Foreclosure fraud, false claims and stonewalling by Wells Fargo

marcy wheeler...

[T]he government has been sitting on evidence of significant crime for the last 18 months–crime that resulted in people losing their homes and the government being defrauded.

she's got more and it makes for distressing reading...

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To Occupy or not to Occupy

bmaz, posting at marcy's emptywheel blog, is having an understandable epiphany after digesting the terms of the latest foreclosure fraud settlement trial balloon...

[I]t is hard for many in the comfortably ensconced traditional middle class to see just how heinous the situation is, and how necessary the “Occupy” movement may really be.

Trust me. I know, I am one of the uncomfortable. My natural predilections are within the system and rules. That, however, is no longer perhaps enough.

[...]

When the politicians and corporate masters no longer are willing to play by the rules, how much longer can the “99%” afford to honor them? When the so called leaders will not abide by the norms and constricts of law, why should the average man still be held to the same?

Again, I fully admit just how much I struggle with saying the above. I really do; it is uncomfortable and discomfiting. I could go on, but my own thoughts pale in comparison with those similarly situated who have experienced first hand what the import and truth of the Occupy movement is.

he goes on to cite a post written by a woman in oakland who had been struggling with the same hesitancy...

lili loofbourow...

I'm a moderate: small, fearful, skeptical, selfish, with privilege aplenty. I have health care through the university, where I'm both a student and a teacher. I'm half-Hispanic, but I scan as white. I'm a not atypical Bay Area type: liberal, taxpaying, cautious, law-abiding (maybe to a fault), trying to hang onto the things I have. I have an iPhone, for heaven's sake.

I am, moreover, a liberal with a lifelong habit of opting out of the political conversation—and out of most kinds of activism—because I find its language dishonest, combative and unjust. I understand perfectly that our politics proceed according to a kind of barter system where each side continually overstates its convictions. I understand that the nation is a behemoth, and that to shift it, however minimally, requires the kind of herculean effort that very few people can muster.

[...]

Don't do anything wrong and the police won't bother you. Vote and you'll be represented. Do your job and you'll be able to live in relative comfort. And if you want to change things, go through the proper channels. Start a petition! Write to your representative! If something really important happens, the news will surely cover it.

lili went on to describe her own epiphany as she realized that mere moments before oakland police began using tear gas on the protestors was the precise moment when both abc and cbs television live streams went dead...

To sum up: the only two mainstream media live-feeds switched off at precisely the same instant—the minute before fifteen police departments working together engulfed a peaceful group of protesters in tear gas.

[...]

Given our image-saturated society, it's hard to explain how the absence of an image can be more dramatic, a bigger scandal, than the hundreds of disturbing videos of citizens being attacked by police. We're used to thinking of surveillance as the enemy. Big Brother abides, and I can testify that there's something undeniably eerie about the news helicopters hovering over my neighborhood. But for those helicopters hanging in our sky for hours and hours, waiting for a story, to disappear precisely when the story breaks—that's a different kind of sinister, a different kind of wrong.

[...]

Here's the thing: technology tilts the political machine so that only that which is public matters. Letters, phone calls, once the instruments of an engaged citizenry, used to function as public documents. That's not true anymore; the letter is quiet, nostalgic, quaint, difficult to reproduce or witness. Phone calls are unrecorded. A letter or phone call from a voter is like the tree falling in the forest: the question of whether or not it makes a sound is purely academic.

In fact, a letter or phone call to my representative is exactly the opposite of the chalk shadows on the sidewalk: it's an original that never even had a shadow, let alone an aftermath, or an effect.

But surely, the moderate within me insists, that same technology can save us. Email! Online petitions! The trouble is, the skeptic counters, that emails are incredibly easy to fake, and online petitions are ignored because they're so easy to generate and so difficult to verify. The electronic age has not helped voters. The ordinary channels are sort of like local channels on TV: they're still around, but nobody's really watching.

Except for those of us who are watching, and then the ABC live-feed goes dead.

