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Meet Putin’s New Military

  

While America is in a steep decline with Wall Street chosen politicians running the country, it seems Putin has learned a valuable lesson from this American “exceptionalism.”  The result of that lesson was seen in the Russian annexation of Crimea.  Russia’s investment in their military, as in people, has paid off big time. 

According to a New York Times article called “Crimea Offers Showcase for Russia’s Rebooted Military”:

PEREVALNOYE, Crimea — The soldiers guarding the entrances to the surrounded Ukrainian military base here just south of the capital, Simferopol, had little in common with their predecessors from past Russian military actions.

Lean and fit, few if any seemed to be conscripts. Their uniforms were crisp and neat, and their new helmets were bedecked with tinted safety goggles. They were sober…

Past Russian military actions have often showcased an army suffering from a poor state of discipline and supply, its ranks filled mostly with the conscripts who had not managed to buy deferments or otherwise evade military service. Public drunkenness was common, as were tactical indecisiveness and soldiers who often looked as if they could not run a mile, much less swiftly.

Yes, five years ago Russia’s army was a mess, with broken, outdated equipment, low pay, improper training and low morale.  Putin recognized you can’t have a strong military if you don’t value your military personnel.

The transformation of the armed forces has been a personal priority of Mr. Putin, who as prime minister from 2009 to 2012 and more recently in his return to the presidency has overseen billions of dollars in new military expenditures…

Since the start of 2012, salaries for most military personnel have roughly tripled, to between $700 and $1,150 a month for privates and sergeants — a respectable amount in Russian terms. The Kremlin has also expanded housing and education benefits.

Putin has increased the salaries, expanded housing and education benefits for military personnel in stark contrast to America.

In the meantime, American military personnel have had pay cuts, cuts in education benefits and slashed pensions in order to funnel those funds directly to Wall Street in the form of contracts to build outdated, unnecessary equipment that generates Wall Street profits.  According to Investors.com:

The Obama administration plans to cut the military pensions of those who served their country while giving public employees a break by exempting their ObamaCare subsidies from sequestration.

On the heels of announcing that Army troop levels will be cut below pre-World War II levels, the Military Times has reported that the Obama administration is planning to reduce military pension costs by 10% by converting part of their retirement to 401(k)-like defined-contribution plans from defined-benefit plans.

Yep, Obama is handing over military pensions to Wall Street to convert them from defined benefit plans to “401(k)-like” plans.  If you have seen what happened to your 401(k) plan after Wall Street installed George W. Bush into the presidency, you know what a crap idea that is.

That cost-saving measures are to be applied only to the military and not to politically favored groups and programs is seen in the administration's quiet removal of the cost-sharing subsidies designed to help lower-income people cover some out-of-pocket costs imposed by ObamaCare from its list of programs subject to the sequester, eliminating the 7% cut for 2015.

These low-income subsidies are paid directly to insurance companies that already have been promised that if they lose money because the risk pools ObamaCare is creating wind up with mostly the sick and the elderly — rather than the young and healthy ObamaCare needs — the taxpayers will bail them out.

The Military Officers Association of America has calculated that the typical Army sergeant, as a result of pension and other benefit changes, stands to lose up to $5,000 in annual benefits under the administration's fiscal 2015 budget.

The budget also calls for slashing subsidies for base commissaries, a 5% increase in the cost of military housing and a 1% cap on annual active-duty pay increases.

Wall Street’s disdain for the American people who serve in our Military was front and center when Donald Rumsfeld disparaged our military servicemen and women.  (From Dorian DeWind, Military Affairs Columnist for The Moderate Voice).

… the character – of the then secretary of defense on December 8, 2004, when he held a town hall meeting at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.

At that time, the Iraq War was raging and our troops were being killed by the dozen every week in insurgent attacks.

Looking an Army soldier who was pleading for better protection against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) straight in the eye, Rumsfeld coldly, clinically and callously replied, “As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Yes, according to Rumsfeld, a big “F” you to our soldiers.  That has been our Wall Street politicians’ answer to our army since 2000.  Spending on adequate equipment and safety measures cuts into Wall Street profits.

So how does Putin speak to his military?

