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by operator kos » Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:13 pm
by Allegro » Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:02 pm
by Allegro » Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:03 pm
by Plutonia » Sun Jan 01, 2012 3:42 pm
December 30, 2011 12:38 PM
3.5 Million Homeless and 18.5 Million Vacant Homes in the US
6 comments
By Diane Sweet
The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative along with Amnesty International are asking the U.S. to step up its efforts to address the foreclosure crisis, including by giving serious consideration to the growing call for a foreclosure moratorium and other forms of relief for those at risk, and establishing a housing finance system that fulfills human rights obligations.
New government census reports have revealed disturbing information that details the cold, hard numbers of Americans who have been deeply affected by the state of our economy, and bank foreclosure practices:
In the last few days, the U.S. government census figures have revealed that 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty or are struggling to live on low incomes. And we know that the financial hardships faced by our neighbors, colleagues, and others in our communities will be all the more acutely felt over the holiday season.
Along with poverty and low incomes, the foreclosure rate has created its own crisis situation as the number of families removed from their homes has skyrocketed.
Since 2007, banks have foreclosed around eight million homes. It is estimated that another eight to ten million homes will be foreclosed before the financial crisis is over. This approach to resolving one part of the financial crisis means many, many families are living without adequate and secure housing. In addition, approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans. It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country.
The stark realities that persist mean that millions of families will be facing the holidays in temporary homes, or homes under threat, and far too many children will be wishing for an end to the uncertainty and distress their family is facing rather than an Xbox or Barbie doll.
Housing is a basic human need and a fundamental human right. Yet every day in the United States, banks are foreclosing on more than 10,000 mortgages and ordering evictions of individuals and families residing in foreclosed homes. The U.S. government’s steps to address the foreclosure crisis to date have been partial at best.
The depth and severity of the foreclosure crisis is a clear illustration of the urgent need for the U.S. government to put in place a system that respects, protects and fulfills human rights, including the right to housing. This includes implementing real protections to ensure that other actors, such as financial institutions, do not undermine or abuse human rights.
There is a link available at the Amnesty International website for anyone who is interested and would like to join the call on the Obama administration and Congress to urgently step up efforts to address the foreclosure crisis, including by seriously considering the growing call for a foreclosure moratorium and other forms of relief, and establishing a housing finance system that fulfills human rights obligations.
[Via Amnesty International]
http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com ... million-va
by Allegro » Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:59 am
At its inception, the European Union was an attempt to counterbalance the dominant global geopolitical power of the United States and the USSR. The EU was also supposed to offer a better, more democratic social and political system where the 99 percent had a voice and where political decision were made by equal nation partners with the interests of the people in mind. This democratic dream that was the EU of open national borders, not only for finance, products and services, but also for people, is in the process of being downgraded.
The European Union has entered a phase of global austerity enforced from the top without consensus or democratic control. However, history has given us many examples that a system based on sharp social regressions, dictated from the top, is not sustainable in a democratic system. Occupy movement’s chapters are exploding everywhere in Europe, including within the boundaries of the two dominant powers: Germany and France. Anyone with political acumen understands that as the regressive austerity measures are implemented everywhere in the EU, the opposition from Occupy will keep growing, and at some point, perhaps in the spring, will gain such a critical mass that it will reach a tilting point which is likely to play out in Europe’s streets.by Allegro » Mon Jan 02, 2012 5:41 am
by 2012 Countdown » Mon Jan 02, 2012 10:04 pm
by Nordic » Tue Jan 03, 2012 3:30 am
Hundreds of Occupy the Rose Parade protesters marched down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena on Monday after the real event was over,
by wintler2 » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:52 am
Nordic wrote:Let me guess -- not one of the media team "covering" the event showed one second of this, right? It was censored. I hate to say it, but this was basically a waste of time and energy. You can't play along with the very thing you're protesting against. They will send you to the back of the line, and they will make absolutely SURE they do not show ANYTHING of what you are doing. This is just like all those other protest marches that get herded into dead end parking lots and "free speech zones", away from where anyone can see them. If you're gonna crash something, fucking CRASH it. Don't play along. It might make you feel good, but so what?