At the moment when I understood that the police were pulling on their gas masks and I couldn't see what was happening, I got what was already obvious to so many: if I wanted to see the reality of Occupy Oakland, teargas, flash bangs and all, I couldn't rely on the ordinary channels. They weren't working. They'd run out of gas. I needed to go to Occupy Oakland. With all my reservations, resistance, reluctance, and inertia.

So I went.

[...]

The best answer I can muster for the question of what an engaged citizen tired of being a spectator can do is this: try the ordinary channels and try being one of the 99%. It is not perfect. Nothing is. But there is room for more than your vote or your money: there is room for you, your body and your brain. It offers something our political system (increasingly peopled as it is by disembodied, bodiless, shadowless “corporate” persons) doesn't. It's this: talk into the human microphone, and your voice doesn't disappear. It's amplified. Talk, and you stand a chance of leaving, not a mark—nothing quite so permanent—but a chalk outline of a shadow that shows that you, too, were once here.

reading both bmaz and lili, i identify all too closely with their thoughts and feelings... i'm engaged in the same struggle...

here's the response i put up to bmaz' post...

i have just finished reading your post as well as the one from the thoughtful woman in oakland... i have to say i relate all too well to the sentiments expressed... i am a spectator myself, albeit a very well-informed and perceptive one, who now finds himself at a turning point...

ever since watching the al jazeera live stream from cairo earlier this year (from kosovo, of all places), i have thrilled to see a resurgence of populist spirit across the globe... when the occupy movement started and took hold here in the u.s., my first thoughts were that i had been waiting the better part of my 64 years to see this kind of energy blossom...

for over 35 years, i have taught a deep respect for ordinary people and the common good and attempted to demonstrate those principles in my own life... over the past 10 years, i have been working for development projects that bring me into close contact with the ordinary people in places like kosovo, macedonia, jordan and afghanistan, people who only want what we all want - the ability to feed and clothe their families and to live their daily lives with some sense of safety and security...

returning to the u.s. after long periods outside the country has always been particularly difficult... being slapped in the face with such political and ideological hypocrisy, such mindless consumption, such over-the-top self-indulgence and such vehement denial of reality, has always left me struggling with a sense of deep despair over my country's future... the occupy movement is the first time i've allowed myself to feel any tingle of hope since the entire notion of hope was burned out of my neurons after being left at the altar by my two-timing fiance, barack obama...

now, like lili in oakland and like you, bmaz, as i find myself back in the u.s. for what appears to be an extended period of time, i must decide if i want to continue to plant my aging ass in front of my laptop or do i want to dust myself off and get busy working for the future of my country and my countrymen...

stay tuned...

p.s. i plan to attend the occupy reno general assembly this afternoon...

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We can't afford the basics of nation-statehood any more, just the money for forever wars and drone strikes

marcy - emptywheel - wheeler...

Elite pundits increasingly seem to be making the argument that we simply can’t afford to be a nation-state anymore–we can’t afford to offer the most basic federal services to our poor and rural citizens. Yet they rarely consider how easily we manage to come up with unbelievable sums to remain an empire.

Drone strike budgeting: ruining rural lives here and overseas for fun and profit!

lord, please deliver me from elite pundits...

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Social networking

a few observations on social networking...

despite my advanced age - 63 - i've generally been and continue to be pretty much up on the latest electronic media and related gadgets... i guess it's a necessity in my line of work where i regularly find myself based for weeks at a time in a wide variety of countries spread across several continents and both northern and southern hemispheres... if i wasn't up on the communication opportunities provided by the internet, i would essentially be up shit creek...

i started this weblog almost six years ago in 2005, a bit behind the pioneers but ahead of many, including most of my peers who, at that time, didn't know a blog from their left cheek...

i put the blog on twitter almost a year ago, so all my blog posts are automatically tweeted but, other than that, i haven't paid much attention to twitter... i've avoided facebook like the plague, i guess because it seems just a little bit too sorority/fraternity-esque for my taste and, at this particular point, i will probably continue to stay away... in truth, the whole notion of "social" in the "social networking" concept leaves me cold...