In a speech to military officers in February shortly after the raises were enacted, Mr. Putin declared, “I have always believed that military servicemen should be paid, as has always been the case in Russia, by the way, even more than skilled specialists in the sphere of economics or administration or other civilian sectors.”

Imagine that, Putin values his lowest grade serviceman more than “skilled specialists in the sphere of economics or administration or other civilian sectors.”  America has chosen to fatten its military budget to enrich Wall Street banks whereas Putin has seen the value of investment in its people. 

This is what Russia’s takeover of Crimea looked like:

This is what America's “liberation" of Iraq looked like:

So, what does this mean for the people of Crimea?  Well, according to the New York Times:

MOSCOW — Moving quickly to envelop Crimea in the Russian bureaucracy and economy, the Kremlin said Monday that it had nearly doubled pensions paid to retirees on the peninsula, raising them to the average levels paid in Russia.

President Vladimir V. Putin signed a decree raising pensions and another increasing salaries for public sector workers like teachers and doctors, according to a statement posted on the Kremlin’s website. Officials also announced a number of new investment plans and tax breaks for Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine two weeks ago after a rushed vote in the Crimean Legislature. The Crimeans even realigned the clock, moving theirs ahead two hours, to be identical with Moscow’s time zone.

What’s really interesting here is Putin raised pensions for public sector workers like teachers and doctors.  And, what is America doing?  Dumping and closing public schools for Wall Street profit driven charter schools.  According to AlterNet:

Studies shows that charter schools don’t typically outperform public schools and they often tend to increase racial and class segregation. So one must wonder, what exactly is motivating these school “reformers”? And why have they pushed for more and more closure — and new charter schools — at such an unprecedented rate in recent years?

Pro-charter supporters will tell you that it’s time for public institutions like our schools to start competing more like for-profit institutions. Test scores and high enrollment, then, define success. Unsuccessful schools, they say, should close just as unsuccessful businesses do. For neoliberal school reformers from today’s Arne Duncan-led Department of Education to scandal-ridden movement leader Michelle Rhee to billionaire Bill Gates, it is taken on faith that market principles are desirable in education.

So, studies show charter schools don’t typically outperform public schools, why decimate public school and fund charter schools?

Public School

Charter School

And what precisely is the NMTC doing to restore these so-called “blighted communities”? It’s providing hedge fund managers and wealthy real estate investors with opportunities to cash in on the charter school boom. The government frames it as a useful tool that builds communities up, operating on the assumption that charter schools provide some sort of de facto restoration. But as 

Part I demonstrated, they don’t.

But they do provide wealthy investors with a 39 percent tax credit that more than doubles returns on these investments within just seven years. As NY Daily News reporter Juan Gonzalez reported for Democracy Now!, “this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re collecting interest on the loans, as well as getting the 39 percent tax credit.” And that’s not all. As Gonzalez explained, the federal government “piggyback[s] the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits, like historic preservation or job creation or Brownfield’s credits. The result is, you can put in $10 million and in seven years double your money.” So, if you put in a couple million dollars, you’ll have double that amount within just seven years.

Well the road to hell is paved with Wall Street profits.  Putin’s Russia is beginning to look like what was once America, before our Wall Street selected politicians destroyed America’s military and public sector.

So, meet Putin’s new Russia, a strong vibrant army, enhanced public schools and pensions and a government that governs with the consent of the governed.  Where Wall Street demands austerity for America and western countries, Putin’s Russia is looking pretty good.

By Patricia Baeten

From War on Poverty to War on Poor

File - President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, center left, leave home of Tom Fletcher, a father of eight who told Johnson he'd been out of work for nearly two years, Inez, Kentucky, April 24, 1964.

January 8th is the 50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty introduced by President Lyndon Johnson.  When President Johnson announced the war on poverty January 8th, 1964, 22 percent of Americans were living in poverty in the richest country in the world.  When President Johnson left office 5 years later, there were only 12 percent living in poverty. 

Lyndon Johnson grew up in impoverished Texas and when he became President he sent many from his White House staff to experience what it was like to live with the homeless.  He sent staffers into schools where the education was inferior and children were unable to compete and would drop out before they even started.

Voice of America News interviewed James Jones who was chief of staff to President Johnson on the 50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty.

