Do you suppose that Mary Kissel has no internet access where she works? I’ve been following the story of illegal foreclosures with many web posts for more than four years. There must be hundreds if not thousands of web sites from personal stories to major news outlets detailing the crimes. And there have federal investigations culminating in the much ballyhooed settlement over the robosigning scandal.
I guess it makes one’s ideological prejudices more comfortable to deny unpleasant realities.
I’m not impressed with that quality of comment. It insults the intelligence when a supposed authority doesn’t acknowledge basic facts. I have read several times the Wall Street Journal’s preferred narrative of the housing crisis, that too many people bought “too much” house. That’s an interesting definition of a crisis surrounded by financial industry fraud and law breaking on a breath taking scale.
Mary Kissel’s commentary should cast doubt on the ability of the Wall Street Journal to accurately report on this subject.
James Pilant
Conservative Pundit Claims No Homeowners Have Been Wrongfully Foreclosed
Despite hundreds of thousands of wrongful foreclosures uncovered by investigators, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Mary Kissel claimed that “there hasn’t been a single homeowner who has been identified who was foreclosed on who shouldn’t have been foreclosed on” in a Friday appearance on Fox Business.
The reality of the situation is far different, with $1.4 trillion worth of mortgages being rendered legally unenforceable by the paperwork abuses that were so common during and after the subprime mortgage boom. Foreclosures based on shoddy or forged documents have become commonplace since the financial crisis. These aren’t faceless numbers, either, as reporters have indeed identified individual homeowners who were wronged.
Louise and Ceith Sinclair of Altadena, California might like a word with Kissel. The Sinclairs were current on their modified home loan when a company called Nationstar bought the loan from the original servicer, ignored the finalized loan modification, and foreclosed on the Sinclairs while ducking their repeated inquiries. Nationstar sold the house out from underneath them, and without a local news investigation that shamed the company into reversing the sale, it’s unclear whether the Sinclairs would have a home today.
Two huge settlements with the biggest U.S. banks — dubbed the National Mortgage Settlement and the Independent Foreclosure Review — involved millions of wronged homeowners thrust into foreclosure. But that’s not enough to convince Wall Street Journal editorial board member Mary Kissel.
She was adamant about this mind-boggling claim she made during the October 11 edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co.
Did you hear the recent news about a homeowner in West Sacramento effectively using the new California Homeowner Bill of Rights to stop foreclosure on his home? You can read about it in the Sacramento Bee: “West Sacramento homeowner uses new state law to stop foreclosure (5/23/2013)” The Fair Housing Law Project at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley prepared a summary of the California Homeowner Bill of Rights which homeowners can use when working with their bank or servicer to apply for a loan modification.
So, I find air conditioning to be a necessity for many people not to mention those like me with serious allergies. And, of course, air conditioners are now mass produced to the extent that new ones are less than one hundred dollars and used ones much less. So, even poor people can often acquire one. It does not make me angry that poor people have them.
Should poor people have to actively suffer so that Fox News commentators can feel better about themselves? I hope not.
Being poor is hideous. Every expense is a problem that may not be solvable. Every day is another day of not having things other people take for granted; having things like food. Apparently the reality of food insecurity in this country is not taken seriously by Fox News.
In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of
households (approximately one in seven), were food
insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United
States 1 (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v.)
In 2010, about one-third of food-insecure households
(6.7 million households, or 5.4 percent of all U.S.
households) had very low food security (compared with 4.7
million households (4.1 percent) in 2007.
In households with very low food security, the food
intake of some household
members was reduced, and their normal eating patterns
were disrupted
because of the household’s food insecurity
(Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v.,
Nord 2009, p. iii.) .
I’ll let them have air conditioning. It doesn’t diminish me.
