” Dan Quayle. “Conservative” G.W. Bush picks neocon RINO Dick Cheney. Neocon RINO John McCain picks “conservative” Sarah Palin. Now, neocon RINO Mitt Romney picks “conservative” Paul Ryan. As long as there is one “conservative” on the ticket, mushy-headed “conservatives” across the country will go into a gaga, starry-eyed, hypnotic trance in support of the Republican ticket. I’m convinced that if Lucifer, himself, was the GOP Presidential candidate, he would get the support of the Religious Right and Republican “conservatives” as long as he selected a reputed “conservative” to join his ticket. And, by the way, the notable “conservative” wouldn’t think twice about joining such a ticket, either, I’m convinced.

Let’s just get this on the record: since 1960, there have only been two Presidential nominees (from the two major parties) who were not controlled by the globalist elitists. One was a Democrat, John F. Kennedy; the other was a Republican, Ronald Reagan. Kennedy was shot and killed; Reagan was shot. Every other President, Democrat or Republican, has been totally controlled, which is why none of them have done diddly-squat to make a difference in the direction of the country. On the issues that really matter, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are just more of the same!

via Chuck Baldwin — Paul Ryan: More Of The Same.

He goes on to say that Ron Paul is the only one; and I disagree with that. However, I will say this; he is right about Romney and Ryan. Which is I am voting for:

Goode/Clymer in 2012

He will not win the election

But voting for anything else is simply Anti-American

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Dear MSNBC: Obama is engaging in the ‘niggerization’ of America

Yes, I said that and do please, quote me on it.

Video: (Via Mediaite)

Via Mediaite:

Touré didn’t just say that – he said that Romney was “using the playbook Republicans have been using for decades now.” In other words, Republicans have been involved in so-called “niggerization” for decades.

This is disgusting. It’s a lie, and what’s more, it waters down racism to the point where anything qualifies – and to the point that real racism isn’t taken seriously anymore. According to Touré, it’s racist to suggest that Obama is the “food stamp president,” even if he’s elevated food stamp usage to record levels; it’s racist to call him angry; but it’s not racist for Joe Biden to suggest that freeing Wall Street will put black people “back in chains.”

Only MSNBC would put a fool like Touré on the air every night. And only the racially extreme left would consider Touré an eloquent spokesperson for their perverse views.

Okay, now I am going to say what Ben did not have the room or even the heart to say up there in that quoted text above. As a white man, who has been unemployed for the last eight goddamned years and has watched as family members, friends and neighbors of mine lose their jobs, their homes, and their dignity over the last eight years —- of which Obama has been in office for almost four years of that time. Let me say that I have watched as Obama has engaged in the ‘niggerization’ of America.

I have watched as President Obama bailed out Wall Street and left people on Main Street to suffer. I have watched as Barack Obama went out of his way to protect failing companies like General Motors and Chrysler (READ —- UNIONS!) — Which are headed for bankruptcy again —- and then not do a goddamned thing for non-union working class folk —-like myself.

The fact is that unemployment is up, food stamp enrollment is up, social security enrollment is up and the Nation’s GDP is down, manufacturing is down and economy is just goddamned awful. Whose fault is that? It is President Barack Obama’s fault. If Barack Obama had just left the economy alone, it would have been just fine and would have recovered. However, no, he spent like a drunken sailor and now this Country is $15 TRILLION dollars in debt and what do we have to show for it? —– Not one goddamned lousy thing except for the debt itself. Oh, we got something all right, a lousy goddamned healthcare bill that utterly robbed Medicare!

So, if the liberal Democrats want to talk about ‘niggerization’ of anything, I suggest they look in the goddamned mirror and also take a look in the White House and look real close at what the “magic negro” that they elected to the office of President of the United States is really doing! Because I tend to suspect that, these clowns are just plain damned clueless.

This is what the Democrats have left, their leader has failed, and his reelection is in jeopardy. They have nothing left in their bag; —- except for class and racial warfare. This will cost them dearly too. Because Independent people are going to see this and they are going to run away from it. Racial resentment is a turnoff to most people.