"Things such as Medicare, which [then-President] Harry Truman first proposed in around 1946-47, and nothing had been done on that," said Jones. "Things such as fair housing, which, again, went back to the Truman Administration, and nothing had happened in 20 years."

Critics in Congress say spending on poverty reduction programs is out of control, and the Republican-led House of Representatives recently voted to cut funding for the Food Stamp assistance program by about $4 billion a year.

Still, Johnson's initiatives, despite their flaws, have lifted millions out of poverty, says Ron Haskins, a former White House and congressional advisor on welfare issues and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based non-profit research organization.

The Republican Party has launched a war on the poor in the United States.  They have slashed food programs for the poor, unemployment benefits, and tied subsidized housing, food stamps and unemployment benefits to drug testing for the poor at the expense of the poor. 

The GOP has a financial interest in requiring the poor pay the $30-$35 per test to qualify for benefits.

The company that received the lucrative contract to drug test welfare recipients in Florida was none other than Governor Rick Scott’s own company Solantic.  All those tests, all that profit and who had to pay?  The poor.  This is from the Reid Report:

Scott’s newest scheme, which will help him turn a profit from his $70 million investment in becoming a one-term Florida governor, would be genius if it weren’t so darned evil. Fresh off his plan to drug test welfare recipients in the state, compounding what for many people is an embarrassing experience, having to take public assistance, Scott now plans to visit the same humiliation on state workers. You know, the ones who haven’t had a raise in four years and who are about the have their unions shredded and their pensions hollowed out by the right wing legislature.

Critics say that idea is too expensive and impractical, but on Tuesday, a Senate committee moved forward a drug testing bill applying to welfare recipients.

Scott, in a statement praising the Senate committee and announcing his executive order defended both actions.

“Floridians deserve to know that those in public service, whose salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars, are part of a drug-free workplace,” Scott said in a statement.

And how will Floridians get that information? Who has the wherewithal to carry out the drug testing of state employees on a random basis, or when any are crazy enough to apply for a job working for Gollum’s kingdom?

Solantic. Beauuuutiful Solantic.

Remember when Jeb Bush’s Republican legislature voted for drug testing for public housing?  Remember when grandma in public housing raising her grandchildren was to be turned out on the street if one of her grandchildren was caught with drugs?  That triggered a great deal of parody which would have been funny if it weren’t so horrible.

by Corinne Carey

NEWS RELEASE

Late Tuesday, following the arrest of Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, for possession of crack cocaine, the Orlando District Attorney’s Narcotics Evictions office forwarded information about her arrest to The People of the State of Florida, demanding that The People serve the Bush family with an eviction notice to vacate their residence in government-subsidized housing.

A spokesperson for the Orlando DA stated that under federal public housing regulations that were upheld by the Supreme Court this past Spring in Rucker v. Davis, eviction of Bush and his entire family is the appropriate sanction.

But of course the Bush family was not evicted from their plush public housing.  It was considered a “family matter”.

Recently, according to the New York Times, a judge in Florida struck down a Florida Law requiring drug testing on the poor to receive welfare.

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down as unconstitutional a Florida law that required welfare applicants to undergo mandatory drug testing, setting the stage for a legal battle that could affect similar efforts nationwide.

 “The court finds there is no set of circumstances under which the warrantless, suspicionless drug testing at issue in this case could be constitutionally applied,” she wrote. The ruling made permanent an earlier, temporary ban by the judge.

Mr. Scott, who had argued that the drug testing was necessary to protect children and ensure that tax money was not going to illegal drugs, said that the state would appeal the ruling.

State data in Florida also showed that the measure produced few results. Only 108 out of 4,086 people tested — 2.6 percent — were found to have been using narcotics. State records showed that the requirement cost more money to carry out than it saved.

So while the GOP declares the war on poverty a failure and cuts food stamps, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment, Medical Assistance, School Lunches, Pell Grants, Student Loans, Veteran’s Pensions, Teacher’s Pensions, Housing Allowances and continues cutting taxes for the billionaires and increases corporate welfare, Happy New Year America.

By Patricia Baeten

Charles Krauthammer: Insurance Companies Ruined By ObamaCare Will Need a...

