Florida's foreclosure crisis

Millions of Floridians are losing their homes due to foreclosure. It would be easy to just say "pay your mortgage, deadbeat" as many people have, but things are not as easy to solve as that statement would indicate. Matt Weidner, a Tampa area attorney, has a blog that spends a good deal of time and bandwidth explaining the problem:

The lenders of Florida, and the firms that bought mortgage backed securities, have traded, sold, spindled and mutilated the mortgage notes and mortgages in this state in such a fashion as to make it impossible for anyone to determine or prove who owes what to whom. When confronted in court, many of the lenders and their attorneys are manufacturing the evidence they need to take the home. They have been caught doing this so often that the Florida Supreme Court had to issue rules that apply to these foreclosures in an attempt to curb some of the lies, fraud, and manipulation that is going on.

Reading Mr Weidner's blog made me truly understand why the mortgage, insurance, and bank failures that caused our current recession occurred. The banks and mortgage lenders have been lying, cheating, and stealing their way to billions in undeserved profits by enticing lawmakers and the courts to game the system in their favor.

Now we come to the reason for this post. As the courts begin to catch on to the fraud being carried out here, the banks are beginning to lose foreclosure cases all over the state. They have responded by getting legislators to introduce a new bill ironically called Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act. The purpose of this proposed law is to change Florida from a Judicial foreclosure state (requiring a bank to take you to court to in order to take your home, thus allowing you your day in court) to a non-judicial foreclosure state, essentially allowing people using "Operation Repo" style tactics to take your home without you ever getting your day in court.

If you think things are going to improve in our economy anytime in the near future, you are sorely mistaken.

Glen Frey

The sailors and pilots,
The soldiers and the law,
The pay offs and the rip offs,
And the things nobody saw.

That song is in my head this morning because of the backdoor deal that convinced anti-abortion senator Stupak that his morals were for sale. Just what is the going price for a senator these days?

$726,409 more or less. That is the total grant money being given to three airports in his district.

I have to ask- why were airport grants included in a healthcare bill? And why didn't the healthcare bill include- well, healthcare? See, the Dems were so busy passing out the pork, they forgot to include helathcare in the bill.

Math fail

Did you know that if you cut off the end of a string and tie it to the other end, you can make the string longer? At least that is the plan in Illinois, where the plan is to save money by going to a four day school schedule, and making up the lost hours by shortening the summer vacation.

Hows that again? What a bunch of douche nozzles.

Doubt Global Warming? You should be shot

At least that is what James Cameron thinks:

The "Avatar" director was equally unsparing in his comments about those who don't accept global warming as fact.

"That's right," Cameron said. "I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads."

Turning more serious, he added: "Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their ass I'm not sure they could hear me."

Of course, any person who disagrees with him would be persecuted by the media for daring to suggest that this pompous windbag should be shot. I doubt he even knows which end of the gun gets pointed downrange.

Of course, James Cameron, like the rest of the rich and famous global warming crowd, thinks that being green only applies to the peasants. After all, he wants to fly into space, and launching his ass into space will take tons of CO2 generating rocket fuel. He regularly flies to Japan, Hawaii, and Rome, and then demands that I bicycle to work, and sweat without air conditioning in the Florida summer. Who exactly has his head up his ass? Either he is an elitist douchebag, or a liar.

Mr Cameron- I am a "denier" and I accept your challenge. I will even loan you a gun, since I am sure that your left wing, liberal, douchebag ass doesn't own one.

I will even make accommodations for your political beliefs. I will let you use a .22 revolver, so you can stay away from those semi-automatic killing machines.

I will use an evil assault rifle.

Rules as follows:

We stand on a football field with our backs to the goal posts. You shoot first. I will let you empty your gun, then it is my turn.

Interesting

In an earlier post, I wondered why the Democrats were taking the self-defeating position of trashing their own popularity to make healthcare happen.

Others are beginning to wonder the same. For example, is illegal amnesty going to be used to keep the Democrats in office?

Will Obama simply pack the Supreme Court?

Both? Neither? What does the future hold for our Republic? Whatever it holds, I don't think it will be good. The debt load we have is unsustainable, and spending money to finance free health care for millions more will not improve it any. We will be nearly $14 trillion in debt by the end of this fiscal year.

Factcheck is not about facts.

One of my most viewed posts is the one about how Clinton did NOT balance the budget. Factcheck.org calls me a liar, and says that he did. They say:

there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while.

Well, according to the Treasury Department, if you exclude Social Security, the National Debt on Oct 1, 1998 was $5,540,570,493,226.32 ($5.540 trillion), and the Debt on Sept 30, 1999 was $5,656,270,901,633.43 ($5.656 trillion). Any way you look at it, that is a deficit of $115 billion for FY 1999.

The debt at the end of FY 2000 was $5,674,178,209,886.86 ($5.674 trillion), which gives a deficit of $18 billion. In all, the US Debt increased by $1.3 trillion under Clinton, or 130% of what it was when he assumed office eight years before.

