The Fraud Thickens

Did you hear the one about the guy who bought a house, only to have it stolen by the bank, and when he (and millions of others) went to his state's Attorney General for justice, was told, "Don't worry, were are here to protect you." Later a check arrives in the mail. The man opens it - and to his dismay finds it's only in the amount of $2000- his settlement for losing his house.
"How can this be? He screams to the Attorney General, " You told me you were going to help me!" The Attorney General responds, "Oh, I'm sorry sir- I thought you were with Bank of America!"

It's no joke - and no one thinks it's funny. This is the "settlement" offered to those defrauded by the banksters in the mortage settlement offered by the Obama administration.

As punishment for robo-signing and blatent fraud the banks get away with murder, and the defrauded homeowners whose homes were stolen get a slap in the face as a concession prize.

But wait, the fraud thickens.

Recently, the San Francisco County assessor released an audit suggesting that many, many more demonstrable crimes were committed during the foreclosure scam of the past few years.

“It is very apparent that the system is broken from many different vantage points,” Phil Ting, the county assessor, told the New York Times’.  Morgenson describes the audit as such: “About 84 percent of the files contained what appear to be clear violations of law, it said, and fully two-thirds had at least four violations or irregularities.”

That's not a mistake, or oversight on the part of America's biggest criminal cartel- those too-big-to-fail racketeers, masquerading as banks. This was the pre-meditated plunder of the American public.

And cowardly lawmakers and regulators continue to avoid the obvious, and treat the whole ordeal as something they would rather avoid- they are ignoring the devastation in order to sweep it all under the rug. Like indifferent passers-by, they ignore the dead horse in the middle of the road (Detroit). They consistently look for the easy way out of the enormous mess created by the banks - who it seems has them by the balls. The banks went on a greeding frenzy during the housing boom they created, by first offering risky loans to not only those who couldn't afford them, they went so far as to tweak other loans making them affordable only in the short term by manipulating naive borrowers into rising interest rate traps. Not to mention the robo-signing fraud fiasco along with destroying the time honored deed recording system with their invented third party trustee zombie called MERS.

And not one bankster, not a single one goes to jail.

In California it's a felony to create false documents, and squeamish prosecutors are reluctant to even mention the word "prosecute" when it comes to the bankster gangsters who have run rough shod over home buyers and county recording agencies.

As hard as they try to play pass-the-blame the banks can continue to hide behind brokers that sold inflated loans, or assessors who overvalued properties, to the ratings agencies that called a pile of junk bonds supposedly backed by mortgages - gold, they can't deny the fact that all of these miscreants were inspired to loot by the very banks that conspired to make it happen.

There is hope in the work of a handful of state attorneys general who have suggested they’re ready to at least direct one set of dirty words at Wall Street: “civil and criminal complaints.” The recent settlement is a narrow one, because California, New York, Delaware and others held out for the right to sue for fraud committed at the time loans were originated and at the time they were sold to investors.

The fact that those AGs had to fight so hard in the face of such enormous evidence of wrongdoing is proof of how well the banks’ “wasn’t me” strategy has worked. Still, if there remains a chance for accountability—if not restoration—in the Great Recession, it lies in the hands of people like New York AG Eric Schneiderman and California AG Kamala Harris, to whom the San Francisco County assessor delivered his audit. Four years after the foreclosure crisis began, we are all still staring down the bald lie that the nation’s largest banks aren’t responsible.

If the handling of the mortgage crisis has a message for America it could be seen as this:

1. That those who work in financial services are either way over-paid, only modestly intelligent, morally challenged or have fantasies of being a new American class of nobility known as the Oligarchy.

2. Laws are not laws. Laws are merely guidance's to be enforced at the whim of the government and its agents in a selective way OR to be enforced to the benefit of the new nobility.

3. Everyone’s principles have a price including those in government and law enforcement.

4. To be free from risk of prosecution you need to be too big, too connected, too hard to understand so that you can threaten the government with the idea that if they take you down you take down everyone else with you. Alternatively, if you can make prosecuting you too much work or too expensive you can cut a deal for a small portion of what you stole and never have to admit that you did anything wrong so you can still be invited into polite society and keep your golf club membership.

Disgusting.


Did you know that during the great depression in the 30′s no banker could buy a farm at a sheriffs sale? If they attempted they faced getting the pitchfork treatment, so none even tried. In fact no person bid against the farmer being foreclosed upon. He would often have the property for $1. It was possible because people recognized their enemies were dividing them and stood together.

