Long But Good Read

Yves Smith on the proposed mortgage modification program floated by the Obama administration. It’s very long, but very thoughtful and worth a read. It’s also a good starting point for people who haven’t been following this closely, as Smith gives a lot of background analysis before getting to the meat of this new proposal.

Join SFT’s Rangzen Circle Drive

Sign up today and help us reach our goal of 100 new members by Monday, March 21. Here are the Top Ten Reasons to Support SFT:

Reason 10: SFT is youth
Our base of young Tibetans and supporters know change is possible. Young people have the passion, commitment, and inexhaustible energy to work for what they believe in.

Reason 9: SFT is nonviolent
We apply nonviolence theory and practice to our activism for Tibet because we believe it’s the most effective way to achieve our goal. There is no better way to fight for peace than to promote nonviolence as a weapon.

Reason 8: SFT is grassroots
We’re a network of students, Tibetans, activists, professionals, artists, volunteers, and many others working at the grassroots level to mobilize people power in a way that truly changes the course of history.

Reason 7: SFT is diverse
SFT’s membership is composed of Tibetans, Americans, Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Canadians, Australians, Japanese, Taiwanese, and dozens of other nationalities with diverse cultural backgrounds and political viewpoints — because the goal of Tibetan freedom unites everyone.

Reason 6: SFT is global
We are everywhere. With members in more than 50 countries, chapters and networks in 35 countries, and offices in 4 countries, our constituency spans the globe.

Reason 5: SFT is cutting-edge
SFT’s membership and leadership is made up of the most talented innovators, strategists, and visionary techies. We use the latest information technology and social media tools to successfully execute campaigns and actions that inspire Tibetans and directly challenge China’s control over Tibet.

Reason 4: SFT is about training
We invest in the next generation of Tibetan leaders and Tibet activists through our unique leadership training programs. Our Free Tibet! Action Camps and regional trainings help young leaders hone their skills to effectively lead strategic campaigns and non-violent actions for Tibet.

Reason 3: SFT is fun
We believe in hard work and in having fun. We emphasize the importance of humor and laughter in our work, so that freedom is not merely the destination but also the journey.

Reason 2: SFT is strategic
We think and plan before we act. Our leadership has the vision, experience, and strategy to develop and execute effective campaigns and actions.

Reason 1: SFT is for an independent Tibet
Ultimately, we believe that the social, economic, environmental, and cultural interests of the Tibetan people can only be truly safeguarded if Tibet is an independent nation. We know this goal is possible and will continue to work hard to achieve it.

Give today.

Nukes and Banks

John Moyers at AMERICAblog makes a great point, namely nuclear power is an industry defined by privatized profits and socialized risks. This is exactly like the financial sector around the world, where banksters made hundreds of billions of dollars in profits and bonuses doing things that blew up the global economy and begat a massive bailout by the American public (and other countries’ citizenries). Just saying.

Conventional Wisdom keeps solidifying against Palin

Jonathan Martin and John Harris write a Conventional Wisdom-defining piece at Politico about Sarah Palin’s penchant for playing the victim card and how it is a sign that she will not be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012.

Among those taking aim at Palin in recent interviews with POLITICO are George F. Will, the elder statesman of conservative columnists; Peter Wehner, a top strategist in George W. Bush’s White House, and Heather Mac Donald, a leading voice with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute.

…
But Palin’s skeptics said a successful presidential candidacy would need to be buoyed by genuine policy vision, not merely grievance. For now, however, Palin’s appeal is now largely rooted in the sympathy she’s gleaned from her loudly voiced resentments toward the left, the news media and the GOP establishment.

“The appeal of conservatism is supposed to be people taking responsibility for their own actions,” said Labash. “But if you close your eyes and listen to Palin and her most irate supporters constantly squawk or bellyache or Tweet about how unfair a ride she gets from evil moustache-twirling elites and RINO saboteurs, she sounds like a professional victimologist, the flip side of any lefty grievance group leader. She’s becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition. The only difference being, she wears naughty-librarian glasses instead of a James Brown ‘do.”

Let’s leave aside the amount of sexism and racism laced through Labash’s quote and notice that this is a damning critique of Palin that is echoed in more artful ways by both the left and right. Labash later describes Palin’s victimization routine in a more artful way: “cocked-fist self-pity.” This better reflects the Palin modus operandi. Add in the fact that she has not used one moment of her time in public life since the 2008 election to expand herself intellectually or adopt a policy to gain expertise on and you arrive at the analysis of the ultimate Beltway Conventional Wisdom maker, Mike Allen:

Playbook facts of life: Sarah Palin has shown no capacity to evolve, grow substantively, or expand her base of support. If she had spent her time studying education reform, like Jeb Bush – or developing a signature issue of any sort – a Palin candidacy would look much more promising. She resigned as governor in July, 2009 — a year and a half that has been squandered, used only to make money rather than to reintroduce herself to the American middle.