Now I realize that the $4.9 trillion spent during the Bush administration (185% increase over 8 years) and the $2.1 trillion (129%) increase of the Obama administration in his first 26 months makes an $18 billion deficit seem small, but the point is that the Clinton administration did NOT balance the budget, did NOT show a surplus, and I will not trust a word that comes from the so-called factcheck.org.

As for the CBO, I have this to say: Only a Government agency can look at an increasing debt and conclude that they are running a surplus.

Repeal? Not likely

There are many people all over who are bleating on about how the Republicans are going to get elected and will repeal the unpopular healthcare bill. There are a few reasons why I do not believe this will happen:

1 The Republicans owned Congress and the Presidency during the first part of the Bush administration. How many Democrat laws did they repeal? Not one.

2 Even if the Congress falls out of Democrat hands, there is no way that Obama will sign any repeal into law. This means that the Republicans will need a 2/3 majority in BOTH houses of congress to override the veto.

What does this mean?

The Republicans need to gain 26 seats in the Senate, and 110 seats in the House. Historically, the party that holds a seat, keeps that seat over 90% of the time.

Even so, there are only 18 Democrat Senators coming up for Reelection. That means that there is NO WAY that the Republicans can have more than 59 seats in the Senate, and that assumes that all 18 Republicans running keep their seats, and all 18 of the Democrats lose theirs.

Therefore, there is no way that the healthcare plan will be repealed.

Can history repeat?

There has been a lot of talk about the unconstitutional method by which Congress is planning to pass the unconstitutional health care plan, and there has been a good bit of discussion about lawsuits, and sending this to the Supreme Court. President Obama and the leadership of Congress seem unperturbed by this and are determined to pass the legislation this weekend any way.

This got me to wondering: With Presidential and Congressional approval numbers in the basement, and threats of legal action on the horizon, why are the executive and legislative branches pushing for this thing that so many are opposed to? Aren't they afraid of losing seats in the upcoming election? This is very unusual for election year politics, where Congress usually stays away from unpopular legislation in an election year.

Are they going to pass amnesty for illegals to get more voters? Probably not in time for the election.

Are they going to pack the Supreme Court, like FDR threatened to do in 1937? Adding 2 or 4 justices would certainly make the Democrat's jobs easier.

We have not seen the last of this fight. I am wondering what the Dems have up their sleeve.

A Challenge to all

Show me the Article in the Constitution that grants the Government the power to:

1 Provide health care to anyone
2 Provide education
3 Provide money to anyone from the public dole

or for that matter, do 90% of what it does

Are you down with OTP?

Whatever happened to the "HOPE" boy?
Teleprompt this: "You can't stop this, OTP."
You're gonna feel it when I vote, boy
Cuz you gotta go, ya gotta go, yeah
MOLOTOV CHORUS
Fool me once, shame on me, shame on we
United States of America
Fool me twice? It's not gonna happen, G
One term president, OTP

VERSE 1 (MOLOTOV)
Fool me once, it happens all the time!
Public education made me dumb, man
Barack Obama done beat me like a drum, man
Thought I was votin for hope, I was votin for a bum, man
I used to be a pie baker
Look into my eyes, all you'll see is pies
I could make a french apple cobbler with a greyerre crust
r-a-double u, fat girls are lovin dude
That was then, nowadays find me on the corner with a Mac 10
I lost my job at the bakery, Obama faked me, so I turned criminal
I'm sellin dr*gs at the terminal
B. Hussein, baby where's my job?
Just words just speeches, ya weakless




OTP, angry mob reppin 2-0-1-2
Karma's gonna get you

DJ DOLCE MELODY
Whatever happened to the "HOPE" boy?
Teleprompt this: "You can't stop this, OTP."
You're gonna feel it when I vote, boy
Cuz you gotta go, ya gotta go, yeah
MOLOTOV CHORUS
Fool me once, shame on me, shame on we
United States of America
Fool me twice? It's not gonna happen, G
One term president, OTP

VERSE 2 (CONSTITUTION KATE)

Why am I still up in Iraq, man?
Whats the holdup? I'm still duckin rounds in the sand, man.
I'm sick of smellin like a mosque after Ramadan
While you smellin like some prawns and filet mignon
We on the battlefield, camouflage khakis and M4's
Blood, sweat and tears for Iraqi's
But then I look at you, sittin in the West Wing, won't do anything
but polish up ya Nobel Peace Prize
You dropped charges for terrorists, (WHOA)
You think ya Fergie, ya glamorous (WHOA)
You roam the world to apologize, bowin to Saudis, investigatin G.I.'s
But pretty soon, you gonna pay the piper and I don't mean a sniper,
My vote's got a teflon coat
Jeremiah Wright, say it for the troops:
"ya chickeeeeennnnssss...comin home to roost"


