Substance or Fluff: The Mayor's Anti-Blight Initiative

Today I saw Mayor Wharton made an announcement that 139 property owners will be getting sued by the city. This seems like a positive step, but how effective will it be. There are literally thousands of empty houses in the city. Many are like these properties, owned by individuals or small property owners. Yet, the biggest problem are bank owned properties. There are hundreds that have been empty for a couple years or more. In the channel 3 news story, Kelli Rabon brings up this very issue. Here is the story. Now it isn't hard finding plenty of bank owned properties with liens on them. Mid-South Peace & Justice was able to find $60,000 in back taxes/code violations and then directly confronted Wells Fargo about their bad neighbor policies last week. If Mid-South Peace & Justice can get $60,000 out of a major bank for local government, what is the city doing to go after all those other banks like Deutsche and others? Apparently not much, because there is only one bank owned property out of the 139. So the city is going after the lowest hanging fruit by suing small property owners. That's ok, but by pursuing these small fish, is the city give the big blight makers a chance to get away.
There is an old saying, good policy makes good politics. This doesn't look like good policy because the city hasn't addressed comprehensive code reform nor thought through what to do with the thousands of vacant lots which still blight the city after the dilapidated structure gets knocked down. Nice Dog & Pony today though.

This Is Where 109,000 Civilians Died In the Iraq War

Wikileaks just released 400,000 secret US military field reports between 2004 and 2009 from the Iraq War. Turns out the US military was paying close attention to documented civilian deaths. The Guardian News Paper used Google fusion tables to map all 109,000. Take a look.You can click on a dot and see the report of how the person(s) died. Stunning. As an American, you should have to look at this map. Whether you supported or opposed the war, the US government did invade Iraq and unleashed this carnage.

Cohen & Foreclosure Fraud: Crickets?

A week ago I wrote a blog post about Democratic leadership's involvement with the foreclosure fraud legislation. Since then a few congress members have stepped up to the plate, representatives John Conyers, Marcy Kaptur, Raúl Grijalva, and Alan Grayson. Here is an article about it. Memphis has been plagued by foreclosures on a scale similar to Florida, Michigan, Arizona, and Ohio. Where is Congressman Cohen on this? He's close to Conyers, why didn't he sign this to Neil M. Barofsky? Many people locally are fighting hard to combat the abuses of banks. Time for Congressman Cohen to take a stand on the foreclosure fraud scandal.
Here is a refresher of what the banks are doing to Memphis.

Foreclosure Fraud Scandal and Your Congressional Democrats

I'm not sure how closely people have been following the Foreclosure Fraud Scandal, but if you haven't you need to because it is the Crime of Century and almost the destruction of the Republic. Several blogs have been shining a light on this, most notably Naked Capitalism. Go here to get a good primer.

I want to talk a little more about the political system and specifically House and Senate Democrats. This article from Reuters tells the legislative background of how HR 3808: The Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act got within an Obama signature of becoming law and helping the banks cover-up their foreclosure fraud system.

Here are quotes from the article
"The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents."

"The law, the "Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act," requires all federal and state courts to recognize notarizations made in other states.

"The law specifically includes "electronic" notarizations stamped en masse by computers. Currently, only about a dozen states allow electronic notarizations, according to the National Notary Association."

"The bill's approval involved invocation of a special procedure. Democratic Senator Robert Casey, shepherding last-minute legislation on behalf of the Senate leadership, had the bill taken away from the Senate Judiciary committee, which hadn't acted on it."

"The full Senate then immediately passed the bill without debate, by unanimous consent.""

Now take a look at the congressional record on what the House did with this bill here.

"Apr 27, 2010: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by voice vote. A record of each representative’s position was not kept."

Obama recognized this would be political suicide to sign this bill and wisely didn't. Over the past couple days Democratic House Leadership has come out calling for a suspension of foreclosures. What the hell? You think that will save you. Aside from Alan Grayson, I haven't really heard many other democratic representatives talking about foreclosure fraud. Amazingly, two other versions of this bill has been passed since 2007. If it wasn't for the Senate dragging its ass, not passing this until September 27th and evidence of widespread foreclosure fraud coming to light a couple weeks ago, Obama would have signed and it would have become law. The democratic leadership in the House and Senate were prepared to aid and abate systematic fraud on a Crime of the Century scale. The Senate passed the bill on September 27th through Unanimous Consent and the House had a voice vote to hide their dirty, corrupted finger prints. Why should any American support any incumbent Senator and Congressman at this point. Fortunately, there is an election in a month and it is the perfect time to ask our congressman a few questions.

1) How did you vote in that voice vote on April 27th, 2010?

2) After voting for TARP legislation in September 2008 which aided banks with Troubled Assets related to mortgage backed securities and costing tax payers $700 billion, had you become skeptical of any Banking supported legislation, especially relating foreclosures, something that has ravaged the 9th Congressional District?

3) Congressman Cohen is a regional whip in the Democratic Caucus, did you express any reservations to Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, or other members of the leadership about HR 3808?

4) If so what were those reservations?

5) If you were aware of HR 3808 or one of its legislative predecessors, how vocally did you come out publicly against it and when?

6) With such corruption evident in federal political system why should people have faith in a government helping banks illegally foreclose on their homes?

These are extremely important questions and I anxiously await to hear what Congressman Cohen has to say about this legislation.