I’ve been saying for years that it’s pretty near impossible to identify Conventional Wisdom is, in fact, correct. But this may be a time when the Beltway prognosticators and reality in the rest of the country line up closely.

One thing that I wonder is if any of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates will start making similar attacks on Palin as we’re seeing from Beltway pundits and conservative opinion writers. Whoever does so first will likely enjoy a pretty heavy dose of Palin’s “cocked-first self-pity,” which may be the whole point for Palin. By drumming up her victimization schtick for two and a half years, any opponent will clearly know that a direct attack on her will not be taken lightly. Palin may not be performing well in primary polls, but does Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty really want to go head-to-head with Palin while the whole press is watching? I doubt it. The flip side of this, which Allen gets at, is that being a one-trick pony clearly hasn’t won Palin strong support with base voters yet. For her to become viable, she has to find a way to reach people that doesn’t include victimization. She has to offer up ideas, at least in so far as any of her opponents will offer up ideas (Personally I don’t think “cut taxes, bash workers” counts as an actual idea, but that’s just me).

Originally posted at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right’s Field

What Class Warfare Looks Like


Mike Konczal has a rough transcript, starting about 45 seconds in:

Representative Barca:  Excuse me, Mr. Chairman I have a question about the open meeting rule being violated…Most importantly, before we even get started, obviously I’m going to want to have a summary of this bill from our director Lane, so I understand what’s in here.

Chairman:  It’s the same bill you debated for 60 hours.

Barca:  So there’s nothing different?

Chairman:  No.  We just removed items from it.

Barca:  Removed what?

Chairman:  Removed items.  There’s nothing new.

Barca:  So can we get a description of what was removed?

Chairman:  Nothing new.

Barca:  Well, you said things were removed Mr. Chairman.  I want to know what’s removed.  It seems to me that the body should have and our community should know what we are voting on.  So what was removed?  I need to know that.  So I do want a description from Director Lane….But before we even get into that I want this is a violation of the open meeting law.  It is required, I have here a memo from the current Attorney General, not a past one the current one.  August 2010.  No Wisconsin Court decision will allow meetings unless you have good cause to provide less than 24 hours notice of a meeting.   The provision, like all other provisions of the open meetings law must be construed in favor of providing the public with the fullest and most complete information about government affairs…

Chairman:  Representative Barca.

Barca:  that’s compatible with government business…

Chairman:  Representative Barca.  Clerk, call roll.

Barca:  NO EXCUSE ME  It says if there’s any doubt as to whether or not good cause exists the governmental body should provide 24 hours notice. This is clearly a violation of the open meetings law.  You have been shutting people down…

Members:  Aye.

Last night was as clear an example as any I’ve ever seen of how Republicans are waging class war on the American middle class. As Rep. Barca points out, what the happened in Wisconsin during last night’s conference committee meeting clearly violated the state’s open meetings law, which require 24 hour notice prior to a governmental meeting. David Dayen has been astutely documenting the ways in which how the WI Senate Republicans split off the repeal of collective bargaining to make it “non-fiscal” (despite arguing for a month that it was a fiscal provision) failed to actually remove fiscal items from the language they voted on:

But that does not address the potential fiscal impact in what remained. On page 12 of the LFB memo you see a item that would “reduce funding… in the Joint Committee on Finance’s general program revenue supplemental appropriation.” On page 17, you see the changes to public employee health and pension benefits. On page 33, there’s an inclusion of a particular piece of wetlands in a tax incremental financing district, which appears to be tax relief. It would be hard to imagine that these pieces don’t have a fiscal impact. In fact, the Wisconsin State Journal, one of the more staid publications in the state, basically came this close to accusing the Republicans of outright lying

One of the Wisconsin 14 Democratic State Senators who’ve bravely stayed away for the last number of weeks and created the delay that allowed protests to gather steam did in fact go so far as to call Governor Walker a liar last night on MSNBC (sorry I don’t have the quote). State Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller had this to say after the Republicans dishonest and dishonorable actions yesterday:

“In thirty minutes, 18 State Senators undid fifty years of civil rights in Wisconsin.

“Their disrespect for the people of Wisconsin and their rights is an outrage that will never be forgotten.

“Tonight, 18 Senate Republicans conspired to take government away from the people.

