Posts
"Madness! Madness!"
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
Ex-CIA Director Who Endorsed Clinton Calls for Killing Iranians and Russians in Syria
"Six Things to Know About the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)"
"Why This Job Market is Still Terrible: The Politically Incorrect Numbers Everyone is Hushing Up"
If you think the Bushes are not supporting Donald Trump's candidacy, you might want to rethink that. George Prescott, Jebbie's son, whose Mother was an immigrant, gives us a slightly different family twist - a far more clever response than his elders.
George P. Bush’s Shrewd Move: His Trump Backing Is About One Thing — Keeping the GOP Together
Well, if you crave novelty you've got to admit that it's been interesting.
It's certainly not your parents' (or even your grandparents') pre-election festivities. (You'd need to go back to approximately turn-of-the-century twice removed to find candidates being shot at.)
The Don's Show is in shambles (Evan McMullen, anyone?), and the Hillary's is continuing like a house afire (as your grandparents might have described it in their day).
As said previously here, if the Don had been challenged by the Clintons at one of their past dinner parties/wedding celebrations to run as an easy foil for their future purposes, it couldn't have worked out better. He may even end up with another TV show - how would the "Apprentice President" go over I wonder? He would have millions of committed viewers. At least at first.
Yes, you couldn't have made this up.
Or could you?
Someone did. And the country has been intellectually impoverished ever since by this campaign.
At a time when the financial system is imperiled by those sitting in the best seats, reaping all the profits, with the power to hugely increase them for ever more, the citizens of the U.S.. have received absolutely no information about what the two major parties intend to do to change things after the election (and don't kid yourself about promises made on the stump).
But . . . they have been offered a vision put forward by a 73-year-old "socialist" of what they could do, which has been formally mocked by both parties throughout the campaign.
If voters hope that the party platforms offer any hope for change, they should review the past party platforms before stepping off the cliff at the voting booth.
Yeah. I know. It matters about copyrights. So, I try not to use too much whenever I'm quoting a really stellar source.
Most of the time.
Sanders Supporters Stunned by Sudden Death of 38-Year Shawn Lucas Who Served the Lawsuit on the DNC and Wasserman Shultz
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
August 8, 2016
On Friday, July 1, just ahead of the long Fourth of July weekend, a happy, exuberant process server, 38-year old Shawn Lucas of One Source Process, served a lawsuit at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters and named the DNC and its then Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as defendants. It leveled the following serious charges: fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence.
The suit seeks class action status and was filed in the Federal District Court in the Southern District of Florida. (Wilding et al v DNC Services Corporation and Deborah ‘Debbie’ Wasserman Schultz; Case Number 16-cv-61511-WJZ).
A video of the service of process (see embedded video below) shows Shawn Lucas saying he was “excited” and “thrilled” to be the process server on this lawsuit, later in the video equating it to his “birthday and Christmas” rolled into one. A month later, Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor. A cause has yet to be announced.
As of this writing, we could find no mainstream newspaper or wire service that has reported on the troubling death of Shawn Lucas. The original YouTube video, however, has skyrocketed from 32,000 views to more than 350,000 views as of this morning.
The flurry of angry comments below the video are suggesting there is some form of Hillary Clinton hit squad in operation.
. . . Just hours before Lucas was found dead, there had been a major housecleaning of DNC officials implicated in the DNC emails leaked by Wikileaks, showing that key executives had secretly strategized on how to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders while bolstering the campaign for Hillary Clinton. (Those leaked emails provide important new evidence to buttress the class action lawsuit.) DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz had stepped down earlier as a result of the emails at the outset of the Democratic Convention but Politico reported on the afternoon of August 2 that “CEO Amy Dacey, communications director Luis Miranda and chief financial officer Brad Marshall” were leaving the DNC and that staffers had been told of the changes that very day. All three had been implicated by the leaked emails.
Also implicated in the emails leaked by Wikileaks was law partner Marc Elias of the politically-connected legal powerhouse, Perkins Coie, who chairs its Political Law practice. The name “Perkins Coie” appears 263 times in the Wikileaks emails. The law firm vetted essentially every media ad released by the DNC, as well as drafting responses to Senator Sanders’ campaign charges of serious irregularities taking place at the DNC to boost Clinton’s campaign. (Under DNC bylaws, it must conduct its activities in a fair, unbiased manner toward all Democratic candidates in the primaries.)