These people were yesterday's 99%er's.


Is there anything left to loot?


How about Social Security - the vulture capitalist's holy grail. It’s what the payroll tax cut extension bill is really all about — defunding Social Security so that it can be served up, with plenty of savory green stuffing, to Wall Street vultures whirling overhead.



We have them out numbered.

 Had enough yet? Get off the couch and take a stand.

May Day 2012 Occupy Wall Street stands in solidarity with the calls for a day without the 99%, a general strike and more!! On May Day, we are calling for: *No Work * No School * No Shopping * No Banking TAKE THE STREETS!


P.S. Don't forget your pitchforks.



ickenittle

Rick Santorum Wants to Save You From Being Euthanized



Teh crazy Santorum

 As if declaring women's contraception as being "bad for woman", wasn't crazy enough, presidential hopeful and Catholic extremist crack-pot, Rick Santorum is now claiming that the Dutch government is wilfully euthanizing the elderly as a way to eliminate the weak in society.

Santorum brought up the subject of euthanasia at a forum hosted by conservative leader James Dobson, founder of the conservative organization " Focus on the Family."

“They have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily in hospitals, because they are older and sick,” Santorum said. “So elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country. Because they’re afraid because of budget purposes they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.”

Santorum also said some Dutch wear bracelets saying, “Don’t euthanize me.”


A quick fact check reveals what a fear mongering liar this guy is, (as if we didn't know that by now)

Santorum claimed legal euthanasia is responsible for “10 percent of all deaths for the Netherlands.” Government statistics show euthanasia is climbing, but represented only 2.3 percent in 2010, according to the most recent data.

Santorum added that half of the people euthanized were killed “involuntarily.” A representative of the Royal Dutch Medical Association said “there are no forced cases of euthanasia.” Dutch euthanasia review boards found nine cases in 2010 where doctors “had not acted in accordance with the due care criteria,” mostly for how the procedure was performed — not because it was against anyone’s will.

Santorum claimed the Dutch elderly wear bracelets that say “do not euthanize me,” but the Dutch government and medical association say no such bracelets exists. Santorum “might be confused with a ‘do not resuscitate’ bracelet or necklace” worn by some patients, a medical association representative said.

Santorum discussed euthanasia in the Netherlands during a Feb. 3 forum at the Grace Bible Church in Columbia, Mo. Dr. James C. Dobson, who has endorsed Santorum, moderated the discussion. Dobson is the founder of Focus on the Family, a very scary right-wing Christian organization. These aren't Jesus loving Christians- these are "Crusades lovin" Christians.

Santorum is about as unhinged as a conservative can get. He seems to be the anti-candidate seeing he is against practically every advancement this country has made since slavery was abolished.

Rick Santorum would like to go back to the days where a woman's place was in the home,barefoot and pregnant, gays were relegated to second class citizen status, and abortion went back to the back alley. He has even gone so far as to say Liberals aren't Christians, and protestants are cultists.

So much judgement from a man of gawd.

There will always be lunatics and liars, and every country has them, but the issue here is that politicians are made mainstream not by their views or level of public support but by their ability to go unchallenged on television.

When things like this come to light, a media with any sense of public duty would be trying to drag Santorum onto their shows to be interrogated about where he got this nonsense and why he sees fit to spread pure lies about other countries when vying for the top job in politics.

One Dutch observer said (in reference to America) - "The American dream is only believed because you have to be asleep to believe it."


Couldn't have said it better myself.

So true it hurts.


ickenittle

CCA the Prison Industry's KFC

With the Devil.

In an unbelievably evil deal offered by the for-profit private prison corporation, Corrections Corporation of America to 48 states (CCA) says it will  manage state prisons for $250 million per year in exchange for a guaranteed 90 percent occupancy rate.

The company says it’s a way for states to help manage their current budget crisis. (said the spider to the fly)

“We believe this comes at a timely and helpful juncture and hope you will share our belief in the benefits of the purchase-and-manage model,” CCA chief corrections officer Harley Lappin said in the letter.

Like a waiting vulture, the so-called "private prison" system is another wolf in sheep's clothing preying on cash strapped states trying to close budget gaps, and short sighted republican governors,  absorbed with their own political careers are finding these quick fixes hard to resist.