“Tomorrow we will join the people of Wisconsin in taking back their government.”

The solidarity between Wisconsin Democrats, unionized workers of both the public and private sector, students and the general public has been truly inspiring. It will continue in the face of this latest assault and I can’t imagine anything but a further slide in approval for Gov. Scott Walker and the Republicans in Madison who rammed this bill through over unprecedented public opposition.

Tibet Action Institute Launches


The Tibet Action Institute has officially launched as a special project of Students for a Free Tibet, on whose Board of Directors I serve. From the email announcing Tibet Action:

From Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen to Bahrain, the past six weeks have shown the tremendous power of strategic nonviolent resistance – particularly when combined with new online technologies – to change authoritarian governments and bring an end to repression. This is a remarkable moment to be able to announce the launch of the Tibet Action Institute (https://tibetaction.net) – a special project of Students for a Free Tibet that provides open-source technology, training and strategy to Tibetans to help advance our nonviolent struggle for freedom.

Since stepping down as Students for a Free Tibet’s Executive Director in 2009, I have been spearheading the formation of the Tibet Action Institute, along with Nathan Freitas, SFT’s chief technologist during the 2008 Olympics campaign and a remarkable technology innovator, and more recently, Freya Putt, former campaigns director of SFT and former Olympics campaign coordinator for the International Tibet Support Network.

The 2008 Tibetan Uprising showed us all the incredible power Tibetans can have when we utilize the Internet, mobile and other new technologies in our freedom struggle. At the same time, we have seen the painful consequences these same tools can have for the Tibetans inside Tibet who dare to use them.

The Tibet Action Institute trains Tibetans everywhere in how to use information and communication technologies to be more safe, secure, and effective. We also offer training in the art and methods of nonviolent resistance in order to employ effective strategies, campaigns, and innovative technologies to overcome occupation and oppression.

The Tibet Action website with multi-lingual training videos, tech security tips, and the best of strategic nonviolence literature – including the guides that played an instrumental role in Egypt and Tunisia – is live now:

https://tibetaction.net

You can also learn about efforts like the Guardian Project, which provides mobile phone technology to help activists communicate more safely and securely, and the Tibet Crisis Map, a crowd-sourced map of the true geography of Tibet. More content will be coming soon.

Our small team, along with SFT’s board and staff, is continually inspired and motivated by the courageous acts of resistance occurring daily inside Tibet, and – against a backdrop of global revolution and successful grassroots people’s movements – we are thinking big for Tibet.

We know it’s not a matter of if, but rather a question of when and how change will come to Tibet. We want to make sure our movement is ready.

The Tibet Action Institute envisions a world where Tibetans inside Tibet are engaging in powerful noncooperation and civil resistance campaigns and employing simple and creative technologies in bringing about an end to China’s occupation. We look forward to working with you, and supporters everywhere, to make that vision a reality.

In solidarity,

Lhadon Tethong
Director, Tibet Action Institute
https://tibetaction.net

Iowa AG Miller’s Term Sheet with Banks

The 27-page term sheet between the group of 50 state Attorneys General, led by Iowa AG Tom Miller, and the banks is online and it isn’t pretty. There are a few categories I see this term sheet doing:

1. Getting things to work the way they are already intended to work under current law. This is the bulk of the term sheet;

2. Getting the servicers actions back in line with MBS investor interests and homeowner interests;

3. Improving systems for homeowners in sensible ways advocated by consumer groups.

But mostly #1. Fraud Digest writes, “For the most part, the settlement would require servicers to do exactly what they are already required to do.”

At FedUpUSA, Stephanie has a very detailed analysis:

Let’s be blunt: There’s no “there” there.

The entire document is a rehash of what servicers had a legal mandate to do right up front. Accurately apply payments. Respond to inquiries. Operate in good faith. Use a NPV test for HAMP (was in the HAMP program originally.) Document the assignment chain before foreclosing.

There’s exactly one substantive change, in that HAMP did not prohibit “dual-track” (that is, foreclosure while attempting modification.)

Yves Smith rips apart the landscape that bred this term sheet:

Team Obama has put on a full court press since March 2009 to present the banks as fundamentally sound, and to the extent they needed more dough, the stress tests and resulting capital raising took care of any remaining problems. Timothy Geithner was even doing victory laps last month in Europe. To reverse course now and expose the fact that writedowns on second mortgages held by the four biggest banks and plus the true cost of legal liabilities from the mortgage crisis (putbacks, servicer fraud, chain of title issues) would blow a big hole in the banks’ balance sheets and fatally undermine whatever credibility the officialdom still has.