Update - Budget Deal Permanently Slashes Military/Federal Pensions and Unemployment

Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte says that pensions for current disabled veterans are cut in the new budget deal:

Video:

Paul Ryan outlined the budget deal he reached with Senate Democrat Patty Murray on Fox News Sunday. 

"We’re not busting sequester caps," Ryan said on "Fox News Sunday." "In just the next two years, 70 percent of the sequester is intact. Ninety-two percent of the sequester over the life of the sequester is intact. The Democrats came into this thing saying ‘get rid of the entire sequester.’"

“We are permanently asking federal workers to contribute more to their pensions so that the hard-working taxpayers who pay for those pensions don’t have to pay as much," he said.

"This is keeping our principle intact," Ryan added. "No tax increases, net deficit reduction, permanent spending cuts in place of the across-the-board [sequester] approach.”

When Ryan says “we are asking federal workers to contribute more to their pensions so that hard-working taxpayers who pay for those pensions don’t have to pay as much”; aren’t federal workers taxpayers too?

Obama has ticked off all the boxes on the Republican agenda.  This Obama/Ryan 2 year budget is the cruelest of all.   

 Washington's reaction to the budget deal:

Nancy Pelosi to Military:  Embrace the Suck

I can't understand what Pelosi finds so funny about millions of people without food, jobs and homes.

Jamie Dimon JP Morgan Chase:  "I sent an email to Patty Murray and Paul Ryan yesterday basically saying ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ and may the lord bless them because the country is getting stronger every single day".

Stronger for whom?

Those are the words of Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase who has a $23 billion dollar slush fund to pay off fines and buy off prosecutors for stealing trillions from the American People in homes, jobs and savings.   Do you know that 30% of bank tellers receive food stamps?  Just another form of bailing out shareholder profits.

You’ve seen the reaction from Pelosi and Dimon, here’s the reaction from America:

 This heartbreaking call from a lady in Maryland who lost her unemployment benefits:

Video:

Yes, while Pelosi embraces the suck and Jamie Dimon blesses Ryan and Murray, that lady in Maryland is defaulting on her rent and credit for the first time in 40 years.

And this heartbreaking call from Mike in Kentucky:

 Video:

Another caller from Arkansas asked about raising the minimum wage this is what you get:

Video:

 Merry Christmas to America from Barack Obama, after all he is the one who promoted an austerity agenda. He's the one that put pensions, medicare and social security on the table.  

Well he's off to Hawaii for the holidays.  Merry Christmas from Jamie Dimon, Nancy Pelosi, Paul Ryan, Patty Murray, Chuck Schumer and all the rest of the millionaires whose lives were just enriched by slashing all hopes and dreams of the American people.

By Patricia Baeten  

Ding Dong the Obamacare Witch is Dead Part III

Well the Obamacare nightmare goes on.  This is what you get when a politician claiming to be a Democrat runs for office and then governs, and I use the term "governs" loosely, like a Republican.   Every Republican house of horrors dream has come to bear under Obama. 

Barack Obama is the first President of any stripe to cut funding for Social Security.  First Social Security was cut but freezing all cost of living raises for 3 years and then instituting the highly desired Republican plan of cutting Social Security with a payroll tax holiday.

From a Washington Post article by Amy Goldstein, October 16, 2010 Business Section:

For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday, renewing debate over whether the system offers enough help in a weak economy.

The absence of any growth in Social Security checks for consecutive years is unprecedented in the 3-1/2 decades that payments have been adjusted automatically based on the nation's inflation rate.

The news that retirement benefits will remain static was part of a trio of developments on Friday that drew attention to lingering effects of the recession. Taken together, the new reminders of the country's economic fragility carry large political stakes, coming 2-1/2 weeks before a midterm election in which the deficit and jobs are paramount concerns among voters.

Yes, Democratic voters demoralized by Obama’s Republican agenda failed to go to the polls to vote in November 2010.  The Tea Party seized the opportunity of low Democratic turnout to usher in a new wave of Republican Governors, Congressmen and Senators to demand of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Barack Obama did what no Republican would dare to do, cut Social Security.  That was followed by another Republican dream, the Social Security payroll tax holiday.  Most people were not even aware of the payroll tax holiday because the extra money they received in their paychecks from the payroll tax holiday was so small it wasn’t really noticeable.  But, they sure were aware when their payroll taxes went up 4% to recoup the 2 years of the payroll 2% tax holiday.