But how do you guarantee a 90% occupancy rate? Take a guess.

Private for-profit prisons are known for cutting incentives for repeat offenders like education and job training programs and offer no drug or alcohol rehabilitation. They have also been accused of inflicting violence on inmates at a higher frequency because they (being cheap bastards) don't pay guards and staff a decent living wage, just like Walmart and KFC.

Last year, the CCA became the first for-profit prison company to buy outright a state-owned prison, under the auspices of the Administration of Ohio Governor John Kasich (R).

Ohio said on Thursday it had gone through with a controversial plan to privatize a portion of the state’s prison system, the latest step in Republican Governor John Kasich’s campaign to shrink government and close the state’s budget shortfall.

Officials said the state had sold the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, an 11-year-old prison housing about 1,500 nonviolent prisoners, to the Corrections Corporation of America for $72.7 million. The state will now pay the Nashville-based company to run the facility.

Were the inmates included in the price?

One more step closer to a banana republic- the ultimate free market capitalism paradise, where CEO's collect bonuses by enslaving people. If a prison were one of the big banks, we'd see deregulation legislation appear like magic, where prisons could robo-sign your life away to keep the profits rolling in.

With so many people defaulting on debt these days, the next boom to the prison industry could be in the debtor's prison market.



We have more people in prisons than China and Russia combined, which means America has a vast untapped resource ripe for exploitation, that of the law abiding citizen.

Profit driven prisons only give incentive to lock up the innocent, because you can't afford to have an empty prison where some CEO won't get his multi-million dollar bonus.

Now that would be a crime.


ickenittle

The Poor Don't Deserve Nothin Good

A state Senator in Florida thinks that if you are using food stamps to make ends- meet, you should rightly suffer for it. It's OK to buy staples like milk and bread- but buying chips, cookies, and cakes is just going too far, and she wants this abuse of tax-payer money stopped immediately.

No snacks for you -- spoiled entitlement taking loser!

The bill would also require the state to launch a campaign education to teach dumb poor folks on how to eat right, and stop tax-payer funds from being used to purchase "luxury foods" like in store bakery items when the poor could just as easily whip up a cheaper version of a day old baguette or yesterday's cake at home.

Let them eat cake -- no more!

"Most individuals using public assistance dollars are using the funds to get by and to provide for their families. However, we should do what we can to prevent dollars intended to help Florida's poorest families from being spent in the wrong places or on the wrong things," Storms said in a statement.

But critics say the government shouldn't dictate what people eat.

"What I choose to ingest even though I may be on food stamps, that's at my discretion. I don't need government telling me what I can and cannot purchase," said Rep. Gwyndolen Clarke-Reed, a Pompano Beach Democrat who voted in committee against the bill (SB 1658). She said the bill is demeaning and invasive and she worries the education campaign would imply to "minorities and low-income folks that they're not intelligent enough to make selections on the foods they want."

Are poor people stupid or just lazy? If you are a right-winger the answer is both. They just hate to see all those tax dollars going to fund things for average Americans instead of war.

How can you maintain the Empire if you go around shelling out cash for your own citizens when there are so many hungry corporations to feed?

The state Department of Children and Families, which oversees the food stamp program, would have to get federal approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to implement the bill if it passes, which may be tricky since no other states have been successful. The federal government spent nearly $5 billion last year to help about 3 million Floridians, as an increasing number are relying on the program in a sour economy. The average monthly benefit in the state is about $140 per person, that breaks down to $35 a week for groceries according to the USDA.

Try living on $35 a week for food, and see how luxurious it is.

In 2004, Gov. Tim Pawlenty tried to make Minnesota's welfare program the first in the country to ban recipients from buying candy with food stamps, but feds didn't go for it. Last year, New York City applied for a waiver to restrict the sale of soda and sugary drinks, but that was also denied. Iowa, California and Texas have proposed similar bills in the past two years, but nothing has been passed into law, according to at the National Conference of State Legislators.

All that money wasted to try to pass dead-in-the-water legislation.

The proposal comes months after another attempt to clamp down on welfare spending. Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature passed a law last year supporting drug testing for welfare recipients. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a military veteran and single father and it's now a class-action case.

Maybe there needs to be a bill that imposes fines on lawmakers who waste tax-payer money on stupid bills that don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting passed.