But the fallacy of their thinking is that addressing and cleaning up this rot would lead to a financial crisis, therefore anything other than cosmetics and making life inconvenient for the banks around the margin is to be avoided at all costs. But these losses exist already. The fallacy lies in the authorities’ delusion that they are avoiding creating losses, when we are in fact talking about who should bear costs that already exist.

Smith goes on:

Even if these measures were tough-minded and vigorously enforced (two irrelevant “ifs”), they are still deficient. We don’t even know the extent of servicer abuses, since we are conveniently moving very quickly to avoid any serious probe, but there is considerable evidence that suggests that a lot of foreclosures were servicer driven. So merely fixing practices going forward, is necessary but far from sufficient. What are the remedies for people who suffered in the past? Of course, it’s horrifically difficult for individuals to prove their case, which is why having state AGs act on their behalf is the best remedy we have. And if that is going to be waived, the trade needs to be that the pubic gets something punitive, not just prescriptive.

…

In other words, this is simply another example of how the too big to fail banks are chipping away at the rule of law. The banks have over time have fought successfully to reduce the influence of state laws and regulations on their business while increasingly bending the Federal regulatory apparatus to their will. But the state AGs are still enough of a force to be reckoned with that the Federal bank regulators are now applying considerable to pressure them into abandoning initiatives that could help homeowners in their states. Hopefully at least a few of these AGs will wake up and have the self-preservation instincts to realize that this settlement is not in their or their constituents’ best interests.

David Dayen has a take that ends up being very close to where I am (it stems from his writing on an Iraq veteran whose home was illegally foreclosed and whose possessions were stolen by the servicer):

The main point is this: you can make all the guidelines you want, and basically, the 27-page term sheet has most of them. You can demand a single point of contact for borrowers, an end to the dual track process of the servicer pursuing modifications and foreclosures simultaneously, specific mandates for modifications and all the rest. You can even set stricter guidelines for dealing with military families. All of those are in the term sheet, and many of those kinds of guidelines are in the VA Home Loan that Sgt. Kevin Matthews received. It didn’t matter. Neither did all the promises servicers have made to reform their systems going back to 2003. Servicers pretty much don’t follow the law. That’s why they were under investigation. A document that tells them to comply with the law, in language the banks are already using, doesn’t seem like it’ll make much of a difference.

Two more things. Without rigorous enforcement, the guidelines are approximately meaningless. State AGs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would serve as the enforcement monitors under the terms of the agreement. And CFPB adds a new wrinkle to this. However, if servicers have been abusing their customers for this long, and the term sheet mostly reinforces the same laws that they broke all this time (with a couple additional strictures), who’s to say that they won’t simply treat the Kevin Matthewses of the world the same way again?

The final issue is this. The term sheet sets the basic standards for conduct in the servicing industry that servicers should have followed all along. But this is supposed to be a sanction, for violations of law. So now the penalty for failing to follow the law is having to sign an agreement saying you’ll really follow the law this time? We don’t know what monetary penalties or quotas for principal mods will come along with this yet. But we do know this. Kevin Matthews had all his possessions stolen from him, and nobody under this agreement will go to jail for that theft.

The term sheet is not a full deal. We don’t know if there will be any financial penalty to along with it. We don’t know if banks will have a specific money budgeted for principal reduction. But the implication prior to last night was that whatever terms were agreed to would come in exchange for the 50 state AGs not pursuing criminal investigations. And I don’t see any of this, even good parts that will hopefully make life a lot easier for currently distressed home owners, as an appropriate trade for not looking backwards at illegal actions by servicers.

What’s most frustrating is that it seems that the things that need to happen are not happening not because of a lack of need, but because these AGs and federal regulators don’t have believe they have the political will to fight the banks or that the banks need to be protected from suffering the consequences of their action. Given that and everything else we’ve seen from regulators and AGs, I find it hard to believe that the provisions in this term sheet will be adequately enforced, that whatever commitment to principal modification that is made alongside this will be large enough to be meaningful, and that servicers will be sufficiently dissuaded from continuing illegal behaviors that squeeze people out of their homes. If there was a realistic chance of enforcement and if there ends up being a requirement for a large volume and dollar amount of principle modification and if the settlement effectively stopped servicers from behaving the way they have structured themselves to behave, this could be a good thing, as long as it also included a pathway for some of these fraudsters to go to jail.

I look forward to seeing the rest of this deal, as well as seeing if the rest of the state Attorneys General are actually on board with it. Until then, I will file this in the ever-growing section of things that might have been tolerable had they also looked backwards and held people accountable.