There was this article From Strengthen Social Security.org:

Washington, D.C. — The payroll tax holiday recently unveiled by President Obama and Republican Congressional leaders could lead to the “unraveling of Social Security,” charged Eric Kingson, Co-Director of Social Security Works and an expert on Social Security…

President Obama has proposed reducing the employee’s share of the payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. Restoring the 2 percent lost due to the payroll tax holiday would be a nearly 50 percent tax increase on what workers would be paying throughout the year.

Two percent of taxable payroll is what Social Security’s actuaries calculate is needed to put Social Security in surplus for the next 75 years. “There are already many in Washington who want to cut Social Security’s modest benefits, which average just $13,000 a year,” claimed Kingson. “If the tax cuts became permanent and if a future Congress chose not to continue to reimburse the Social Security Trust Funds for the lost revenue, today’s manageable shortfall would double, becoming much less manageable.  

There would be tremendous pressure to make deep cuts to middle class benefits, even as the population was rapidly aging.”

“A payroll tax holiday will also promote Social Security privatization,” charged Kingson. “Once people get to put the 2 percent in their own pockets, they will be more susceptible to appeals that they should be able to put the funds into a private account where it can be gambled on Wall Street.”

“All of these likely scenarios, if they occur, will result in the unraveling of Social Security,” claimed Kingson.

Yes indeedy, the Republican and Obama payroll tax holiday could unravel Social Security.  That’s just what Obama and the Republicans planned.

But wait, even more body slams to people on Social Security under Obama and the Republicans.  According to Fox Business News dated October 14, 2013:

Another year, another small raise for millions of people who rely on Social Security, veterans' benefits and federal pensions.

Preliminary figures suggest next year's benefit increase will be roughly 1.5 percent, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. The increase will be small because consumer prices, as measured by the government, haven't gone up much in the past year.

For the second year in a row, it would be one of the lowest raises since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

The exact size of the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, won't be known until the Labor Department releases the inflation report for September. That was supposed to happen Wednesday, but the report was delayed indefinitely because of the partial government shutdown.

More than a fifth of the country is waiting.

Nearly 58 million retirees, disabled workers, spouses and children get Social Security benefits. The average monthly payment is $1,162. A 1.5 percent raise would increase the typical monthly payment by about $17.

So, let’s look at Obamacare.  Obamacare was a creation of the Heritage Foundation.  The Heritage Foundation is a Conservative, Republican think tank and is promoted by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They call for less Government by, for and of the people.

Obamacare was larded up with every Republican wet dream to destroy Medicare.  It is a way to take money away from Medicare and Medicaid and funnel those funds into private insurer’s profits.

For the American people it’s like being strapped into a funhouse car in the house of horrors and being jolted from one horror room into the next.  First horror house room is the American people with individual policies, losing those policies.

On December 9^th a “reporter” from the Huffington Post was on C-Span’s Washington Journal to talk about Obamacare.  A woman from Georgia called in and said she recently retired and receives $1,024 in Social Security.  She was notified by the State of Georgia that she must sign up for Obamacare.  Her policy through Obamacare will cost her about $400 per month after the subsidy allotted to her.  That entitles her to a policy under the Bronze plan.

Under the Bronze plan she pays $400 and month to the insurance company in addition to what the U.S. Treasury pays the insurance company for her.  Under the Bronze plan she has a $6,000 deductible and after she meets her deductible the insurance company pays 60% and she pays 40%.  She asked, "how is that affordable?"

The Huffington Post writer said the good news is, if she can’t afford it she won’t have to pay the penalty.

Hear that?  She still doesn’t have insurance and will be worse off if she gets insurance, that’s the good news.  

Obama and Republicans say you must bend down the cost curve.  Well, today on C-Span’s Washington Journal a previous emergency room doctor turned journalist, Elizabeth Rosenthal, was a guest to discuss her recent article in the New York Times called “As Hospital Prices Soar a Stitch Tops $500”.

"A day spent as an inpatient at an American hospital costs on average more than $4,000, five times the charge in many other developed countries, according to the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurance industries.