so, imagine my surprise when i, for no other reason than simple curiosity, started following my twitter home page in mid-january, just prior to leaving for my current assignment here in kosovo... just remembering to bring up my twitter home page required, as you can imagine, a shift in my ingrained web surfing habits, and, once i got into the habit of regularly bringing it up, i initially wasn't overly impressed... yeah, i added some interesting people to follow - glenn greenwald, emptywheel, greg mitchell, and the like - and was interested to see that their tweets often reinforced and amplified their longer pieces i was accustomed to reading in salon and the nation, but nothing in their various tweets struck me as significantly more valuable than what i was accustomed to following on the more traditional sites...

that all changed with the events in tunisia and egypt... what i am experiencing now is the full-blown immediacy of being on the front lines of a major world event in a way that the traditional news media or even the alternative internet news media couldn't possibly deliver... reading the tweets from sharifkouddous, a native egyptian who is tweeting and broadcasting live for democracy now from cairo adds a three-dimensionality to the goings-on that is breathtaking... i now see "social networking," at least the twitter variety, from a completely new perspective and i'm in awe of its power...

ok... i'm a convert...

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Paul Krugman and Marcy Wheeler on the continued upward transfer of wealth to the already-rich

i didn't post on either of these subjects yesterday as i found them just too damn depressing...

krugman on the catfood commission proposal...

The Hijacked Commission

[...]

It will take time to crunch the numbers here, but this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?

[...]

It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.

marcy expostulates...

David Axelrod’s Quaint Idea of Middle Class “Security”

There’s a lot to despise about David Axelrod’s announcement of Obama’s capitulation to the oligarchs on tax cuts, not least that he made this announcement on the same day Obama’s Catfood Commission Chairs started the process of stealing from seniors to “fix” our deficit.

Let yesterday be marked as the day when a nominally Democratic President began to dismantle Democrats’ signature policy achievement, social security, so he could shovel $700 billion to the very rich.

[...]

[T] worst thing that could happen to this economy may well be passing legislation that continues to hollow out of the middle class and with it increasing the massive income inequality that continues to subject the American people to the craven demands of a few very rich people. That is, precisely what Axe and Obama have now agreed to do.

These men either don’t know or don’t give a damn about the security of the middle class.

oh, they KNOW, all right... they also KNOW all too well which side their bread is buttered on...

but wait, marcy isn't quite finished...

You know, it is not just that the arrogant and cluelessly detached President Pangloss is steaming toward a one and done Presidency, it is that he is literally destroying the Democratic Party and liberal ideology in the process and leaving them in his wake.

UPDATE: I guess Obama couldn’t even sell crack free trade to Charlie Sheen the Koreans.

see what i mean about too depressing...?

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Accountability...? What's that...? An emptywheel rant...

this is a follow-on to the previous post and this one...

marcy is righteously indignant over the unbelievable cover-up of our country's worst excesses and the apparent lack of any accountability whatsoever...

Of course no one will be charged for destroying the evidence of torture! Our country has spun so far beyond holding the criminals who run our country accountable that even the notion of accountability for torture was becoming quaint and musty while we waited and screamed for some kind of acknowledgment that Durham had let the statute of limitations on the torture tape destruction expire.

[...]

I think it’s clear. We cannot say we live under the rule of law.

lord help me, i am SO-O-O-O-O-OOO sick of posting about a lack of accountability...

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In only ONE YEAR, Sprint gives law enforcement agencies GPS info 8 MILLION TIMES...!

ummm... whaddaya say to this except, HOLY SHIT...! i mean i knew it was happening but not on this scale...

chris sogohian via emptywheel...

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

The evidence documenting this surveillance program comes in the form of an audio recording of Sprint's Manager of Electronic Surveillance, who described it during a panel discussion at a wiretapping and interception industry conference, held in Washington DC in October of 2009.

