At rescued banks, perks keep rolling

At rescued banks, perks keep rolling
Bosses benefit after bailout Fringe compensation rose 4 percent last year

By Tomoeh Murakami Tse
Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Jeffrey M. Peek, at left, and Kenneth D. Lewis each received more than $100,000 for personal use of corporate jets. Peek is chief executive of the troubled lender CIT, and Lewis runs Bank of America. Both lenders have received federal government support. (Mark Lennihan/associated Press)

NEW YORK — Even as the nation’s biggest financial firms were struggling and the federal government was spending hundreds of billions of dollars to save many of them, the companies as a group were boosting the perks and benefits they pay their chief executives.

The firms, accounting for more $350 billion in federal bailout funds, increased these perks and benefits 4 percent on average last year, according to an analysis of corporate disclosures filed in recent months.

Some chief executives, such as Kenneth D. Lewis of Bank of America and Jeffrey M. Peek of CIT Group, the major small-business lender now on the brink of bankruptcy, each received about $100,000 more than a year earlier for personal use of corporate jets. Others saw an increase in the value of chauffeured services, parking or personal security.

Ralph W. Babb Jr., chief executive of Dallas-based lender Comerica, was compensated for a new country club membership, with an initiation fee and dues of more than $200,000. GMAC Financial Services chief executive Alvaro de Molina benefited from a $2.5 million payment from his company to help cover his personal tax bill.

Government scrutiny

“You would have thought that this would be the moment when everyone said, ‘Okay, the perks have got to stop — at least while we’re indebted to the government,’ ” said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library. “But that didn’t happen.”
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This year may turn out to be different. In June, the Treasury Department prohibited companies receiving bailout funds from reimbursing senior executives for their personal tax payments.

In the meantime, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration official assigned to set pay for top executives at seven of the companies receiving the most help, plans to curtail perks such as country club fees when he rules on compensation later this month, according to people familiar with the matter. Perks worth more than $25,000 are getting particular scrutiny from Feinberg.

On average, the chief executives at 29 of the largest public financial companies that have taken bailout funds received perks and benefits worth more than $380,000 in 2008, according to compensation figures included in annual proxy statements and supplied by Equilar, a compensation data services firm. Individually, about half the banks increased their fringe benefits to the top executives. The figures do not include relocation costs and related taxes, typically one-time fees that can skew year-over-year comparisons.

In contrast to the 4 percent average increase in perks and benefits at these companies, the average awarded to top executives at non-financial companies in the Fortune 100 declined by more than 7 percent over the same period, according to Equilar.

Personal use of corporate aircraft and “gross-ups” — when the company pays taxes due on bonuses or other benefits — represented more than half of the $11 million in non-cash pay awarded to the 29 chief executives in 2008. Among the more common perks were company cars and drivers, as well as personal financial and tax-planning services.

Although perks represent a relatively small portion of an executive’s overall compensation package, they have been targeted some shareholders who argue that these fringe benefits are meant largely to stroke the egos of top company brass.

“These executives are already well compensated,” said Daniel Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO’s office of investment. “The notion that some of these folks can’t even leave a nickel on the floor, that they want to take every last dime and put it on the company card really rubs people the wrong way but points to a larger problem of lack of independence at the board.”

Some banks, mindful of the popular resentment over the government’s $700 billion bailout of banks and other financial companies, have eliminated certain perks. And a few executives have voluntarily given up benefits that lawmakers have criticized as excessive. At Bank of America, for instance, senior executives will no longer use corporate jets for personal travel starting this year, a bank spokesman said.

Still, some companies that have taken away perks are making it up to executives by boosting their pay. SunTrust Banks eliminated most executive perks in 2008, including financial planning services, club memberships and payment of taxes on the perks, according to a corporate filing. But the bank also noted that “base pay increases were made in 2008 to offset this reduction in perks.”

A spokesman for SunTrust, a recipient of $4.9 billion in government funds, said in an e-mail that the bank seeks to “maintain an executive compensation framework that is competitive, appropriate and consistent with industry practice, and we periodically make adjustments in line with that goal.”