The most expensive hospitals charge more than $12,500 a day. And at many of them, including California Pacific Medical Center, emergency rooms are profit centers. That is why one of the simplest and oldest medical procedures—closing a wound with a needle and thread—typically leads to bills of at least $1,500 and often much more."

Yes, the Obamacare nightmare goes on.  The Republican for profit, Wall Street mandatory profit based insurance system is thriving under Obamacare.  Unfortunately it is at the expense of an abused, beaten, jobless, broke American public.  But Obama’s Republican for-profit healthcare system is ensured endless profits.  Merry Christmas America.

By Patricia Baeten

CA Supreme Court Judge with Millions in Wells Fargo Stock Rules in Favor of Wells Fargo Mortgage

During information gathering for an article on State Supreme Court Justices’ disclosure requirements called State Supreme Court Justices Reveal Scant Financial Information, the Center for Public Integrity discovered an egregious conflict of interest by California State Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Werdeger.

According to the article by Kytja Weir:

Last December, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by a couple who had accused financial giant Wells Fargo & Co. of predatory lending.

One justice, who owned stock in the bank, recused himself from the case. But Justice Kathryn Werdegar, who owned as much as $1 million of Wells Fargo stock, participated — and shouldn’t have.

What makes that conflict of interest by the highest court in California so important is a case that is winding its way through the California court system involving Wells Fargo and the City of Richmond.

Richmond became the first city in the country to offer to purchase mortgages of distressed homeowners from Wall Street banks and other lenders.  The city council approved a plan in April to allow the city to use its eminent domain authority to purchase loans in order to modify them and allow families to avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes. 

Eminent Domain is the power of government to take private property for the public good.  The 5^th Amendment to the U.S. constitution was put into law by James Madison to ensure property owners would receive “just compensation” for their property.  Just compensation as defined by the Supreme Court means “fair market value”.

The City of Richmond’s case is based on the 2005 Kelo vs. the City of New London, CT US Supreme Court Case.  In that case the United States Supreme Court ruled in a controversial 5-4 decision, that a private developer could seize the land of private citizens for economic development as long as they paid “fair market value”. 

In the City of Richmond, California almost half of the city’s residential mortgage holders are underwater.

According to Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, “We are stepping in by taking these troubled loans off the hands of the banks, and we’re paying them fair market value for these loans.  And then we’re working with the homeowners to refinance and modify loans in line with current home values.  We call on the banks to voluntarily sell us these loans, and if they don’t cooperate, we will be considering eminent domain”.

 “Wells Fargo, three other banks and even the Federal Housing Finance Agency think otherwise”.

“The banks have filed two lawsuits alleging that the plan is an illegal abuse of eminent domain, which allows governments to seize private property for public use – like a house in the path of a new highway or a piece of land needed for a new park”.

 “The banks argue the plan would "severely disrupt the United States mortgage industry" because many other cities would likely adopt the same program to help homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth”

The Obama Administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency has sided with Wells Fargo bond holders and the banks against the City of Richmond and its residents. 

However, according to a December 6^th article in the Credit Union Times by David Morrison, the ACLU has filed suit against Obama’s Federal Housing Agency:

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Federal Housing Finance Agency seeking information about the FHFA’s position on the use of eminent domain to reduce the principal amounts of mortgage loans.

The organization brought the suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under the federal Freedom of Information Act, contending that it had asked the agency about how it has developed its position on the use of eminent domain to reduce mortgage principal and, particular, about the role larger banks might have played in developing that policy.

"The FHFA has taken an aggressive stance on this issue in a way that has harmed minority communities. The public deserves to know why," said Linda Lye, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California.

The ACLU said that it first asked for the information in October and, after receiving one response from the agency, have not received any more.

In the wake of the city of Richmond, Calif., beginning to take steps toward using eminent domain to reduce the principal on some mortgages, the ACLU charged the FHFA threatened legal action against Richmond or any other city that uses eminent domain to reduce mortgage principals and by threatening to deny credit to people seeking mortgages in those communities.

Imagine that, the United States Government under Barack Obama is threatening any city that uses eminent domain to reduce mortgages and keep people in their homes. Will the California Supreme Court Justices with millions of shares of Wells Fargo Stock recuse themselves?

I guess that Wall Street Banks who funneled a billion dollars into the Obama campaign are being paid off in the trillions.


By Patricia Baeten