James Pilant
Hasselbeck Says People On Welfare Shouldn’t Have Air Conditioners
When the right-wing talks about welfare and ‘entitlements,’ their not-so Christian attitude becomes abundantly clear. They have all sorts of stories about how welfare recipients experience all of the finer things in life and clearly they are abusing the system. Welfare recipients are not supposed to have nice clothes; they should wear rags instead so that Republicans are satisfied that they are indeed poor. Recipients are not allowed to have a decent looking car, who cares if it was bought before they fell on hard times. People on welfare should never, ever buy junk food. Oh that cake was for your kid’s birthday? Too bad, celebrate with mud pies. A welfare recipient has a phone? Well they shouldn’t! Poor people shouldn’t have phones! Well now Elisabeth Hasselbeck and her fellow co-workers over at Fox News have new items to add to the list of things poor people should not own or use: televisions and air conditioning.
Hasselbeck Says Welfare Recipients Don’t Deserve Air Conditioning
Yes, you read that right. Hasselbeck thinks that if a person is on government assistance they are not entitled to a television in their home — or an air conditioner.
Seems that the Heritage Foundation has dusted off some old rhetoric and shaped some new data to fit it. Thus it proclaims, much as it did
in 2007, that “many of the 30 million Americans defined as ‘poor’ and
in need of government assistance” are actually doing very nicely, thank
you.
First, a word of clarification. The reference to 30 million is just sloppy blogging. The Foundation’s actual report says “over 30 million.” Technically accurate, but minimizing. The latest Census Bureau income and poverty report tell us that there were nearly 43.6 million people in poverty in 2009.
As I (and many others) have written before, this figure is based on a rather primitive and woefully outdated measure, i.e., the inflation-adjusted cost of what used to be the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s cheapest meal plan.
The Census Bureau is developing an alternative measure based on recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences.
But the Heritage Foundation doesn’t care for that — indeed, has
delivered its latest blast in part to argue (again) that the new measure
is a sneaky scheme by the Obama administration to advance a “spread the
wealth” agenda.
Its main goal, however, is to give aid and comfort to Republicans in Congress who want to slash spending on public benefits.
English: Slavery in Brazil, by Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). Español: La esclavitud, de Jean-Baptiste Debret Deutsch: Sklaverei in Brasilien, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). Português: Escravidão no Brasil, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was surprised to find that slavery in Brazilian history was quite likely to have been more savage and more laden with death and torture than American slavery. Blacks couldn’t catch a break in either North America or South America.
Today in 1888 (121 years ago) Brazil officially abolished its slave trade – the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to do so.
Slavery and the slave trade dealt exclusively with Africa and
persisted for nearly 400 years. Brazil lasted longer than any other
Western Hemispheric nation, although the US South had the highest
concentration of slaves that the world has ever seen – 6 million on the
eve of the Civil War in 1860. Brazil never reached those heights, but it
used slaves in the same fashion as white southerners did. Not only was
slavery economically essential to parts of Brazil, but it also created
castes of human beings that persist today.
Pablo Picasso, 1937, Guernica, protest against Fascism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was going to quote a paragraph from this. And then after reading it a while, I decided to quote four paragraphs. And then, I just decided this is just excellent writing and quoting a piece out of it was like slicing up a Picasso.
James Pilant
[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]
From: Michael Cheponis <michael.cheponis@gmail.com> Subject: America’s government shutdown: No way to run a country | The Economist Date: October 4, 2013 4:46:01 PM PDT
AS MIDNIGHT on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s government. To a wondering world, the recriminations missed the point. When you are brawling on the edge of a cliff, the big question is not “Who is right?”, but “What the hell are you doing on the edge of a cliff?”
The shutdown itself is tiresome but bearable. The security services will remain on duty, pensioners will still receive their cheques and the astronauts on the International Space Station will still…
The distance between the supporters of the shutdown and their “perspective” on public support and actual polling data could not be more stark. It may be that in this nation, threats to destroy the nation’s economy to gain political ends may be considered “going over the top” of what is reasonable. Certainly, I feel that way.