Corporations have long defended perks as necessary for attracting and retaining talented executives. They also say some perks — corporate jets and chauffeured drivers, for example — are provided for security and to ensure that executives can work efficiently. In fact, it is not uncommon for companies to mandate that their chief executive use the corporate jet and car for all travel. American Express is one such company. Last year, it provided its chief executive, Kenneth I. Chenault, with $415,000 in corporate jet travel for personal reasons, as well as $201,000 for a home security system and $46,000 for security during personal trips.
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A spokesperson for American Express declined to comment. The company’s proxy statement says it eliminated tax gross-ups as of 2008.

GMAC said it had stopped using its corporate aircraft altogether after receiving a federal bailout in late 2008 and that de Molina, its chief executive, had declined a year-end bonus for 2008. He did receive a nearly $6 million award earlier in the year, however, and GMAC covered the taxes due on that bonus.

De Molina, a former executive at Bank of America who arrived at GMAC in 2007 and became its chief executive in April 2008, was “instrumental in leading the company through an incredibly challenging period and successfully executed a series of actions to stabilize the company,” said Gina Proia, a company spokeswoman.

CIT, which cut its staff by 22 percent in 2008, declined to comment. Representatives for Comerica did not return phone calls.

Today’s somewhat random thoughts….

Today’s thoughts….

Basically we are all moving too fast in our lives these days.

Working longer hours for less pay and even lesser appreciation for our efforts and sacrifices.

Banks and Government have been screwing us all for years.

It’s time to fight back by slowing down.

Start doing things with your friends and family again.
Plant a vegetable garden, read a book, play a board game or just sit around and talk.
Talk to your loved ones.
Ask your elders about how they lived without the internet and all this technology that was created to make life easier..

I know I have a better appreciation for my Grandparents generation.
They went through World Wars.
They went through Depression Eras.
They grew gardens.
They preserved, pickled and jarred foods.
They had less plastic in their homes.
They recycled for a common good.

It’s time we step back and look at what’s important and not just ‘ What the Joneses are doing ‘.

Does your kid really need ‘ play dates ‘ and ‘ a schedule ‘. Gimme a break. Let your kids just play!

The mandatory two income family created by Baby Boomers has caused more harm to the everyday family – than good.

Hardship is everywhere and it needs to stop.
Slow it down.
If enough of us tell the upper 1% to piss off and not pay our bills, what would happen?

Time to take it back.

Foreclosures Force Ex-Homeowners to Turn to Shelters

By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: October 18, 2009

CLEVELAND — The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom.

The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car.

But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.

In the Midwest, foreclosure played a role for 15 percent of newly homeless people, according to the survey, reflecting soaring rates of unemployment — Ohio’s reached 10.8 percent in August — and aggressive lending to people with damaged credit.

At a shelter for women and children run by the West Side Catholic Center in Cleveland, where Ms. West now lives, foreclosure accounted for zero arrivals in 2007, the center’s executive director, Gerald Skoch, said. Last year, two cases emerged. This year, the number has already reached four.

Similar increases have been reported at shelters in California, Michigan and Florida, where a combination of joblessness and the real estate bust have generated unusually severe rates of foreclosure.

Most people who become homeless because of foreclosure had been low-income renters whose landlords stopped making their mortgage payments, leaving them scrambling for new housing with little notice and scant savings, according to the survey and interviews with shelters.

But in recent months, there has been a visible increase in the number of former homeowners showing up in shelters. Like Ms. West, most have landed there after months trying to stave off that fate.

“These families never needed help before,” said Larry Haynes, executive director of Mercy House in Santa Ana, Calif. “They haven’t a clue about where to go, and they have all sorts of humiliation issues. They don’t even know what to say, what to ask for.”

Many start off camping out in cars, particularly in warmer places.

“We’ve seen a rise in people sleeping in their cars,” said Rick Cole, city manager in Ventura, Calif., which recently allowed car-camping in designated areas. “Some are foreclosed former homeowners, and some couldn’t afford their rent. People will give up their house before they give up their car.”

