NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is filing a lawsuit against the top predatory banks for deceptive and fraudulent practices. From the press release:

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against several of the nation’s largest banks charging that the creation and use of a private national mortgage electronic registry system known as MERS has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts, harming homeowners and undermining the integrity of the judicial foreclosure process. The lawsuit asserts that employees and agents of Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, acting as "MERS certifying officers," have repeatedly submitted court documents containing false and misleading information that made it appear that the foreclosing party had the authority to bring a case when in fact it may not have. The lawsuit names JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Bank of America, N.A., Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., as well as Virginia-based MERSCORP, Inc. and its subsidiary, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.

The lawsuit further asserts that the MERS System has effectively eliminated homeowners' and the public's ability to track property transfers through the traditional public records system. Instead, this information is now stored only in a private database – which is plagued with inaccuracies and errors – over which MERS and its financial institution members exercise sole control. Additional defendants include BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP, Chase Home Finance LLC, EMC Mortgage Corporation, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc.

“The banks created the MERS system as an end-run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitization and sale of mortgages. Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions, seeking to take homes away from people with little regard for basic legal requirements or the rule of law,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Our action demonstrates that there is one set of rules for all – no matter how big or powerful the institution may be – and that those rules will be enforced vigorously. Only through real accountability for the illegal and deceptive conduct in the foreclosure crisis will there be justice for New York’s homeowners.” ...

The lawsuit specifically charges that the defendants have engaged in the following fraudulent and deceptive practices:

MERS has filed over 13,000 foreclosure actions against New York homeowners listing itself as the plaintiff, but in many instances, MERS lacked the legal authority to foreclose and did not own or hold the promissory note, despite saying otherwise in court submissions.

MERS certifying officers, including employees and agents of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, have repeatedly executed and submitted in court legal documents purporting to assign the mortgage and/or note to the foreclosing party. These documents contain numerous defects, including affirmative misrepresentations of fact, which render them false, deceptive, and/or invalid. These assignments were often automatically generated and "robosigned" by individuals who did not review the underlying property ownership records, confirm the documents’ accuracy, or even read the documents. These false and defective assignments often masked gaps in the chain of title and the foreclosing party's inability to establish its authority to foreclose, and as a result have misled homeowners and the courts.

MERS' indiscriminate use of non-employee "certifying officers" to execute vital legal documents has confused, misled, and deceived homeowners and the courts and made it difficult to ascertain whether a party actually has the right to foreclose. MERS certifying officers have regularly executed and submitted in court mortgage assignments and other legal documents on behalf of MERS without disclosing that they are not MERS employees, but instead are employed by other entities, such as the mortgage servicer filing the case or its counsel. The signature line just indicates that the individual is an "Assistant Secretary," "Vice President," or other officer of MERS. Indeed, these documents often purport to assign the mortgage to the certifying officer's own employer. Moreover, as a result of the defendants' failure to track the designation of certifying officers and the scope of their authority to act, individuals have executed legal documents on behalf of MERS, such as mortgage assignments and loan modifications, when they were either not designated as a MERS certifying officer at the time or were not authorized to execute documents on behalf of MERS with respect to the subject loan.

MERS and its members have deceived and misled borrowers about the importance and ramifications of MERS' role with respect to their loan by providing inadequate disclosures.

The MERS System is riddled with inaccuracies which make it difficult to verify the chain of title for a loan or the current note-holder, and creates confusion among stakeholders who rely on the information. In addition, as a result of these inaccuracies, MERS has filed mortgage satisfactions against the wrong property.

Let me just say hooray for Scheiderman. This has been a LOOONG time coming. It is WAY past time to hold these banks accountable for their criminal activities.

Let me just say hooray for Scheiderman. This is way overdue. These banks have been screwing middle and working class Americans for years now and I am glad somenoe is doing something about it.

Mere days after the Susan Komen Foundation (the originators of the Walk for the Cure and the pink ribbons) shot itself in the foot by publicly taking on a right wing agenda against Planned Parenthood's providing breast cancer testing to underserved women and against valuable stem cell research, thus putting Republican extremism in front of actually curing cancer, the following film is being released:

This film exposes the relatively corrupt and ineffective ways the Komen Foundation goes about raising money. This film was coming out anyway...the Komen Foundation just happened to boost the attention it's getting by becoming so right wing even Michael Bloomberg took them to task and raised money for Planned Parenthood in response. The PR nightmare for Komen is all thanks to their relatively new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel, a right wing Republican and former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia.

Now I once participated in one of their walks. I also have done actual cancer research and was for awhile paid off an Army breast cancer research grant. I think the Komen Foundation has funded some good research, but it seems greed and a corporate mentality may have gotten in the way of their original goals. And now that they have sided with right wing Republicans (some of the most anti-science, anti-research people in America), it seems they have abandoned all but the pretense of trying to help find a cure for breast cancer. Pity.