James Pilant
Ted Cruz Is Living On Another Planet – Yahoo Finance
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the public hates the shutdown, Americans are 20 points more likely to blame Republicans for the shutdown than Obama, the Republican Party is scoring its worst poll numbers on record, Cruz\’s colleagues in the House and Senate hate him, and they\’re preparing to cave to the president by reopening the government and funding Obamacare.
Cruz is betting that his supporters are too stupid to notice that his strategy is failing and was doomed to fail. He\’s probably right.
Lots of people thought that when Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election after months of conservatives proclaiming that the polls were \”skewed\” and he was on course to win, the party\’s base might start to evaluate whether it misunderstood the world around it.
Remarkably, conservative delusion about facts on the ground is more intense than ever. The appetite for stories like the one Cruz is telling is unending, impervious to facts and sustainable no matter how far the Republican Party\’s poll numbers fall.
When constituencies become aggrieved minorities, seeing themselves as under attack by the establishment, they are vulnerable to hucksters like Cruz, because they disregard outside warnings and evidence that they are being had.
English: The ten largest economies in the world and the European Union in 2008, measured in GDP PPP (millions of USD), according to the International Monetary Fund. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I read the Huffington Post almost every day. Niall Ferguson has written three attacks on Paul Krugman which have appeared in that publication which has me wondering about what’s going on? I was under the impression that Ferguson’s hit piece on Obama has been so awful that his credibility had taken a substantial hit but apparently not a substantial enough hit for the Huffpost not to publish him. I find Ferguson’s beliefs appalling, his attacks on Krugman ridiculous and I am pleased that so many are firing back at Ferguson’s attacks. Here is one from the web site, Beat the Press.
James Pilant
The Ravings of Niall Ferguson, the Real World, and the Needless Suffering of Tens of Millions | Beat the Press
But it is hardly worth wasting time and killing electrons in a tit for tat with Ferguson. What matters is the underlying issues of economic policy. These affect the lives of billions of people. The absurdities pushed by Ferguson and like-minded people in positions of power, in direct defiance of massive evidence to the contrary, have ruined millions of lives and cost the world more than $10 trillion in lost output since the crisis began.
First, contrary to what Ferguson claims, the downturn is not primarily a “financial crisis.” The story of the downturn is a simple story of a collapsed housing bubble. The $8 trillion housing bubble was driving demand in the U.S. economy in the last decade until it collapsed in 2007. When the bubble burst we lost more than 4 percentage points of GDP worth of demand due to a plunge in residential construction. We lost roughly the same amount of demand due to a falloff in consumption associated with the disappearance of $8 trillion in housing wealth. (FWIW, none of this was a surprise to folks who follow the economy with their eyes open. I warned of this disaster beginning in 2002, see also here and here.)
The collapse of the bubble created a hole in annual demand equal to 8 percent of GDP%
English: US Capitol, Washington DC, the seat of government for the United States Congress. Nederlands: Het Capitool, de zetel van de volksvertegenwoordiging van de Verenigde Staten. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am appalled by what’s happening. I freely confess I don’t know what will happen if this last beyond the 17th and we go into default. It could be anything from very little happening to a worldwide economic catastrophe culminating in a decade long Depression. If I were a legislator, I like to think I would want to avoid going into default where the unknowns are so perilous. But I do not believe I can count on the intelligence or judgment of those willing to shut down the government as a form of blackmail. It was irresponsible to begin with, and it has only become less moral, less ethical and less intelligent as the days have gone by.