Following charges from the Sanders’ campaign that a joint fundraising account called the Hillary Victory Fund was being used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to “launder money” for Clinton, that is, to evade her fundraising caps from wealthy donors, Marc Elias sent an email to four DNC officials on May 3 of this year, advising them to “put out a statement saying that the accusations [from] the Sanders campaign are not true.” Elias doesn’t provide any specifics on why the charges are not true.
In April of this year, Politico was investigating reports that when State Democratic parties received a large sum from the Hillary Victory Fund, the identical amount on the same day would be wired to the DNC, sometimes without the State Party even being aware the money had come and gone. Perkins Coie was looped into the email discussion of how to respond to these charges. On April 25, 2016, Graham Wilson of Perkins Coie responded to the email thread, writing in part:
. . . According to the Perkins Coie web site, law partner Marc Elias is “currently general counsel to Hillary for America” as well as representing the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic Governors Associations.
. . . The role of Perkins Coie in the email scandal is now raising eyebrows in the legal community because Perkins Coie has responded to the class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Bernie Sanders’ supporters indicating that it will be representing the DNC in the matter. Marc Elias is listed as one of the attorneys that will be involved in the case.
Exactly how Perkins Coie attorneys can serve their client’s legal interests while being simultaneously implicated in the raging conflicts of interest is raising the specter that the new DNC leadership that selected the law firm is as ethically challenged as the old team. The well known media personality, Donna Brazile, has been appointed the DNC Interim Chair.
. . . Just 11 days prior to the death of Lucas, Perkins Coie filed a motion for dismissal of the lawsuit, specifically alleging that Lucas had not served the lawsuit properly, in that he failed to hand it to someone at the DNC who was authorized to accept lawsuits. The lawyers for Sanders’ plaintiffs responded to those allegations just this past Friday, August 5, writing:
. . . The class action lawyers then provide the court a link to the video that was made of Lucas handing the lawsuit to the DNC representative and quote from the exchange that occurred, noting that the DNC staffer had every opportunity to advise that she wasn’t able to accept the lawsuit, but did precisely the opposite of that:
. . . The woman who accepted the lawsuit from Lucas, Becca Herries, was at the time a special assistant to then DNC CEO, Amy Dacey. Dacey was either terminated by the DNC or resigned on the same day Lucas was found dead on his bathroom floor.
Update 2:26 P.M. August 8, 2016: "Wall Street On Parade" spoke with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Washington, D.C. this afternoon regarding the death of Shawn Lucas. They are not releasing the cause of death at this time and asked us to check back in two weeks.
The Stench of Raw Propaganda_ _ _ _ _ _ _
How Long Can Economic Reality Be Ignored?
Is the Saudi 9/11 Story Part Of The Deception?
Sorry You Lost Your Home: Americans Deserve More Than an Apology for the Foreclosure Fraud Epidemic
Despite talk of "recovery," former homeowners remain scarred after their government abandoned them
David Dayen
“I lost my home of 30 years to fraudclosure.”
“I have been fighting this bank for over five years now. I am finally losing everything to their fraud.”
“We feel captive in our own home.”
This is a sampling of what I have awakened to practically every day for the past few months, since my book “Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud”came out. Hundreds of people have emailed me, sent me letters, attended my public events, to relate their personal horror stories of foreclosure and dispossession. They come from across America, from different social and economic backgrounds. Some lost everything, and some haven’t given up.
They contact me, a non-lawyer who has only written about and not participated in their struggle, because they have been abandoned, by a government that chose sides against them after the crash of 2008. They seek answers that I mostly don’t have and support I mostly cannot provide. Outside of referring them to legal aid, I cannot solve their foreclosure problems. I cannot convince a judge disinclined to rule in their favor, or a bank disinclined to see them as anything but a financial asset to be plucked, to change their minds. I can only note in sorrow that the massive netting of fraud laid by the mortgage industry over a decade ago continues to capture people like them.
But despite my lack of assistance, they typically express to me their gratitude, for one simple reason: just by giving voice to similar nightmares, I have instilled in them hope that they aren’t utterly alone in their misery, that they haven’t been singled out by a vengeful nation, that somewhere out there they have an ally and a confidant.
I wrote my book for them, for everyone who suffered as a result of the largest consumer fraud in American history and the greatest economic collapse in nearly a century. They shouldn’t be forgotten. In fact, somebody should apologize to them for having to bear the weight of the financial collapse on their shoulders, even while that suffering was exacted through outright fraud. It might as well be me.
In “Chain of Title”, I detailed how three foreclosure victims uncovered an unparalleled pattern of deceit: mortgage companies systematically using false evidence in courtrooms and county offices to take people’s homes away. This routine document fabrication covered up the unspeakable crime of breaking the chain of title on millions of home mortgages, confusing the underlying ownership and damaging 350 years of functioning property records law.
