Cottonmouth Press

One of the newest and most repugnant features of the mortgage foreclosure crisis is the rise of “foreclosure rescue” scams.  Imagine if you will a vulture picking at the bones of an almost-but-not-quite-dead rabbit.  Also imagine that the vulture tells everyone (including himself) that he’s “helping” the rabbit, and you get the picture.

As a fair housing attorney, I deal mostly with discrimination cases but have been peripherally involved in predatory lending issues and only somewhat aware of foreclosure rescue programs.  Then I answered the phone yesterday morning.

The caller was a guy whose employee (we’ll call her Jane) had fallen behind on payments on a home equity loan she took out a couple of years ago.  The payments had been manageable until she got a cancer diagnosis.  Foreclosure proceedings had begun, which in Tennessee means that the foreclosure had been advertised and a sale was to be scheduled.  The employer wanted to pay the lender almost $3,000 to bring the loan current and cancel the foreclosure.

That was all well and good, except that Jane had already signed a contract to sell her house to a real estate agent.  The agent was then going to find an investor with the understanding that the investor would allow Jane and her family to stay in the house as tenants, paying a rental rate roughly twice what her payment on the loan had been.

As for the sale itself, Jane had bought the house for about $90,000 cash a few years ago, but the agent was only going to give her about $33,000.  Of that, she would get $4,000 in cash (that was to help her pay the rent, the agent explained to me).  The rest would go to pay off her home equity loan.

 But was Jane out in the cold?  No!  Not only would she get to live in the house as a tenant, she’d have two years to re-purchase the house.  At what price, you ask?  Well, at the rock-bottom price of $128,000!  What a deal!  The agent helpfully explained that the house had a current tax assessment of $106,000, so $128,000 in two years was perfectly fair.  He was unable to explain how giving her $33K now and charging her $128K later could both be defensible.  One or the other, maybe, but not both.

Obviously we had to get her out of this deal.  She and her husband had signed a document granting power of attorney to an employee of the title company that was working the deal, so they could have closed the loan without her.  Obviously, the first thing I and my fellow attorney did was revoke the power of attorney so that the closing couldn’t go forward.  (It was a close call - the closing could have happened on the 13th but for a cloud on the title.)

At this point, Jane can choose not to go to the closing, which has been rescheduled to the end of the month.  The agent can then sue her for damages or to force her to go through with the sale.  He won’t dare, though, because then the utter unconsionability of the contract would come to light, along with the fact that about 75% of the contract is illegible.  Below is a thumbnail to a small excerpt of the contract.  Seriously, if you can figure out what it says, let me know, okay?

When I spoke with the agent earlier today, my question to him was this: “If your mother or your sister were offered this deal, would you recommend that she take it?”  He didn’t answer other than to mouth some words about “it depends on the situation.”

I also have a question for the title company’s attorney, who told me yesterday that he represents both parties in the transaction: How can one attorney represent two parties knowing that one is so flamboyantly screwing the other?  How is that even remotely consistent with the ethics rules he and I both are supposed to follow?

The House has passed a far less than satisfactory bill on predatory lending.  But eventually we are going to have to deal with these rescue scams.  It’s been my experience that no matter how much education you do on issues like this, it is no match for those clever souls who feed off the misery of others.

For further reading:  NCLC’s Dreams Foreclosed: The Rampant Theft of Americans’ Homes Through Equity-Stripping Foreclosure ‘Rescue’ Scams,” June 2005

Things like this will, I suppose, keep us busy until February, when my agency will probably close for the most part unless our appeal of our HUD grant score goes through.  Non-profit work rocks!