James Pilant
Trudy Rubin: Shutdown repercussions | Opinion | McClatchy DC
How far we have come since the heady days of the 1990s, when eager civic activists from ex-communist and third-world countries looked to U.S. experts to show them how a multiparty system worked.Indeed, America\’s longtime allies are bewildered by a system where a small minority of legislators can hijack Congress. They also can\’t understand why Congress has to vote separately to authorize the borrowing of funds to pay for expenses it has already approved. Perhaps because no other modern democracy except Denmark has such a system.The commentary in friendly countries has been scathing.\”For a country that fancies itself the greatest democracy on Earth, the fact that a small band of outliers in one party can essentially shut down the federal government over a petty political brawl seems woefully undemocratic,\” Lee-Anne Goodman of Canadian Press told the Talking Points Memo blog. Le Monde columnist Alain Frachon told the New York Times that \”Washington is looking more like the Italian political system, with its permanent crises.\”David Usborne wrote in the British newspaper The Independent: \”America is indeed exceptional, at least in terms of its place in the global financial system,\” but \”in almost every other respect right now it is starting to look exceptionally silly.\” Even if a budget and debt-ceiling deal is completed in the next two weeks, he add …
“That leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth willingly
provoked a crisis that suspends public services and decreases economic
growth is astonishing….Even in the middle of its ongoing civil war,
the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers’
wages.” In western Europe, a think-tank scholar tweeted, “Next time you
blame the woes of developing nations on ‘poor governance,’ think about
how the U.S. government arrived at today.”
In France, the newspaper Le Monde assailed the “grotesque” shutdown, and aimed its editorial message at one of America’s founding fathers: “Jefferson, wake up! They’ve gone crazy!” In Germany, Der Spiegel Onlinedeclared, “A superpower has paralyzed itself,” and the business daily Handelsbatt depicted the Statue of Liberty in chains, capped by the headline, “The Blocked World Power.” In Spain, the El Pais newspaper marveled at America’s “suicidal madness.”
Granted, some of these reactions have a touch of schadenfreude,
taking pleasure in our misfortune. That’s especially true with the
French, who always love to tweak us, even while forgetting that if not
for America 69 years ago, they would’ve stayed under the Nazi heel. But
why give them an excuse to treat us as a laughingstock?
And the current scoffing spans the continents. In China, an
entertainer tweeted, “Chinese must be wondering – When will America
embrace real reform? How long can this system survive? Where is
America’s Gorbachev?” In China, a government-run news website said
the nation should be “on guard against spillover of irresponsible U.S.
politics.” In India, business executives told the Voice of America that
they couldn’t fathom how an advanced nation like America could allow its
government to close, and a college student in New Dehli said it was
“sad and shocking.” In the Philippines, an editorial writer asked, “How
did the world’s lone superpower come to such a sorry pass?” In Malaysia,
a news website ran the headline, “U.S. shutdown leaves the world
scratching its head,” and the story said that some Malaysians “had
trouble suppressing smirks.” And The Australian newspaper said that the shutdown “doesn’t say much for the budgetary process in the world’s largest economy.” And so on.
English: Comparison of Charter school performance to public schools. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I believe in public education and its importance. The data on charter schools would have long ago ended any other movement but it continues onward, heavily funded and pushed by opinion leaders across the nation. I can’t help but think we are once again being sold a bill of goods by the privatization crowd and the free market absolutists. No amount of information, no knowledge of history, no deviation from the idea that education is all about making money, will be allowed to stop the movement from turning all education from a public good to a private profit.
James Pilant
Teach for America recommendations: I stopped writing them, and my colleague should, too.
There is a movement rising in every city of this country that seeks true education reform—not the kind funded by billionaires, corporations, and hedge funds, and organized around their values. This movement consists of public school parents and students, veteran teachers, and ex-TFA corps members. It also consists of a national network of college students, such as those in Students United for Public Education, who talk about the damage TFA is inflicting on communities and public schools. These groups and others also acknowledge the relationship between the corporatization of higher education and the vast impact of corporate reform on our youngest and most needy children. It is these children who are harmed by the never-ending cycle of under-trained, uncertified, first- and second-year teachers that now populates disadvantaged schools, and by the data-obsessed approach to education that is enabled by these inexperienced teachers.
I accepted that, and I was a dedicated alumna for about ten years. Then one day I got an email saying that TFA had decided that people who hadn’t finished their full two year commitment could no longer be counted as alumni. It was a bit insulting, that my ten years of talking them up and supporting them suddenly didn’t count, but now I’m glad, because I don’t want to be affiliated with them anymore.