For those who want to help find a cure, I recommend donating to Planned Parenthood (who provide cancer screening to thousands of women with no other healthcare options, thus saving lives) or to the American Cancer Society (which provides a great deal of funding for basic research into cancer and cures).

A couple of years ago, while my brother and I were spending time with our sick mother, my kids were bored, though understood the importance of what we were doing. My son and step-daughter both saw it as the most boring trip to California we ever made. I agree, but we had to fight to break our mother out of a corrupt healthcare scam cycle where she was shuttled from one facility to another based ONLY on how much they could get from her insurance and Medicare and not on what her care required. But that is another story. Bottom line from that is if you have an elderly family member, get help finding the right care from them and DON'T TRUST the care facilities AT ALL. And if you need help out in California, I have the name of the person you need because he helped us starting on that trip.

But I diverge. My kids were bored. So my son, Jacob, started singing what was then his favorite song: Tom Lehrer's Elements Song (later on his favorite music was Woodie Guthrie songs...now it's all Pokemon). And my step-daughter filmed it with her phone (HA...that beats the Star Trek communicators...they didn't have a camera in those) and posted it on YouTube:

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I hadn't heard about this, though in the midst of it my wife and I wondered whether we'd have to try and find a boat to get us back to Brooklyn where out daughter was. In the end the trains started up again, but in those early hours this was a very important action taken by regular folks while Dick Cheney hid in an undisclosed location and George Bush dithered.

REDISTRICTING HEARINGS:

Wed. Feb. 1
10:30 AM
St. Francis College
Founders Hall Auditorium
180 Remsen St.
Brooklyn

Every 10 years there is a census and after every census the entire country goes through the push and shove of redistricting. Each party tries to get an advantage for the next 10 years. That is normal...but the degree to which they go can vary from reasonable to so convoluted that it once created a whole new term: Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is creating a district that goes so far out of its way that it looks ridiculous to any rational person.

These days reform minded folks, mainly Democrats, are pushing for independent redistricting, while Republicans are doing their utmost to consolidate power by gerrymandering every chance they can. I touched on this back in 2007 when Assemblyman Michael Gianaris came to a local political club meeting to discuss non-partisan redistricting. Gianaris pointed out overzealous gerrymandering by Republican Tom DeLay in Texas got him admonished by the House Ethics Committee. Assemblyman Gianaris put it well: let's focus on doing it fairly and getting it right, leading to more competitive races. That's why I am a Democrat, we think like that more often than Republicans seem to. Too bad Democrats don't ACT on it more.

Well that was back in 2007 and now that the census has happened and we are faced with an actual redistricting battle, it is time to doing it fairly and getting it right. But the Republicans in the State Senate have proposed an old school gerrymandering as an attempt to give themselves more power. My State Senator, Velmanete Montgomery, discussed this at a recent CBID meeting and brought in the proposed maps for the Brooklyn senate districts.

The proposed maps include some really strangely shaped districts. The one I will be in (SD20) would be composed of one pretty large area in Prospect Heights and further East. Then it has a small blob South of Greenwood Cemetery. Connecting them is a very strange arm that is about a block wide for most of its length. I happen to be in that strange arm, right about the elbow. When you see a district with a random long arm one block wide connecting two blobs, you KNOW the district is a textbook example of gerrymandering. SD22 is also very strange, consisting of 3 blobs connected by two narrow arms. The details don't matter. The key thing is the Republicans are behaving in a typical greedy manner while most Democrats I know are pushing for independent, non-partisan redistricting.

For all those Russians considering voting for Teabagger Republican Storobin against Lew Fidler, keep in mind that the Republican redistricting plan completely screws over the Russian voters. Why would Russians vote for a Republican now that it is clear Republicans don't give a rat's ass for them? In fact the Republicans seemed to have deliberately gerrymandered to limit the Russian vote. Strange.

But it isn't just Russian voters who are getting screwed by the Republican scheme, though they are one of the worst examples. All of NYC is getting screwed because Republicans are proposing districts that squeeze more people per district into NYC districts than in upstate districts, which is blatantly unfair because each and every district is supposed to represent roughly the same number of people. That's why we do it after each census! To divide the districts unfairly completely negates the purpose of linking the redistricting to the census.

This population deviation even makes the Republican Gerrymandering Scheme legally dubious. For state legislative districts, it is considered constitutionally dubious if the largest and smallest districts are more than ten percent apart. The Republican scheme pretty much reaches that limit and so puts NY State on shaky constitutional grounds. Many reform groups advocate ideally for no more than 6 percent apart, a standard some states (e.g. Montana) and Colorado even sets the standard more stringently (5 points). There are legal justifications for greater variance, most specifically in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act. But maintaining partisan control over a state legislature is NOT a legally justifiable reason to deviate from equal and fair districts.  read more »