Posted by Tracey under National & Regional | No Comments »

In Alabama, Daniel Lee Siebert, 53, is facing the death penalty for strangling two women and two young boys in 1986. He was scheduled to be put to death yesterday, Oct. 25. But a court has intervened, and he’s alive on death row where he’s been for more than 20 years.
Siebert is dying of pancreatic cancer. His life expectancy is a month, give or take.
Alabama’s Gov. Bob Riley had refused to stay the execution, saying that the fact of Siebert’s terminal cancer is irrelevant. “To not go ahead with the execution (by lethal injection) would mean we had commuted his sentence to life in prison,” Gov. Riley said.It took me a while for that logic to sink in. It had to permeate several layers of brain cells, the outer layer of which is sternly guarded by my bullshit alarm. Then Riley’s sentence was parsed by my left brain, then handed off to my cerebellum which, in its animal memory, stores the same type of reasoning in a primitive cell mass called the POLITICO-FECALIS-MEDIATORUS.

“Ohhhh! I understand,” my animal brain relayed back. “What he means is, ‘We ain’t gonna let no stinkin’ cancer trump our right to snuff him.’”

Daniel Siebert committed a heinous crime 21 years ago when he killed two children and their mom and neighbor. He is no one we need feel sorry for. (His death row drawings are highly pornographic, by the way,  and are for sale.)
The fact that he is still alive is due to a Kentucky case about the nature of lethal injection, on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court. And until THAT case is decided, Siebert’s execution has been stayed by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Alabama’s attorney general, Troy King,  and the Goober are pissed off at that. They want to shoot the death cocktail into Siebert’s cancer-ridden body pronto. They say that, by the time the Kentucky case is decided, Siebert will be dead.

Let me reiterate: Siebert will be dead before they have a chance to make him dead.

This is not a blog about the correctness of the death penalty, one way or another. It is about the pigheadedness of politicians who —- what? Want to give the victims’ families closure?
Pancreatic cancer will do that.
Want to teach Siebert a lesson? I think that dying of cancer in prison is doing that.  After all, how much painkiller do you think a convicted murderer with a terminal illness gets? Less than you and I, be sure of that.

No, I think this case just demonstrates how the death penalty plays out politically, at least in Dixie. It is about seeming to be tough and full of righteous indignation, despite the facts of a situation. It is about seeming punitive, at least publicly, because that is what the politicos think the public expects from them.
But I believe if you polled 100 ordinary Alabamians right now, better than 90 of them would say, “Aw, hell, let the man die his natural death. It ain’t like he’s gonna live to see the Super Bowl.”

That’s Alabama logic. And I can’t argue with it. Let it lay.

Posted by Gita under Alabama & Regional | 3 Comments »

In a nation that is unparalleled for PR and marketing, it is small wonder that someone came up with a euphemism for the unthinkable treatment of another human.
It’s called “Rendition,” a word that used to mean a way of performing music.
“He gave his rendition of  a Bach cantata.”
“She gave her rendition of a Verdi aria.”

A movie opening this week in most cities tells the real story of how the U.S. treats those it wants to make disappear. We do not call it kidnapping with torture and endless imprisonment. That would be too upsetting to the gentle voters who still think that the war in Iraq is about freedom. We call it “Rendition,” you see. But inhumanity by any other name stinks as bad.

I find it interesting that one of the tortures seen in the movie, a technique called “waterboarding,” was a topic in  this week’s real-life hearings to confirm Bush’s latest nominee for U.S. Attorney General.
Michael Mukasey, a longtime federal judge known to both parties in Washington, was questioned about torture as follows:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Mukasey whether an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, known as waterboarding, is constitutional. We all hoped he would say “Hell, No.”
Instead, the nominee did not take the bait. He sidestepped the issue of whether waterboarding actually is torture.
“IF it amounts to torture,” Mukasey said carefully, “then it is not constitutional.”

Tell that to a man who is repeatedly submerged in water until unconscious but brought back up just short of drowning.
We do that, you know. Yes, we, this country, this government, WE do that among other things to people and some other things even worse.
I refuse to call the imprisonment and torture of “suspicious persons” for years, without showing them the light of day by a tricked out new name. We have to call it what it is. UNACCEPTABLE.
Calling it “Rendition” is a cover story.
Don’t let anyone fool you.