Those with means try to rent homes or apartments, though tainted credit often makes that impossible. Growing numbers are landing in motels that rent by the week, cramming whole families into single rooms and using hot plates as kitchens. But as unemployment expands, many are losing the wherewithal to remain.

Many take refuge with families and friends, occupying extra bedrooms, basements and attics. But such hospitality rarely lasts.

So, as lean times endure and paychecks disappear, homeless shelters are absorbing those who have run out of alternatives.

For Ms. West, whose youthful appearance belies her age, in her mid-50s, the nights spent on couches in other people’s homes were uncomfortably familiar. She grew up an only child in a housing project in Neptune, N.J., where her mother slept in the lone bedroom, and she occupied a pullout sofa in the living room.

“I’ve always had this dream of doing better,” she said. “I always wanted to own my own house.”

She realized that dream shortly after arriving in Cleveland with her husband and two children in the early 1990s. At first, they rented. But one fall afternoon, Ms. West found herself on a block lined with leafy trees in Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood east of the Cuyahoga River that was a magnet for middle-class black families like hers. Red brick homes with wooden porches sat on ample lots. Public schools were a few blocks away.

When she saw an ad in the Sunday paper offering a house on that very block, she bought it for $45,000; for the $9,000 down payment she used the savings her mother had left her when she died. She and her husband assumed the mortgage from the previous owner, with affordable payments of less than $400 a month.

Ms. West then had a job as a maintenance worker at an apartment complex for about $9 an hour. Her husband earned about $10 an hour as a truck driver. As the years passed, they added shrubbery to the front yard and photos of children’s birthday parties to the walls.

“I thought that was going to be my house,” she said.

She tapped her inheritance to buy another house on nearby Union Street, paying $15,000 in cash for a light-blue, vinyl-sided A-frame. She turned the house into a home for five homeless people. She did their laundry, reminded them to take their medications and cooked meals, while collecting payments of up to $750 a person each month from the agencies that placed them.

Over the years, Ms. West and her husband spent more than they earned. They used credit cards to finance restaurant meals. They bought a new S.U.V.

At the group home, Ms. West’s compensation slipped as the state limited benefit payments. Yet every month brought the same thicket of bills — water, electricity, gas, plus food for the people under her charge.

In 2001, Ms. West and her husband took out a $67,000 mortgage on the Union Street house — which had increased considerably in value — to refinance high-interest debts, assuming payments of nearly $700 a month.

Two years later, her husband left her.

“It just took the life out me,” she said. “I was in a very bad state, a very depressed situation. Things just kind of went downhill. I just didn’t care anymore.”

By 2005, she was broke. She sold the brick house to her cousin, disbanded the group home and moved in. She paid what bills she could through temporary jobs as a signature collector for petition drives. But as many months passed without work, the bills piled up past due.

By the next year, terse letters were coming from the mortgage company — notices of delinquency, then threats of foreclosure. Much of the neighborhood was in a similar state. Broken windows sat unrepaired at a two-story apartment block across the street, where tattered curtains flapped in the breeze. The city boarded up abandoned homes to deter vagrants, drug addicts and prostitutes.

Ms. West wrote to her mortgage company, seeking lower payments. But with tainted credit and no full-time job, she was not a candidate for a deal. Fliers beckoned with relief as companies offered to negotiate with her lender for lower payments. But when she called, the companies demanded upfront payments as high as $500.

“I told them, ‘if I had that money, I wouldn’t be going into foreclosure,’ ” she said.

In the spring of 2008, Ms. West accepted an offer from the mortgage company: move out, hand over the keys and collect $2,500. She sold what furniture she could and put the rest on the street — tables, beds, a couch.

Her uncle had said she could stay with him for a while. But when she called him to say she was on the way, he told her that his girlfriend was uncomfortable with the arrangement. Ms. West’s daughter was in a cramped rented house with her boyfriend and her two children. Her son was in a rooming house.

So Ms. West, a stylish woman with a penchant for shiny lipstick and glittering jewelry, wound up camping in her car. She listened to the radio to drown out the voices of prostitutes trawling the street. She meditated. (“Just blank out everything in your mind,” she said. “Just go to a place that’s peaceful, like a beach.”) She prayed.