It is unclear if Federal law enforcement agencies' extensive collection of geolocation data should have been disclosed to Congress pursuant to a 1999 law that requires the publication of certain surveillance statistics -- since the Department of Justice simply ignores the law, and has not provided the legally mandated reports to Congress since 2004.

meanwhile, our "change we can believe in" president keeps on keepin' on...

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Now that Bush has "left the building," Russell Tice spills the rest of the beans on Olbermann

yeah, well, this is what most of us have been saying all along, only maybe now there's some chance of something being DONE about it... ya 'spose...?

from oxdown gazette via emptywheel, both at firedoglake...

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A two-week media appearance schedule for an Iraq war pimp

Brig. Gen. (Ret.)
David L. Grange

this schedule of appearances for one retired general pimping for the bush administration and the iraq war covers a period of a little more than two weeks, from march 12-26, 2003...

from media matters database via empty wheel...


(click on image for larger version)

it's a tough job spreading lies but i guess somebody's got to do it...

he currently works for the chicago tribune's robert mccormick foundation in chicago... here's his bio... see if you can spot the jaw-dropping irony in the first sentence...

Brig. Gen. (Ret.) David L. Grange is a regular commentator on CNN during the current war.

During his 30 years of military service, Grange commanded at all ranks up through Major General. He operated in Ranger, Special Forces, Aviation, Delta Force, and Infantry units throughout the world to include the DMZ of Korea, SE Asia, SW Asia, Germany, former Warsaw Pact countries, Grenada, the Middle East, Central and South America, Africa, Russia, and the Balkans.

Grange attended Army Infantry, Special Forces, Ranger, HALO, Scuba, Air Assault, and Aviation training; the U.S. Marine Corps Command and General Staff College; the British S.A.S. Course, the Delta Course; the National War College, and earned his master's degree in public service at Western Kentucky University.

While serving in the Pentagon, Grange served as the Deputy Director and Director of Army Current Operations, Readiness and Mobilization; and was responsible for coordinating military support within the United States in response to natural disasters and for domestic preparedness against acts of terrorism.

Prior to retirement, Grange commanded the First Infantry Division, "The Big Red One," in Germany, TF Eagle in Bosnia, and U.S. troops in Macedonia and Kosovo.

the "CURRENT WAR"... ya gotta love it...

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Emptywheel marvels at "the audacity of 'nope'"

a new phrase enters the lexicon...

In a sick kind of way, you almost have to marvel at the intestinal fortitude of the Bushies to so ferociously and completely yank the chain of every court they come in contact with. Whatever the people and their Congress want, whatever the courts demand, the answer from the Bush Brigade is always "nope". The audacity of nope.

i think it'll catch on, don't you...?

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The Patriot Act nightmare continues for an innocent man

i posted about this in early january...

read this from the miami herald, a story i was pointed to by emptywheel... not only will it perfectly illustrate the degree to which our country is now behaving like a rogue police state, it will also chill you to the bone... sure, you may say, the government MUST have SOME reason for doing this, right...? RIGHT...?

Lyglenson Lemorin, acquitted of terrorism charges last week in federal court in Miami, is still a guilty man in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Lemorin, 32, a lawful U.S. resident, remains behind bars -- far from his Miami family -- in the tiny town of Lumpkin, Ga., a deportation center 150 miles south of Atlanta.

[...]

Immigration experts said that under the USA Patriot Act, adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a lawful U.S. resident such as Lemorin may still be locked up and possibly deported on terrorism-related charges -- even if they cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in federal court.

the nightmare continues, although NOW they're not using the patriot act as a legal basis...

Legally, there is nothing to bar the government from pursuing immigration sanctions against Lemorin, experts said, though such action is rare after an acquittal. The immigration charges are a civil matter, and a judge will apply a less strict standard of evidence to the charges that were brought at the criminal trial.

[...]