This is not what Martin Luther King Jr. taught; this is the sort of thing Malcolm X preached and practiced. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. This is why Martin Luther King Jr. has a monument in Washington DC and Malcolm X does not. Because preaching this sort of division does nothing to advance the black cause, all it does is cause hate and resentment. It used to work in the 1970’s and even in the 1980’s. However, I tend to believe the Americans, even black Americans, are just a little smarter than that anymore. They are tired of the division and the warfare and just want to get along with everyone. I mean, blacks can go to Selma, Alabama now and eat, shop and sleep about anywhere they want to there now.

Therefore, to MSNBC and this Toure character, I say this: Your racial resentment and “the evil white man” magic act are getting a bit stale. I think it is time you found a new script and some new talking points. Because smart Americans, like me, see right through this and reject it wholeheartedly. By that, I mean; Black Americans, White Americans, Latino Americans, and every other goddamned race of Americans too. All Americans see right now is the fact that there are no jobs, and that they have no money and huge bills and mortgages that are underwater — and the best thing you idiots at MSNBC can do is play the race card? My God —- has defending hope and change gotten that bad?

In closing: ‘niggerization’ —- Nigga please! You idiots do not even know the meaning of the word! 🙄

Others: Power Line, The Gateway Pundit and Washington Post, The Gateway Pundit, We are respectable negroes, The PJ Tatler, The Daily Caller and Riehl World View (Via Memeorandum)

Update: Toure apologizes

Obamacare to stand says SCOUTS

Well, this was not what I was hoping to wake up to hearing on my 40’th birthday.

The Memeoradum round up is here.

The link round up is here: (H/T to Drudge)

TAKE YOUR MEDICINE!

Now for what I think: I believe this to be the biggest set back in American freedom since the McCarthy hearings and the red scare of the 1950’s. I guess I should not surprised, the this out of control federal behemoth that we call Government has always valued the idea of a tax on the American people. I will comment on one thing that I read over at the Weekly Standard, that I linked to above:

It is understandable why President Obama has no interest in framing this election as a referendum on Obamacare. His party already suffered perhaps its worst defeat since the 19th century thanks to his centerpiece legislation. With the Supreme Court’s ruling now behind him, he will have even less incentive to remind voters about Obamacare going forward. As far as he’s concerned, the less the American people think about it, the better.

This means, of course, that the more they think about it, the better it will be for Mitt Romney. It also means (of course) that Romney should encourage them to think about it, reminding them at every turn that this election isn’t merely — or even principally — about the economy; that it’s about something bigger; that we need to repeal Obamacare and replace it with real reform. And he should convey to them what real reform would look like, thereby bringing into the fold those independents who don’t want to go back to the pre-Obamacare status quo. He should start playing to win people’s votes, instead of merely trying not to lose them.

Yes, the fate of Obamacare will be the most important outcome of this election. On some level, the American people know this. There’s a reason why Romney gets standing ovations simply for mentioning repeal.

The question is whether either candidate will convey that he knows what this election is really about. Obama can’t say it’s about Obamacare — even though that’s what he considers it to be about — because he’ll lose if he does. Romney so far hasn’t said it’s about Obamacare — perhaps because that’s not what he considers it to be about — even though he’ll likely win if he does.

Regardless, the Court has cleared the field. The stakes are historic. The citizenry will decide.

Yes, and you can bet that Barack Obama will have a army of lawyers to make sure that he remains President too. In fact, that is just what the Boston Globe is reporting:

OLYMPIA, Wash.—President Barack Obama’s campaign has recruited a legion of lawyers to be on standby for this year’s election as legal disputes surrounding the voting process escalate.

Thousands of attorneys and support staffers have agreed to aid in the effort, providing a mass of legal support that appears to be unrivaled by Republicans or precedent. Obama’s campaign says it is particularly concerned about the implementation of new voter ID laws across the country, the possibility of anti-fraud activists challenging legitimate voters and the handling of voter registrations in the most competitive states.

Republicans are building their own legal teams for the election. They say they’re focused on preventing fraud — making sure people don’t vote unless they’re eligible — rather than turning away qualified voters.