A Canadian citizen detained by U.S. authorities in 2002 on suspicion of having links to al-Qaida, and sent to Syria where he was tortured, has testified for the first time before a congressional committee. Maher Arar addressed a panel examining extraordinary rendition, in which U.S. authorities have sent terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation.

Posted by Gita under Uncategorized | No Comments »

You know what? I am glad that the SCHIP program was vetoed.

Bush gave the voters a chance to see what our Congresspeople are really made of when he vetoed that puppy. I am talking about who is going to vote to override the president and provide more health care to children. Or who is going to risk his political career, sticking by the Prez.

Here in Alabama, Land of the Dumb, little Mike Rogers is willing to risk his 3rd Congressional District seat. He is playing right into the Democrats’ hands because the one thing we Alabamians love even more than football is our children.

And, considering that a lot of families here need help with health insurance for their kids, SCHIP is popular and Bush’s veto is not popular. Mike Rogers, who hails from Calhoun County not far from me, was elected by a fairly conservative, fairly blue collar district. He is a Republican-without-portfolio (no real ideas or plans of his own),  and the fact that he got elected speaks more to the fact that the Democrats didn’t fund a candidate to adequately run against him. (Alabama was written off as a lost cause by the DNCC in the past three elections, don’tcha know?) We had a terrific candidate in the person of Joe Turnham, but the DNCC in its wisdom sent big hunks of money to OTHER states with closely contested Congressional seats.

Mikey Rogers did not win based on his ability to go it alone as a popular lawmaker. He will absolutely drive a nail into his coffin when he doesn’t override the health plan veto.

All we need in this state is for ONE GOOD FAIRLY DYNAMIC Democrat to get some money and run against him. It would be so easy to take that seat away from the GOP.

Go on, Mike Rogers and all the rest of the Alabama gang. GO on and vote against children’s health care.  Let that veto stand.
Make my g-damn day.

Posted by Gita under Alabama & National | No Comments »

It has been a nine-year legal battle, but the forces of “I’m gonna tell you what to do with your genitals” have won. Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. So now, adults in this state must shop for personal pleasure items across state lines. It isn’t the worst thing that could happen to people. Just the most needless and stupid. I mean, with all the serious crime in this state, why does the attorney general have to enforce a vibrator law?

 Sherri Williams, owner of Pleasures stores in Huntsville and Decatur, Ala.,
had sued the state after it banned the sale of sex toys in 1998 as an anti-obscenity measure. She now says she plans to sue again on First Amendment free speech grounds.

In an Associated Press report, she told a reporter, “My motto has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.”
Hmm. Somehow that motto doesn’t quite appeal to me. I’d rethink that position.

Alabama’s  law bans the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”  The law does not ban the possession of sex toys, an important distinction, and Alabamians may purchase sex toys out of state for use in Alabama. Also, they may buy sexual devices in Alabama that have a “bona fide medical” purpose — another important distinction.

So, to review the options, as I see them, one could cross state lines with a plain brown wrapper or two in the trunk. Or one could conceivably put together a line of  “medically assistive devices” that would pass the test of “bona fide-ness.”  Until then, Alabama’s attorney general, the Right Honorable Troy King, is giving store owners fair warning to remove from inventory any playful (not medical) vibrating, penetrating or exciting devices that could be used to bring a person to the peak of pleasure.

The penalty for selling a mere plaything and not a bona fide medical device is steep! Up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine for a first offense. A second offense carries a prison sentence of one to 10 years.

Sherri Williams predicts future court battles over which sexual devices are
legal to sell as medical devices. Whoa, nelly. Can you see your average Baptist granny with a vibrating heating pad in court to insist she used it just for her “arthur-itis?” 

Go ahead. Make fun of Alabama.  Laugh if you will. It’s not like it will be the first time. Or the last.

Posted by Gita under Alabama | No Comments »

It is early Wednesday morning, and I have just learned that Warren Jeffs, the 51-year-old prophet in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, has been found guilty of assisting in a rape. I know that, all day long today, the various talk radio stations will be abuzz with this topic. People will debate the rightness and wrongness of  the religious practice of polygamy: specifically, whether it is right to assign young women to be the wives of older men, or men they do not love.