David A. Martin, a University of Virginia law professor who served as general counsel at the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the late 1990s, said that "the government is perfectly within its legal rights to go ahead in two different forums even after they've lost in one." He added, "Whether it's a sound use of prosecutorial authority is a much tougher question."

however, what i said in january still applies...

the strategy is clear... build a base of precedent on the backs of those who have no way to defend themselves, and, even if the justice system demurs, fall back on unconstitutional laws [and obscure regulations] to insure that the emerging police state isn't obstructed... when there's enough precedent established, you and i are next in line...

it's all about instilling fear...

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Deporting a legal U.S. resident who has been acquitted of terrorism charges

read this from the miami herald, a story i was pointed to by emptywheel... not only will it perfectly illustrate the degree to which our country is now behaving like a rogue police state, it will also chill you to the bone... sure, you may say, the government MUST have SOME reason for doing this, right...? RIGHT...?

Lyglenson Lemorin, acquitted of terrorism charges last week in federal court in Miami, is still a guilty man in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Lemorin, 32, a lawful U.S. resident, remains behind bars -- far from his Miami family -- in the tiny town of Lumpkin, Ga., a deportation center 150 miles south of Atlanta.

On Thursday, Lemorin's wife learned from The Miami Herald that federal authorities have charged her husband with unspecified ''administrative immigration violations'' and that he has been placed in ''removal proceedings'' that could lead to his deportation to his native Haiti.

"He has kids here, and we really need him home,'' said Lemorin's wife, Charlene Mingo Lemorin. ``He can't do anything for us in Haiti. Everything was settled by the jury. He was found not guilty. It's like the nightmare is not over."

[...]

Lemorin was arrested along with six other men in June 2006 on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda -- in an FBI-directed undercover sting -- to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and federal buildings in Miami and other cities. They were dubbed the "Liberty City 7."

A federal jury found him not guilty on Dec. 13. Jurors deadlocked on the others, with a retrial set for Jan. 7.

The day after he was acquitted, immigration agents whisked Lemorin away to Miami International Airport.

Lemorin -- born in Haiti, raised in Miami and the father of two children who live in Little Haiti -- told his family and attorneys that he feared the agents were going to put him on a plane to his native Haiti.

Instead, they drove him to the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade County. Then came an overnight drive to the Stewart detention center in Lumpkin.

Leonard Fenn, who temporarily represented Lemorin in the immigration case, expressed outrage over the government's actions.

"We're presuming they're claiming there is reason to believe he was a supporter of terrorist activities or a terrorist himself," said Fenn, who got on the case through Lemorin's criminal attorney, Joel DeFabio.

"It's outrageous -- a complete misallocation of government resources," Fenn said.

Immigration experts said that under the USA Patriot Act, adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a lawful U.S. resident such as Lemorin may still be locked up and possibly deported on terrorism-related charges -- even if they cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in federal court.

go back and read that last sentence very slowly and very carefully...

"...a lawful U.S. resident such as Lemorin may still be locked up and possibly deported on terrorism-related charges -- even if they cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in federal court..."

now, making things ever so much worse, the judge has slapped a gag order on everybody involved, including lemorin's wife...

With a sweeping gag order imposed Dec. 13, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard cited the need to damp down media coverage that could complicate efforts starting Jan. 7 to find impartial jurors to rehear the case.

Her order at the close of the first trial prohibits the defendants, their lawyers, prosecutors, and others, such as agents, investigators and witnesses, from talking to reporters, raising issues for defenders of free speech and drawing a challenge from one of the lawyers covered by the order.

Lenard extended the same restrictions to Lyglenson Lemorin, who was acquitted, and his criminal defense lawyer, as well as an attorney representing the Haitian national in immigration proceedings.

The gag order is so broad that federal prosecutors preparing to retry the case contend it applies to Lemorin's wife, who was once listed as a potential defense witness.

the strategy is clear... build a base of precedent on the backs of those who have no way to defend themselves, and, even if the justice system demurs, fall back on unconstitutional laws to insure that the emerging police state isn't obstructed... when there's enough precedent established, you and i are next in line...

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