TFA is no longer about filling a desperate need, where no qualified teachers can be found. Now the organization does what I refused to do. They take jobs away from people who are better qualified, more committed to teaching, and much more knowledgeable about the communities in which they teach.
I believe that most of the people involved in TFA have good intentions. I also believe that some TFA teachers may be better than some of the teachers they replace. On the whole, though, the organization is now doing more harm than good, and the people who run it seem to be wearing goggles, made from confidence in their own intelligence and virtue, that blind them to the detrimental effects of their work.
Maybe they don’t have to quit. Maybe they just need to find a way to restructure, so they can go back to filling an actual need. What I know is, when my attempts to help became a hindrance, I stepped out of the way. TFA needs to take off the we-are-saving-the-world goggles and do the same thing.
A construction project to repair and update the building façade at the Department of Education headquarters in 2002 resulted in the installation of structures at all of the entrances to protect employees and visitors from falling debris. ED redesigned these protective structures to promote the “No Child Left Behind Act”. The structures were temporary and were removed in 2008. Source: U.S. Department of Education, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is the same kind of “reform” that is devastating high school education in the United States, a reliance on testing, a emphasis on monetary results from education (“practical” education) and diminished state funding. This is education being re-defined from public good to private acquisition.
Are we who teach in academia on the verge of living in the same world as the public school teacher, that is, teaching to the test, rigidly defined course materials and funding based on test results?
That is certainly the intent of organizations like the Bill Gates Foundation and the Neoliberal movement.
Haven’t we learned enough from the NCLB disaster in the public schools to not have to do this kind of disastrous social experimentation? You’d think so but these zombie ideas just keep on staggering along, rotting and contaminating intelligent thought as they throw off empty ideas and fancy slogans like the miasma from a swamp.
James Pilant
6 ways neoliberal education reform is destroying our college system – Salon.com
“An outcomes-based culture is rapidly developing amongst policymakers in the higher education sector,” declares a 2012 report sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, “Measuring Value-Added in Higher Education.” With hardly contained delight, they add that this development “mirrors recent trends in the K-12 sector.”Like RTTT’s progenitor No Child Left Behind, much of the genetic material of higher education reform is drawn from Texas. Just as the apocryphal “Texas Miracle” became the backbone of NCLB’s testing and accountability model, college reforms propagated in Texas have captured the attention of reformers nationwide, with the Gates Foundation playing its usual capo-de-tutti-capi role.The foundation also funded Compare College TX, an accountability system, and supported—in fact helped inspire—Governor Rick Perry’s $10,000 degree plan. This initiative epitomizes the Republican higher-ed platform, defined by performance funding, value-added measurements and the likely curtailing of state funds.The foundation’s other forays into higher education—an accountability challenge, numerous nationalcollege completion initiatives, and a series of research paperswith consulting firm HCM Strategists made Gates “one of the strongest voices …
You could say I am angry, but I don’t see that as a negative quality. Anger is a normal reaction to suffering, whether you experience it or witness it. One can be angry without being hostile or violent. One can be angry and still be respectful and polite to others.
Anger is a positive emotion, because anger acknowledges the possibility for change. The opposite of anger is acquiescence – the acceptance of suffering as normal. Anger is a form of compassion.
Corruption and inequality are man-made problems. They are not inevitable and neither is the hardship that accompanies them. But in order to fix a problem, we have to see it as a problem, not an inexorable element of human life or human behavior. Saying “this is the way things are” discourages people from imagining how things could be.
If people are angry after they read my work, I am glad. I hope they use that anger to fight on behalf of others. One of the worst feelings in the world is to suffer in the open and have no one care or raise a hand to help you. We should not take terrible conditions for granted any more than we should treat the suffering they cause as acceptable. Anger demands accountability.
As for your question as to whether I am “mentally and emotionally exhausted“ — probably. But that’s because I am the mother of two young children, not because I’m some sort of revolutionary.