It is a conundrum. The question is lodged firmly in that crack of the First Amendment we call “separation of church and state.” And that tipping point  has been growing ever more contentious in the past 20 years because so many cases have come to the courts of our land with the separation clause used as either a hammer or a sewing needle.

Here is what I mean. All across the South, and in some other states, people and the courts have grappled with the question of whether the Ten Commandments should be placed in public buildings. Some say no because that is a religious set of laws. Some say yes because the Ten form a base for our system of jurisprudence.

In many states, the question has rung out, do school boards have the right to promote Creationism in school textbooks where a sizeable number of parents want their kids taught Evolutionary Theory. Some say yes because the story of Adam and Eve is the first chapter of our human story, as told in the Holy Bible. Others say no because they believe that first chapter is a fairy tale, and to teach it as science is to set our children’s learning back by thousands of years.
 In many states, the religious community has been a rancorous nuisance when scientists want to conduct stem cell research. The current government imposes its Christian view that an embryo is a full human, and it halts that research.
Does the state have the right to impose its religious view on the rest of the nation, which may or may not benefit from stem cell medicines?

Enter Warren Jeffs. He and his followers have religious beliefs that play out as extreme against the 21st century backdrop.
I watch Big Love, um, religiously, you might say, for two seasons now on HBO. I feel that eery sense of life imitating art when I see the photos of the  real-life FLDS girls huddling together in long braids and prairie garb: Why, they look just like the women on the fictional TV show!  Only this is real and the state is imposing its rule of law on a group with its own laws: religious laws.

I am not supporting the marriage practices of the sect. Far from it.
How awful that women are married to total strangers three times their age, then “reassigned” to other husbands when the old men die. Ickkk!

I just wish this nation could find a consistent policy where church and state intersect.
I would like to see the church stay completely OUT of the way where stem cell research is concerned and where the teaching of science is concerned. I would like the state to buzz off where people’s rights to consensual sex and marriage are concerned.

 I wish this nation would FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTIONAL DIRECTIVE: No government shall establish a religion for the people to follow, and that means no imposing of Christianity on those who do not want it and no imposing of the state’s will on religious practices. Yes, even when they seem disgucting to us and raise our eyebrows. The state can offer other avenues of escape and comfort to people who want out of a religion, but in my view, both the church and the state should stay on their own sides of the playground.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

As some of you may know about me, I have deep family ties in Jena, La.  Both my parents were born and raised there, and I still have a lot of relatives there.  I am white, and I am appalled at the conduct of the powers that be in perpetuating a dual system of justice in Jena.  As you can imagine, I’m Googling the news for Jena every day.

Reed Walters, the Distric Attorney of LaSalle Parish, La., has an op-ed that just appeared in the New York Times online for publication in tomorrow’s paper.  In it he attempts to explain the decisions he’s made as a prosecutor in the Jena 6 case.

While some who are inclined to agree with him might find his op-ed an articulate and convincing self-defense, its omissions are glaring.

Here are a few excerpts from Walters’ op-ed:

Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.

Fine, Mr. Walters, but that doesn’t explain why they were first charged with attempted second-degree murder.  The blatant overcharging of these kids is a huge part of what set this whole thing off.  That you subsequently came to your senses and found slightly more appropriate charges is too little, too late.

Now, about those nooses:

I cannot overemphasize how abhorrent and stupid I find the placing of the nooses on the schoolyard tree in late August 2006. If those who committed that act considered it a prank, their sense of humor is seriously distorted. It was mean-spirited and deserves the condemnation of all decent people.

But it broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none.

Point taken.  But the fact is that these morons were barely punished at ALL.  Maybe that’s not your fault, but it’s part of the overall narrative here.

And I’ll bet the Louisiana criminal code has something to say about pulling a shotgun with a pistol grip at a convenience store, yet the white dude who did that wasn’t prosecuted - hell, he wasn’t even arrested.  Instead, the kids he pulled the gun on were charged with second-degree battery, assault, disturbing the peace and theft of the weapon after wrestling it away from him in self-defense.  Why?  Because the white guy felt “threatened.”