“It was scary,” she said. “Here I am, alone, and I don’t have nowhere to go.”

The next day, she moved in with a friend, remaining there for about three months. For several more months, she stayed with the cousin who had bought her old brick house and was living there with her husband and seven children. Toys lay scattered across the floor. The walls vibrated with music, television and the sounds of children. She lay awake on the couch, a vagabond in the one place that had once felt so solid.

“I was losing my mind,” she said.

She was grateful to be inside — particularly during the Cleveland winter — yet never comfortable or stable enough to plan beyond the next day.

“You know in the back of your mind that people don’t really want you there,” she said.

Sometimes, she lived out of her car, spending days at the public library, where she washed up in the restroom and used a computer to scan meager job listings.

Finally, a woman she met on the street took her in and helped her formulate a recovery plan. She signed up for food stamps. She enrolled at a community college in a three-month, state-financed training program that would give her a certificate for an entry-level job in biotechnology, putting her in position to earn as much as $16 an hour.

In September, she got a bed at the homeless shelter, reluctantly accepting that she needed her own space to re-establish her life.

“I never wanted to go to the shelter because of the stigma,” she said. “I’m a very independent person. I felt like I got myself into this situation, and I’ve got to get myself out. But I knew I couldn’t just keep going back and forth and staying with these people and not moving forward with my life.”

She sleeps in a twin bed with a flower-print duvet, in a small room painted lavender. Her plants line the windowsill. She keeps to herself, reading motivational books, as she prepares to start classes next month.

She is working again, taking care of senior citizens in their homes part time, and saving money.

By December, she will exhaust the shelter’s 90-day limit, so she is hurrying to line up a house to rent while arranging a subsidy through the West Side Catholic Center.

She is still shaken by the past and anxious about the future, but she is again looking ahead.

“I do want to eventually own a house again,” she said. “That’s the American dream. That’s what everybody wants.”

Here is information for you to use in filing complaints against eBay/Paypal.

Here is information for you to use in filing complaints against eBay/Paypal. It was provided by Ming the Merciless a blogger and user on http://www.auctionbytes.com

1. US Department of Justice (DoJ)
Anti Trust Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
E-mail: antitrust.atr@usdoj.gov

How to submit a complaint:

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm

Recommend Sherman Anti Trust Act and Clayton Anti Trust Act violation complaints; restraint of trade, numerous violations of the agreement between DoJ and Ebay in 2002 regarding PayPal use on ebay and the multitude of PayPal abuse of sellers and their money.

2. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Consumer Response Center
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580

Mission: The Federal Trade Commission is the nation’s consumer protection agency. The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection works For The Consumer to prevent fraud, deception, and unfair business practices in the marketplace.

The Bureau:

Enhances consumer confidence by enforcing federal laws that protect consumers

Empowers consumers with free information to help them exercise their rights and spot and avoid fraud and deception

Wants to hear from consumers who want to get information or file a complaint about fraud or identity theft

To report a company for a pattern and practice of suspected fraud:

1-877-382-4357

The FTC doe NOT resolve individual consumer complaints. Please confine your remarks whether verbal or written to ebay/PayPal policies you believe are illegal.

Online fraud complaint form:

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

Suggest constant bait and switch schemes, aiding and abetting of buyer fraud, illegal deprivation of seller property, etc, etc.

3. Securities and Exchange Commission
SEC Complaint Center
100 F Street NE
Washington, D.C. 20549-0213

http://www.sec.gov/divisions/enforce.shtml

(above link includes information about insider trading and sending tips and complaints

1. Insider trading: http://www.sec.gov/divisions/enforce/insider.htm
2. Tips and Complaints: http://www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml

Online complaint forms: http://www.sec.gov/complaint/selectconduct.shtml

Hypthetically, if I were filing an SEC complaint, I’d strongly consider:

–False or misleading statements about a company (including false or misleading SEC reports or financial statements)

– Stock price manipulation to enrich executive with stock options? Note that ebay has had several consecutive quarterly losses yet their stock has more than doubled and they’ve been buying up their own stock.