It was a work of history, depicting events mainly in 2009 and 2010. But that history lives on in my email inbox, to this very day.
Julian Soncco of Phoenix, Arizona, told me how his bank, GMAC Mortgage, broke into his home and changed the locks while he was supposed to be under bankruptcy protection. He received a favorable judgment on two occasions but has still never recovered his home. “In this country,” Soncco wrote, “no such person, no matter how much power they hold, should have the right to take or rob a family from their home without any just reason.”
Michael Powell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said he survived two foreclosure cases over the past five years, with a third attempt possible. “People would look at me like I was crazy when I’d talk of bogus documents and robo-signing,” he wrote. Diane Bauman of Baldwin, New York, described a foreclosure case against her by JPMorgan Chase going on six years, where affidavits suddenly turned up in the last month, purporting to fix defective documents.
Kim Bolin of St. Louis, Missouri, was told to stop making payments while she negotiated a modification, and then was put into foreclosure simultaneously. The lender submitted as proof of ownership an assignment dated 2013 from the original lender Intervale Mortgage, which went out of business in 2008. Kim, her husband and her three kids expect to be out on the street in the next two weeks. “The feeling of failing your kids is unbelievable,” Bolin wrote. “I now have a heart condition that is causing rapid breathing and a rapid heart rate – the only reason they can find is the huge amount of stress I’m living with every day.”
It’s impossible to expend the time and resources necessary to verify these and the hundreds of other stories I get daily. I can’t even get through all the names of these victims. But I can paint a picture of the type of people who write them, which is nothing like the one the industry frames, a tale of deadbeats and losers who miss mortgage payments and try to scam banks into acquiring a free house.
These people are meticulous. They’ve kept every scrap of paper related to their cases, probably to preserve their own sanity. They know how the law works. Their perseverance, even while recognizing the odds against them, is remarkable.
Andy Williams drove four hours from Chicago to St. Louis to see me speak last month. His foreclosure case began eleven years ago, and he’s compiled a half-dozen law firms to help borrowers in foreclosure in the Chicago area. His lonely battle for consumer rights occurred in parallel with the subjects of my book, thousands of miles away in Florida. There was no wide-ranging community to bring all these voices together, nobody to tell them they weren’t alone.
Which I guess made me the conduit. So I hear all these stories, knowing that years after the foreclosure crisis began, judges and lawyers and prosecutors and politicians don’t want to hear them anymore. Any drive to protect the public, if it was ever there, has withered. Having exhausted other options, foreclosure victims have to approach a writer as a last line of defense. It powerfully illustrates the dislocation people feel, of being stuck in a Kafka-esque trauma without resolution.
Political analysts still manage to wonder why people are angry in a time of economic recovery, without ever even hinting recognition of the scarring impact of the foreclosure disaster. More than 9.3 million American families gave up their home between 2006 and 2014, either in a foreclosure or a short sale or some other transaction. That translates to about 14 million people, all of whom have family and friends and colleagues who at least know of the pain caused by the foreclosure crisis. There have been more since then.
It didn’t have to turn out that way. All of the losses didn’t have to be placed upon homeowners. Somebody could have been held responsible. We could have enforced the simple rule that you can’t take a person’s home with false evidence. This bare minimum would have engendered some faith that the system works, that justice still burns somewhere in America.
Comments:
Captain America
Best wishes for your future endeavors.
blunderdog
This was a straight-up heist committed by the USA's financial industry, and not a thing was done.
This is damning evidence that the law only protects those who can afford it. Don't forget this lesson.
Captain America @blunderdog
What lesson was that?
LOOK OVER THERE -- TRUMP!Read the entire essay here.
oncearepublican
Captain America
I was echoing his concern. We will forget. We'll be encouraged to forget. In fact, forgetting will be demanded of us.
Our own allies will demand we remember Obama as a great protector of the middle and lower classes because that fake history is necessary to distinguish ourselves from Republicans.
I was flip, but I thought that meaning was clear. We are always lowering the bar, so that at this point our "champions" are the ones throwing us crumbs while the vultures pick our flesh.
mountaineer
Chain of Title is a great book, and depressing as hell. The outright lying, cheating, and fraud that the banks got away with is shocking, and no one did a damned thing to stop them. Anyone who thinks Hillary or Trump will stop them is delusional.
kilfarsnar
@mountaineer
"The outright lying, cheating, and fraud that the banks got away with is shocking, and no one did a damned thing to stop them."