by crikkett » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:43 pm
Sheriff scheduled to evict disabled Leonard Wilson 1/3/2012
Posted on 02 January 2012 by geekeasy
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tomorrow morning, January 3, 2012, totally disabled Leonard Keith Wilson will be tossed from his home of 26 years by Alameda County Sheriffs. There will be two things that will stand in their way. The resolve of Leonard Wilson to fight against the illegal foreclosure on his home, and his ally Tanya Dennis, who successfully stood up to the Sheriff’s last year and successfully defended the unlawful foreclosure upon her home.
Wilson, whose story was featured in the Post Newspaper last year, has a complaint against HMC Opportunity Fund LLC in Superior Court for their predatory lending practices, misrepresentation, fraudulent conduct and improper service.
Mr. Wilson suffers from a spinal cord injury suffered when his neck was broken twice. Despite his injuries, Mr. Wilson is an icon in the African-American community as a result of his backyard scholarship program where he raises money to put kids through college. He has successfully helped fifty kids go to college.
Tanya Dennis, a Home Defender, has taken up his cause. “After what I went through I just couldn’t sit by and watch this gross injustice take place. Mr. Wilson is having a forensic audit done and although National Forensic Group is not finished, they have indicated that HMC has illegally foreclosed upon Mr. Wilson. By “occupying” his home I’m hoping to buy time so that we can present this new evidence before the court,” said Dennis.
The Sheriff’s are due to arrive tomorrow at 6:01 am at 5001 Congress Avenue, Oakland, CA 94601.
Contact:
Leonard Wilson at (510) 261-9752
Tanya Dennis at (510) 388-5908 or tanyaddennis@yahoo.com
by JackRiddler » Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:40 pm
Princeton Brews Trouble for Us 1 Percenters: Michael Lewis
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/princeton ... 00782.html
By Michael Lewis | Bloomberg – Wed, Dec 28, 2011 7:00 PM EST
To: The Upper Ones, From: The Strategy Committee, Re: The Alarming Behavior of College Students
The committee has been reconvened in haste to respond to a disturbing new trend: the uprisings by students on elite college campuses.
Across the Ivy League the young people whom our Wall Street division once subjugated with ease are becoming troublesome. Our good friends at Goldman Sachs, to cite one example, have been forced to cancel their recruiting trips to Harvard and Brown. At Princeton, 30 students masquerading as job applicants entered a pair of Wall Street informational sessions, asked many obnoxious questions ("How do I get a job lobbying the U.S. government to protect Wall Street interests?"), rose and chanted a list of charges at bankers from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, and, finally, posted videos of their outrageous behavior on YouTube.
The committee views this latter incident as a sure sign of trouble to come. The whole point of going to Princeton for the past several decades has been to get a job at Goldman Sachs or, failing that, JPMorgan. That Princeton students are now identifying their interests with the Lower 99 percenters is, in its way, as ominous as the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
Having fully investigated the incidents in question, we are now prepared to offer strategic recommendations. Going forward all big Wall Street banks, when visiting college campuses, should adopt the following tactics.
No. 1. Send only women. You may not have fully understood why you hired them in the first place, but now is their moment to shine. For some time now the standard recruiting mission has included at least one woman and one person of color, to "season" the sauce. But typically, in the interests of keeping it "real," there has been on the scene at least one white male recruiter.
Anyone who studies the Princeton-JPMorgan video will see that we can no longer afford to keep it real. The camera passes forgivingly over the JPMorgan women -- the viewer feels sorry for them, for some reason -- and comes to rest on the lone white Morgan man. The viewer doesn't feel sorry for him. Get him out of there. Now.
No. 2. Having identified your female employees, gather them together to explain that they have no obligation to justify your behavior, even to themselves. They shouldn't give college students the satisfaction of thinking that you have devoted so much as a passing thought to the following subjects: Why it is OK for Wall Street banks to create securities designed to fail; why it is OK for them to game the ratings companies; why it is OK to get paid huge sums of money while working for companies rescued, and still implicitly backed, by the U.S. government; why it is OK to subvert attempts by politicians to reform the financial system?