And what about Justin Sloan, the guy who attacked one of the black students with a bottle at a party?  Charged with simple battery and given probation.

Yes, “Free the Jena 6″ has become a rallying cry around this whole sorry mess, but I’m not sure even the protesters believe the six should get out of jail free if they were involved in the attack on Justin Barker.

It’s just that so many others ought to be going to jail as well.

Mr. Walters, I certainly hope that there are enough fair-minded people in Jena that they will find someone to challenge you in the next election, someone who won’t bring further shame on Jena.  I can only hope you’re feeling that fear and that’s why you’ve finally decided to attempt to explain yourself.

But it’s too late for that.  It’s time for you to find another line of work.

Posted by Tracey under National & Regional | No Comments »

Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University. To introduce him, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger called  Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator.”
Wow. It’s not often that a guest speaker gets that kind of intro.

Not that I am complaining. When I first heard Ahmadinejad deny the Holocaust my head exploded. When I came to, some hours later, I needed intensive pampering with massages and interesting fruits and drinks to regain my strength.
I always have that reaction when someone denies the Holocaust. (Doesn’t everyone??)

You see, I had family members in the death camps. Several died there almost immediately because they were under the age of 10; a couple survived.
I know: I saw the blue ink numbers that were tattooed on their arms.
Once you see those numbers, your head explodes everytime someone (Louis Farrakhan, for instance) denies the Holocaust.
Don’t take my word for it, though.
As Bollinger pointed out to Ahmadinejad, “The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history.”
But hey, if Holocaust denial isn’t enough of a reason for you to dislike Ahmadinejad, here is another one. He has questioned the events that took place on 9/11. And if that’s not enough, he defended his nation’s executions of homosexuals.Then he denied that there were gays in Iran.
“In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this,” he said to the Columbia audience.
So was Columbia University wrong to allow Ahmadinejad a venue to speak?
In my view, absolutely not.
That is one of the things that differentiates a democratic university campus from one in a fascist nation, or, for that matter, from Bob Jones University.
Much as I despise Ahmadinejad, I strongly believe that universities are forums for open and free exchange of ideas, for discussions, for debates.
I know that several lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, criticized Columbia for allowing Ahmadinejad’s appearance.
They were wrong to do so. Censoring those whose views we dislike is a bad path to go down. Giving the American people, and especially students, the chance to make up their own minds is risky.
But I believe it’s one of the prices of freedom.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

The Bush administration is beating the war drums again, and this time the target country is Iran. Amid the growing buzz to that effect, a group of Peace protesters marched on the nation’s Capitol this weekend. We have nothing if we do not have hope that we can somehow make our government listen to the voices of reason.

How to maintain hope in this time of many plagues (environmental disasters around the corner, a president who lies to the people and condones torture and domestic spying, a national debt that will cripple us for the next three generations and the threat from Al Qaeda on every side)?

I cannot answer for you. But the answer came for me this weekend (as I carried my M-Peach sign down Pennsylvania Avenue) in the form of five new friends, each of whom inspired me to believe again that the spirit of goodness is alive in America. It often happens at protest rallies and marches that you get caught up in the moment and feel a rush of happiness because those around you share your beliefs. That’s a commonplace.

However, the five people I met over the past weekend were exceptionally hard workers in the Progressive community. Aaron is an environmentalist teaching others about sustainable energy and earth-friendly practices. He blogs at www.poweringdown.blogspot.com Grace is a healthcare worker in North Carolina who created a free health clinic for state employees and their families.
Diane, who had never practiced civil disobedience before this Sept. 15 march, rushed the barricades in front of the Capitol in solidarity with Iraqi War Vets and was taken to jail (all 90 pounds of her) for the night. She emerged the next morning not chastened but glowing from the experience of talking all night to veterans about their commitment. She and her husband, Dan, are going to show their photos from the march to friends and also show them a documentary, “Why We Fight.”  They are building a Peace movement in Cleveland.