Part of the issue is that few people know what happened, or is happening. I have spoken with friends, who are liberal, educated and generally informed, about why I'm so angry with the banks and the bailouts. I say it's because of the inequity of the response and the lack of prosecution of massive, systemic fraud. And they're like, "What fraud? What are you talking about? The banks just got bailed out, and they paid it back, so what's the problem?"
That's what people think happened! The news media have absolutely not covered or paid attention to this. They have not reported it in a way that enters the public consciousness. Sure, you can read this book or Matt Taibbi's Griftopia (which I'm currently reading), or any number of other ones and find out, but we all know most people don't do that. So they don't know and don't pressure their representatives to do anything about it. Whether those representatives would respond is another matter.
oncearepublican
I bought David's book and it was very well written. I would recommend that book to ANYONE who wants to understand what really happened to homeowners, but be assured, it WILL make you angry. How could this country have allowed that to happen to its own people?
David, I will miss you, and like I do for Tom Frank and Elias Isquith, I will search for you on the internet. When you guys find a home that allows you to be you, I will find you!
Windsong
@oncearepublican Multi-Nationals fly the "pirates jolly roger flag" I thought everyone knew that by now. LOL
Steven Danis
First off I would like to extend my appreciation to Mr. Dayen. I've always found his columns of interest and well written. It is truly an amazing contrast between how our government under both presidencies of Bush II and Obama have treated Wall Street and the residential sector which is such a key element in American life, especially for those of moderate means. Trillions of dollars were shoveled into Wall Street in what turned to be a successful effort to shore up that sector which now is doing very well after years of recovery In contrast housing was largely left to languish with only token aid. Resulting in the current situation where millions are either involuntary renters, living doubled up with family, or even homeless, and the rate of home ownership having dropped from about 66% in 2005 to the current 61%, the lowest in decades.
Windsong
@Steven Danis they the financial sector may have been intentionally destroying the financial strength of the middle class clearing the way for Citizens United which had been on the conservative battle map since 1988
Logain Ablar
This is a very powerful article. A good, but sad read. It still amazes me how some people around me are either oblivious to the fraud leading up to and beyond 2008 or so quick to believe in the so-called recovery that's being pimped. If you look at the situation like a relationship, a spouse was lied to, cheated on and robbed. When the spouse cries foul after losing everything and rightfully so, the cheating partner says it's all the spouse's fault and the courts protect the cheater. Years later the cheating partner is telling the spouse to trust them and believe in them when they say we're on the road to recovery even though the cheating partner got away with theft, lies and abuse. Why should the spouse trust this person? Why should American people trust government after the debacle of 2008 and beyond? Look around and use reason. Does THIS look like a recovery? An ungodly amount of fraud took place and almost no one was held accountable for it yet America is supposed to be a shining example of Democracy and human rights the world over? This doesn't bode well for what passes for a future.
Thanks Mr. Dayen.
Good luck with your endeavors . . . .
Max and Stacy ("the Edward R. Murrow of our time") give us the inside dope on what's been happening politically (millions to Hillary from hedge funds while the Donald only got thousands) and financially (the ever-increasing debt of the peons) in the last few weeks as well as explain how Warren Buffett and other billionaires (Billionaires for Hillary!) were the beneficiaries (secret beneficiaries, of course) of the Great Billionaire Bailout of 2008 - Forever (which kept the billionaires' insurance companies afloat by impoverishing everyone aft (that's essentially everyone else downstream) on the wealth pyramid).
I remember when Buffett announced Berkshire Hathaway was moving into the reinsurance market (buying General Re) way back in the 90's, thinking "wait . . . wait . . . why?" . . . but there was a very good reason which he and several other hot-to-trot investors, including Blackstone, knew about, and thus many of the voters (who have finally figured out some of this "mystery") will be choosing "Chaos" over more "Billionaire Bailouts." And, remember, Putin is responsible for all the corruption in American politics. (At least that's what we're being told everyday by the MSM.)
[KR951] Keiser Report: Collapse of Political World
August 9, 2016 by Stacy Herbert
We discuss their observations on the road during election season 2016. They observe that the political world has collapsed because of the bailouts and now we have the most disliked candidates in modern history and the most insane conspiracy theories masquerading as political analysis.
Obama’s Flimsy War Justification: The President Has Relied on a 15-Year-Old Law for Launching Attacks
"ObamaCare Collapsing into Financial Ruin as Aetna Insurance Prepares Pull-out after $300 Million Loss"
Getting interesting now isn't it?
Not for the roadkill though.
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