So how exactly do people think this is going to be enforced? Rely on the cashier's due diligence? Create a brand new agency to manage this sort of thing?

For all the people crowing about their tax money being wasted they don't seem to realize how much more tax money will be needed to enforce this kind of broken legislation.

Only broken lawmakers create broken legislation.

And that is the Republican meme. If it ain't broke- break it- then sabotage it - so it breaks again,

then blame it on Obama.


ickenittle

The Real "Food Stamp" President

When Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich described President Obama as the food stamp president -- he had it all wrong.

 Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase bank is the real "Food Stamp" President.

You see, Jamie is the one who issues you your EBT card, and Chase cashes in on all those swipe fees every time you buy something. And good old Uncle Sam pays for those fees- just so you don't have to.

Nice way for a big bank to get government subsidised "corporate welfare."


In the United States today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps. In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14 million since Obama entered the White House, but that doesn't make him the food stamp president- because he isn't the head of J.P Morgan Chase-who are the ones issuing, and profiting off of EBT cards.

All of this makes JP Morgan very happy, because JP Morgan has been making more on food stamps than ever before. Right now, JP Morgan Chase issues food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The division of JP Morgan Chase that issues these debit cards made an impressive 5.47 billion dollars in net revenue during 2010. JP Morgan is paid per customer, so when the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, they make more money, and so does Jamie Dimon.

Christopher Paton, the managing director of JP Morgan’s “Treasury Solutions” business, made the following statement about the “food stamp business” that his firm is engaged in.

“This business is a very important business to JP Morgan. It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale…Right now, volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years. The good news, from JPMorgan’s perspective, is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”

More than 40 percent of all food stamp recipients in the United States actually have a job.
This can be considered an exciting “growth area” for JP Morgan. As the middle class continues to decline, the number of  working poor in America is exploding, and Jamie Dimon gets an even bigger bonus.

Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs. This trend is perfect for JP Morgan because it means that the number of low income workers that are eligible for food stamps is going to keep increasing.

And what makes all of this even more outrageous is JP Morgan has outsourced many of the customer service jobs for its food stamp program to India, which reduces costs and makes Jamie even richer.

When Americans that can’t find a decent job need help with their food stamps there is a good chance that they will be talking to a customer service representative sitting in India.

JP Morgan is the only one today still operating public-assistance call centers overseas, so not only is this bank making money on food stamps it's also making money paying slave wages to poor people in India.

Corporate greed double-dipping, where they make money off of the poor in America, as well as the poor in India, making Jamie one happy rich camper.

 JP Morgan also issues child support debit cards in 15 states and unemployment insurance debit cards in 7 states, where they take also rake in fees for those users too.

And Jamie Dimon comes out smelling like a rose.

What's wrong with this picture?

It's time to impeach Jamie Dimon the real food stamp parasite president.

Move your money.

ickenittle

The Gospel According to Shadrack

According to Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill, the reason teacher pay is so low is because god wants it that way.

McGill says increasing teacher pay is against "a biblical principle" because it might attract people who otherwise wouldn't do the job.

"Teachers need to make the money that they need to make," McGill said, "If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach ... and these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em."

McGill's comments came at a prayer breakfast in Fort Payne, Ala. State legislators are currently weighing raising teacher pay.

But Sen. Shadrack had no problem defending a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators.

Lawmakers entered the 2007 legislative session making $30,710 a year, a rate that had not been changed in 16 years. The raise increased it to $49,500 annually. Because paying politicians more -- is a way to keep them honest.

 According to the Gospel of Shadrack;

"That played into the corruption, guys, big time," he said. "You had your higher-ranking legislators that were connected with the lobbyists making up in the millions of dollars. They weren't worried about that $30,000 paid salary they were getting," McGill said, adding that lawmakers have to pay for their expenses out of pocket. ( kind of like teachers do?)

The logic, according to the Gospel of Shadrack;

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.

"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up...but that isn't what happens, guys."

The calling, according to the Gospel of Shadrack;

"If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance."

Maybe Shadrack has something here.

The Gospel according to ickenittle -- applied to politicians and corporate CEO's;



Where's the part about teacher's pay?

The quality of politicians and corporate CEO's will not go up when you raise their pay.

In fact lowering the pay of all politicians will attract those more in sync with Jesus.

This also goes for those working in the financial institutions like Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail banks.

And don't forget about Congress........

Amen

ickenittle