Since the disputed 2000 presidential election, both parties have increasingly concentrated on building legal teams — including high-priced lawyers who are well-known in political circles — for the Election Day run-up. The Bush-Gore election demonstrated to both sides the importance of every vote and the fact that the rules for voting and counting might actually determine the outcome. The Florida count in 2000 was decided by just 537 votes and ultimately landed in the Supreme Court.

This year in that state alone, Obama and his Democratic allies are poised to have thousands of lawyers ready for the election and hope to have more than the 5,800 attorneys available four years ago. That figure was nearly twice the 3,200 lawyers the Democrats had at their disposal in 2004.

Romney has been organizing his own legal help for the election. Campaign attorney Ben Ginsberg did not provide numbers but said the campaign has been gratified by the “overwhelming number of attorneys who have volunteered to assist.”

“We will have enough lawyers to handle all situations that arise,” he said.

The GOP doesn’t necessarily need to have a numerical counterweight to Obama’s attorneys; the 2000 election showed that experienced, connected lawyers on either side can be effective in court.

Believe me when I tell you; President Barack Obama and the left have been emboldened by this decision and they will stop at nothing to remain in power. Furthermore, the President knows that if he is to protect Obamacare and everything else he and Congress have worked for; they will have to win the election. So, if you all think that Obama and Co. are just going to let White America, which, by proxy will be represented by Mitt Romney —- roll over them and defeat them, you are crazy. They are now going to be emboldened to, in figurative sense — of course — fight to the death to protect everything that they have worked for in the last 3 years.

Putting it in “Southwest Detroit ghetto” terms: things just got very real. The Republicans must know, the kiddie stuff just ended, and now the real fight is now underway. From today, till election day is going to be a bare knuckle brawl. I just hope that the right; bloggers, writers, news people and the politicos know what they are in for. I also hope they know how to fight it, without getting overly stupid and letting their words and actions get them into trouble. This is not 1957 and if they fight like it is, they will lose and lose badly.

Needless to say, it is going to be a very interesting next couple of months.

The latest on Sandra Fluck

I have not really blogged on this much; the kudos goes to this blogger for his fishing out the story on Sandra Fluck’s connections in the progressive movement.

Now the Democrats are crying antisemitism. Where were they when Alan Dershowitz was pointing out to everyone that Media Matters for America was antisemitic? These same democrats are now whining about privacy. The same people who dug up Joe the plumbers private records and exposed them.

Difference is, Joe’s info was private; this info on Fluck was ALL public info. Besides all that, this stupid woman put herself out there as some sort of victim; when in fact she is a professional activist and she got exposed. Boo hoo, crap happens. Take two mydol’s and call me in the morning.

Again, I love it when the left gets exposed like this. The hypocrisy is stunning.

Catholics are not the only ones raising cain about the healthcare issue

The Baptists are raising a stink about it too.

There is this:

WASHINGTON (BP) — The issue at the center of the swelling controversy over the Obama administration’s refusal to protect the conscience rights of employers in its “contraceptive mandate” is “about as basic as it gets,” especially for Baptists, says Richard Land.

“Does the government have the right to intrude on the consciences of people to force them to pay for that which they find unconscionable? This goes contrary to our tradition in this country and contrary to our understanding of the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections,” Land said Feb. 9 in explaining what is at the heart of the debate.

“In my opinion, a Baptist needs to take a stand on this issue. Our Baptist forefathers went to prison and died for the freedoms that we have, and now it’s our responsibility in the providence of God to defend these freedoms lest they be taken away by government fiat,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

via Baptist Press – Land: Obama mandate is a Baptist issue – News with a Christian Perspective.

Then there is this, also via Baptist Press:

“I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a government mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29,” author and pastor Rick Warren wrote on his Twitter account Feb. 7 before adding, “I’m not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure.”

Like I wrote earlier about the Catholics; my advice to my fellow Baptists, do not settle for anything other than a FULL and Complete exemption to this rule. I have to admire the Baptists and other Christian who are showing their boldness in this very important issue. Although, I really wished they would have shown the same sort of boldness, on the issue of the Iraq War. But, at this point, I will take any kind of boldness I can get. 😀

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