DJ DOLCE MELODY
Whatever happened to the "HOPE" boy?
Teleprompt this: "You can't stop this, OTP."
You're gonna feel it when I vote, boy
Cuz you gotta go, ya gotta go, yeah
MOLOTOV CHORUS
Fool me once, shame on me, shame on we
United States of America
Fool me twice? It's not gonna happen, G
One term president, OTP

VERSE 3 (THE MZA)

One term President? Naw, I'm not feelin that
Hardcore birther here, let me make it clear fo ya
Barack Hussein, he isn't even president, we ain't seen a BC
He's sealed up all the evidence
OTP on my Camry, but I put a slash through the O
He's a zero term pansy
Before Obama got elected, I was disrespected, all of my best predictions were rejected
But now they all come to the MZA, I'm runnin five Tea Parties,
flanked by these freedom fighter hotties
I'm a right wing extremist, can I get a witness?
You ain't down if you ain't on a watch LIST
Socialist medicine, I told ya
Spendin trillions on nothin, I told ya
Payin for abortions round the world, I told ya
Reppin OTP, even Angelina's feelin me

DJ DOLCE MELODY
Whatever happened to the "HOPE" boy?
Teleprompt this: "You can't stop this, OTP."
You're gonna feel it when I vote, boy
Cuz you gotta go, ya gotta go, yeah
MOLOTOV CHORUS
Fool me once, shame on me, shame on we
United States of America
Fool me twice? It's not gonna happen, G
One term president, OTP

Obama doubles down

March of 2010 brings us another milestone in the Obama Administration's reign. Checking out the Government website, the public debt of the United States, this morning, you will see that we are in debt to the tune of $12.507 trillion as a nation. On January 20, 2009 when Obama took office, we were $10.626 trillion in debt. That means that this month the President will have officially borrowed two trillion dollars. All told, he has spent nearly $6 trillion.

That is right- it took this nation over 210 years to borrow two trillion dollars. Obama did it in only 25 months. He has spent more money than our first 39 presidents combined, and only GW Bush spent more, but give Obama some time, Bush took 8 years to spend $5 trillion, Obama can do it in 3.

To put that in perspective: Obama has spent nearly $11.5 million every minute that he has been president. For you visual people, here is a picture of $1 trillion worth of $100 bills (note the little guy in the lower left corner)



Two trillion dollars (in $100 bills) if laid flat on the ground would be enough to pave a road 244 feet wide that stretches from the Earth to the moon.

The stimulus that Obama pushed for and then signed into law was enough money to pay off half of EVERY MORTGAGE in the country. The $6 trillion dollars spent on his watch is enough to mail a check for nearly $20,000 to every man, woman, and child in this country.

In fact, it is mathematically impossible for this nation to pay off its debts, because the amount of the debt is more than the total of every dollar that exists. According to the Federal Reserve, the M2 money supply is currently $8.452 trillion.

How can you pay off a debt that is equal to a sum that represents more money than exists? The answer is, you can't.

So where does that leave us with respect to Obama's spending?



Pictures courtesy of http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

Sea World, whales, people on welfare

An Orlando Sentinel article about setting captive whales free got me to thinking. Isn't supporting an animal for its entire life, giving it everything it needs, destructive to the animal's ability to hunt and survive on its own? The article itself says this:

Keiko preferred the company of people to other killer whales. He preferred a handout to catching his own food.

Isn't the Welfare program the same thing? People who have spent their entire lives on the government dole have lost the ability to hunt. They have also lost their freedom, for in accepting the handout, you become dependent on the handout giver, as captive as any killer whale.

Is it any wonder that people, like animals in captivity, occasionally lash out and kill?

Spending

Reading this article from the Cato Institute, I started thinking about the post where I demonstrated that Clinton did not balance the budget,and looking at government expenditures. (Yes, I know that I have no life.)

Let me walk you through this:
This site has an interesting chart, showing you the National debt as a percentage of GDP.


Looking at the GDP of the nation in 1980 (when Jimmy Carter left office), it was $2.725 trillion dollars, or if you want to adjust them to the year 2000 inflated dollars, $5.221 trillion. Government spending that year was $531 billion, ($1.017 trillion in 2000 dollars), or about one fifth of the economy.

In 2000, the year Clinton left office, the GDP was $9.629 trillion and Federal spending was $1.8 trillion (still about 1/5 of the economy).

In 2008, the GDP was $14.373 trillion ($13.366 in year 2000 dollars) and the FedGov budget was $2.9 trillion (still 1/5 of GDP).

Now look at what we spent in 2008, by turning to page 90: Social Security and Medicare is 37% of the budget, Social giveaway programs like Medicaid, welfare, and food stamps were 29% of the budget, and the stuff that the FedGov is actually supposed to be doing (provide for the common defense, yada, yada) was less than 25% of the total budget.

This means that we are pulling dead weight in our economy to the tune of $2 trillion a year, and it makes me wonder how long before the whole thing simply stops working.