Avoid taking questions from college students. For that matter, avoid engaging them in substantive conversation of any sort. Your women need to shift the conversation from content to form. They must say things like, "I don't mind what you are saying, I just mind how you are saying it." And "I don't understand why you can't treat other people with respect."
They must cast themselves not as extensions of a global financial empire but as guests. Everyone at Princeton can agree that it is wrong to be rude to ladies on a visit.
Happily, many Princeton students, hiding behind aliases, have already taken up this cry on campus websites. Encourage those who still want to work for big Wall Street banks to blog and post our new defense. Don't offer jobs to these students who agree to help, however. They are better suited to being Wall Street customers than Wall Street bankers.
No. 3. Focus on what actually angers these angry young people, rather than what they say angers them. The character of Princeton students didn't change overnight; what changed is their circumstances. They think they are pissed off at us because of what we did. They are actually pissed off at us because we can no longer afford to hire them all. To that end ...
No. 4. Engage, quietly, with the ringleaders. Of course, all variations of the Occupy movement claim to be leaderless. We on the committee aren't buying this. With the possible exception of Bank of America, there is no such thing as a leaderless organization, only organizations in which the leaders operate in the shadows.
Sources inside inform us that one of the leaders of the Princeton-JPMorgan protest -- the young man who led the so- called "mic check" -- is a comparative literature major named Derek Gideon. Sources further indicate that for his senior thesis Mr. Gideon is writing -- get this -- a poem.
This poem of his apparently leaves him with a great deal of time and energy to stir up trouble.
"My goal is to change the dominant campus culture," he has been quoted saying, "the culture that assumes that going to work for Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan is the most prestigious thing you can do, without having any critical sense of their current role in society. We're very privileged to be here. We're getting an incredible education. All just for us to be sending 30 percent, 40 percent of our graduates to the finance sector?"
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Gideon doesn't know precisely what he is going to do with his life after he graduates. This young man strikes the committee as an ideal candidate for a job at Goldman Sachs. Yes, in our experience, even the Gideons of this world can be persuaded. After all, what better way for him to improve our behavior than to become one of us? Put that way, he almost has an obligation to take his natural resting place among us.
As awkward as it is to find ourselves in a war with students inside our own trade schools, we cannot simply cease to deal with them. After all, many are our own children. Disinheritance is messy. And, anyway, what's the point of winning the estate-tax battle if we have no heirs?
More important, the students at Ivy League schools are our most devastating ammunition in this looming cultural war. They show the Lower 99 that today's economic inequality isn't some horrible injustice but a financial expression of the natural order of man. The sort of people who become Upper Ones are inherently different from the sort of people who become Lower 99s. The clearest sign of this inherent difference is that we begin our adult life by getting into places like Princeton.
Win the battle at Princeton and we might still win this war.
(Michael Lewis, most recently author of "Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World," is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this article: Michael Lewis at mlewis1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net.
by crikkett » Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:55 pm
by 82_28 » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:20 pm
wintler2 wrote:Nordic wrote:Let me guess -- not one of the media team "covering" the event showed one second of this, right? It was censored. I hate to say it, but this was basically a waste of time and energy. You can't play along with the very thing you're protesting against. They will send you to the back of the line, and they will make absolutely SURE they do not show ANYTHING of what you are doing. This is just like all those other protest marches that get herded into dead end parking lots and "free speech zones", away from where anyone can see them. If you're gonna crash something, fucking CRASH it. Don't play along. It might make you feel good, but so what?
Don't you get tired of posting the same old defeatism all the time? You know it is ' a waste of time' because .. you can see the future? see into the hearts of every participant and observer? Obviously you can't, yet you imply you can; why you do so is between you & your mate/ancestors/therapist/dog, i'm just asking you to not deface this beautiful thread with such tissue-thin squawking. And suggesting that maybe if you actually participated, in material meatspace rather than merely symbolicly/virtually, you could glimpse the settling dust from a passing clue, and find relief from your suffocating despair too.
by Nordic » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:37 pm
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