Dear Demoncrats

Furthermore:


~

You Listen, Timmeh!

My Senator


October 14, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC— U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Mark Begich (D-AK) today sent a letter to Obama Administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, urging action following recent news reports of widespread improprieties and mistakes in the foreclosure processes employed by mortgage servicers.

“There have been attempts to dismiss the reported violations as minor technical paperwork errors, and to employ the defense that these were harmless errors because the homeowners were in foreclosure and would have lost their houses anyway. These are not technicalities, they are not isolated cases – it is likely that over 200,000 foreclosures have now been suspended – and these improprieties cast doubt on the foreclosures in question,” the senators wrote.

“The systemic problems that are being uncovered in the current mortgage market are remarkably similar to the predatory practices employed during the subprime mortgage crisis,” the senators continued. “Your agencies have tools at your disposal to address the substantial challenges facing homeowners in the mortgage market, and you are able to respond more nimbly than Congress to this emerging crisis. The ample record of homeowner abuse should compel you to act expeditiously in the best interest of homeowners and investors.”

Time for jail terms.
~

The Beatings Will Continue...

I don't believe the Administration is stupid enough to believe that yelling at their voters is a winning strategy. I can believe that they see losses in 2010 as inevitable, and so are now scapegoating "the Professional Left". This has the added benefit of sucking up to the corporate media, lobbyists, and plutocrats who employ same.

It will set up a toxic post-election season in D.C. All the punditry will shriek with one voice, "The Administration has been too liberal! MUST MOVE RIGHT!"

Meanwhile, the Presidential Catfood Commission will be coming in with their recommendation to cut Social Security, to be given an up-or-down vote by a Congress full of emboldened Republicans and lame-duck Blue Dogs about to go on to their new jobs as lobbyists.
~

Understanding our corporate media

Glenn Greenwald:

The most revealing political quote of the last year came, in my view, from the second-highest ranking Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, who told a local radio station in April: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
...
This is hardly unique to the banking industry. This is how the political system works generally.

This is also how our media works.

Recall Katharine Weymouth's plan to sell access to the Washington Post's real customers...lobbyists, business leaders, and government officials.

What about the Post's readers? Sorry, suckers. You are just the hoi polloi targets of corporate friendly information product, aka journamalism.

Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote recently wrote a column in which he bemoaned the Post's 'liberal bias'. Alexander quoted Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism: "Complaints by conservatives are slower to be picked up by non-ideological media because there are not enough conservatives and too many liberals in most newsrooms."

Not mentioned is the lack of diversity in views of the very small number of very wealthy corporations and individuals who sign the paychecks of those writers.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

P.S. And now for something completely different: President Obama should donate his Nobel prize money to ACORN.
~