Annie, who has the energy of a tsunami when she’s revved up about a cause, is a MoveOn organizer in Florida. She is building grassroots activism a stone’s throw from a major military base in a “red state.”

What struck me when talking to these and other new friends at the Peace and Impeachment rally was that they do not, and will not, give up. Even when faced with overwhelming odds, like a government hell-bent on expanding war into Iran, they have dug in their heels and they are working harder than ever.

As Grace said to me this morning over coffee in downtown Washington, D.C., “Never give up. Never stop. Period.”
That gives me hope and strength in this time of cholera.

M-PEACH

Posted by Gita under National & Uncategorized | No Comments »

My parents were born and raised in Jena, La.  Until very recently, my grandmother lived there (she now lives near my parents in another state), and I still have aunts, uncles and cousins in Jena.  I have spent lots of time in Jena over my 41 years, most of them as a child.  I even lived there and attended middle school for a short time in the late 70s while my family was moving.  So the Jena 6 situation has really hit home for me and my family.

Most of my family are pretty apolitical - I’m the raging lefty in the family.  A phone call from my mother today has gotten me concerned.  From what she said, there’s starting to be a bit of a panic in Jena over the bus rides planned for Mychel Bell’s court hearing.  Jena has barely over 3,000 people, and my mother said that 40,000 people are expected to come into town for the rally.  I can’t vouch for that figure, but I know that bus rides are being organized from all over the country (including here in Nashville) and that the Jena Six has become quite the cause celebre on African-American talk radio (as well it should).

Adding to the fear is that anywhere African-Americans gather to support their own, the KKK will also put together a contingent, and my mother said the Klan is planning to rally there too.  I haven’t seen this reported online anywhere, and I hope it’s not true.

But if it IS true, this little town, crappy as it is, is a powder keg, because no matter how peaceful everyone intends to be, all it takes is one or two loose cannons to get something very tragic started.  A town the size of Jena simply can’t sustain that kind of crowd to start with, let alone a clash between KKK members and pro-civil-rights protestors.  (Of course, most white people in Jena, especially the older ones, are laying all of this at the feet of the “outside (black) agitators” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.)

My mother is begging her older sister to leave town and stay with my family for a few days, but my aunt won’t budge.  I told my mother I didn’t expect people to rampage the town and burn down homes, but the town is so tiny (as a kid, I would routinely ride my bike from one end of it to the other) that it wouldn’t take much for nastiness near the courthouse or in the city park to spill into neighborhoods.

If there IS serious civil unrest, blame for it will lie at the feet of one person - District Attorney Reed Walters.  None of us can look inside his heart and know whether he’s a racist.  But we can all look at his actions and conclude that he is exceedingly stupid, perhaps even more stupid than Mike Nifong in North Carolina.  From his threats to the students to “end your life with the stroke of a pen,” to his egregious overcharging of the students, to his failure to similarly charge whites who committed similar crimes, to his failure or refusal to explain himself, he has created a vacuum of common sense that has allowed accusations of racism to take hold.  Racist or not, he’s so arbitary as to have the appearance of a racist.

This is Jena’s loss of innocence, its not-so-peaceful introduction to the 21st century where most of the rest of us live.  Jena has always been so insular, so small, so white and so segregated that it has been allowed to wallow in its pre-1960 mindset for all this time.  Things like this don’t happen in Jena, because everyone knows their place, or at least they USED to.  (According to my grandmother, the problem is that these kids are Katrina evacuees.  She didn’t use the word “uppity,” but you can read between the lines).

I am hoping against hope that things can remain peaceful in Jena and that justice will somehow be done.  I also hope that Jena will emerge from this a town in which its few African-American residents will no longer be content to live “over in the Quarters” if they don’t want to or be subjected to a dual system of justice.

I hope for the sake of my mother and the rest of my family that Jena comes out of this a better place.

Posted by Tracey under Regional | 1 Comment »