Criticizing corruption is not exhausting. It is far more exhausting to pretend everything is okay.
English: Graduate School (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve heard this same story several times. Being highly educated and a vital part of an educational institution is no guarantee of job security or a significant salary. it’s driving good people from the field and diminishing the value of higher education.
Increasingly society is viewed through a Neoliberal prism where immediate results and marketization are valued over long term success and more traditional value systems. The church, the school and the press are being increasingly infected with the idea of measurable profit over more difficult to measure values. I would argue that intellectual inquisitiveness, love, honor, culture, and an inclination toward an intelligent development of public policy might have values in a civilized society but my voice in increasingly being shouted down by the fine print in budget statements geared toward the short term and quite often the counterproductive.
I think business ethics are tied in with the higher values of Western Civilization. Once those values are thrown away by crass economic doctrine, there will be a decline of society to a system based on power and wealth until the inevitable turn of the wheel and an new society is born.
James Pilant
“Exploitation should not be a rite of passage” | Sarah Kendzior
I went into academia for the reasons you mentioned – I love to write and do research. I enjoyed having the freedom to study topics that interest me, such as the politics of authoritarian states. I never cared about prestige or making a lot of money. But I care about earning a stable income and providing for my children.
In my final year in graduate school, I realized that my ability to stay on the job market and pursue an academic career was dependent on financial resources that I didn’t have. I was a successful academic – I am well-published, in top journals, with strong teaching evaluations and a solid reputation in my field. But this was irrelevant when it came to finding a job in this economy. I was expected to adjunct, subsisting on poverty wages, until a tenure-track job came along.
Money, not merit, is the critical factor to staying in academia in the United States. Most recent PhDs are either living in poverty, in massive debt, or surviving off family wealth. The former two categories tend to drop out, while the latter pay to play.
In the end, I am glad I left, because what I am doing now is more interesting. I didn’t plan to work as a writer – I was recruited once I started writing for the public. Al Jazeera English contacted me after reading my work on website called Registan.net, where I had been blogging about Central Asia during my last year of graduate school. My Al Jazeera articles often go viral. Over time, other publications asked me to write for them as well.
I love to write so I am happy about how this turned out. But I know my story is not typical. That is one of the reasons I write about barriers to entry in journalism, because talented writers are being locked out because they cannot afford unpaid internships or expensive credentials. Journalism is structured in a similar way to academia, where pre-existing wealth is a de facto requirement for entry.
Everyone benefits from a more diverse and even playing field, so I try to draw attention to unfair labor practices in these professions. Exploitation should not be a rite of passage.
Increasingly, adjunct faculty are doing the teaching in the US education system, particularly at the community college level. This is because they are cheap. Much, much cheaper than tenured faculty. They are often paid by the unit, instead of receiving a salary, and don’t get benefits. It’s cheaper to higher multiple adjunct faculty members than one tenured professor. Some community colleges don’t even have a full time faculty member supervising some departments. The entire English department, for example, may be part timers.
Some people enjoy working as adjunct faculty. The work is a lot more flexible, and you can choose whether to renew contracts between semesters, or move on to something else. There’s less pressure to publish, to perform, to establish yourself. You have more time to work directly with students because you don’t have to do administrative work. Some institutions are very open to suggestions for classes, so you get an opportunity to teach courses that interest you and engage with students who genuinely want to learn. Adjunct faculty have a lot to add to academic environments and are an important part of the academic community.
But the exploitation of adjunct faculty is another matter altogether. Many undergraduate students are not aware of the byzantine workings of college administration. They may not know, for example, that administrators tend to make the highest salaries, and that even star faculty may not receive very much from teaching. Their income is from grants, which need to be continually renewed, or awards, not the university directly. Star researchers are informed that they need to fund themselves, and their graduate students. The university is happy to share in the glory, but it doesn’t want to incur any of the expenses.
Carlos Ovando
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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