– More insider trading like Neg Meg Whitman was caught doing?

– Employees like Richard Brwer-Hay issuing incorrect and misleading public statements that could easily have the effect of deceiving investors (he was caught once, rememeber?)

5. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)
Chairman
House Energy and Commerce Committee
2204 Rayburn
House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Telephone (202) 225-3976
Fax (202) 225-4099

LOS ANGELES OFFICE
8436 West Third Street, Ste 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Telephone 1 (310) 652-3095
Telephone 2 (818) 878-7400
Telephone 3 (323) 651-1040
Fax (323) 655-0502

http://waxman.house.gov/

6. Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Consumer Protection Division
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550
(916) 322-3360

http://ag.ca.gov/contact/complaint_form.php?cmplt=CL

R>
7. Attorney General’s Office
2115 State Capitol
Lincoln, NE 68509
Consumer Protection Division: 800) 727-6432

Online complaint form: http://www.ago.ne.gov/consumer/emailforms/consumer_complaint.htm

R>Specific consumer complaints to the Attorney Generals against ebay/PayPal should be directed to the California and Nebraska
Attorney general’s Office Divison of Consumer complaints. Complaints could include PayPal holds on seller funds, ebay billing issues, PayPal confiscation of seller property, etc. PayPal complaints should be directed to both attorney generals’ office, and
ebay complaints should be sent to California.

General comments:

– Emails and phone calls are fine, but SNAIL MAIL has more impact. PLEASE send all complaints with regular USPS mail.

– When filing and mailing WRITTEN complaints, spring for an extra envelope and stamp and send a copy to the San Jose Better Bureau. Little will come of it, BUT ebay MUST file a written response.

– Rep. Waxman has the ability to hold public hearings on the conduct of a business or industry. He has the power to subpoena executives past and present, past and present rank and file employees, and records. Consider the possibilities

8. San Jose Better Business Bureau
1112 S. Bascom Ave.
San Jose, CA 95128
Phone: (408) 278-7400

9. Ebay operates in all 50 states. Therefore sending copies of complaints or filing directly with your state’s attorney general’s office will make a difference if they receive enough complaints. Your can find your attorney general and consumer protection
information by using a search engine using these keywords (Your state) Attorney General Consumer Protection.

Please post this information on every relevant website and blog — especially TV news, newspaper, financial, and business media blogs and websites. This information should be posted in hundreds of location on a daily basis for maximum and persistent exposure. Remember that certain corporations hire people to disrupt blogs and that includes spamming them to bury
unwelcome messages.

10. Michael Moore

http:///www.michaelmoore.com

mike@michaelmoore.com

Michael can do for ebay what he did for GM and do it all over again!

Layoff Tracker

5 Essential Green Living Skills Our Grandparents Knew

We’re losing the skills our grandparents once had – green skills we need to know today.

By Derek Markham

Our grandparent’s generation didn’t use the word green to describe their lifestyle, but many of the things they knew how to do are now considered to be green living skills. Using those old-time green skills can not only save you money, but can also help to preserve our planet’s precious resources.

1. Organic Gardening: Planting a kitchen garden or Victory Garden was an essential skill for supplying fresh food with high nutritional value at a low cost. And they didn’t choose to grow organically, as that was how everyone gardened. For those without much space, a community garden is a great alternative, or for city-dwellers, try a fire-escape garden, like Mike in NYC.

2. Food Preservation: Many people used to can or dry the produce from their garden to ensure their winter food supply, or they had a cold storage area to keep root vegetables, winter squash, and fruits like apples through the fall and winter. Local Ag Extension offices and Master Gardeners can help you find classes about canning food safely.

3. Seed Saving: Saving garden seeds for next year’s planting was an important task in the past, and seeds of the heirloom varieties of vegetables they grew were like money in the bank. With cheap garden seeds widely available, and the advent of highly hybridized varieties, it isn’t as popular anymore, but you can learn how to save seeds pretty quickly.

4. Cooking from Scratch: Buying pre-made packaged foods wasn’t affordable for most folks, and the variety available in stores was much less then it is now. Starting a meal with basic ingredients was a normal part of life back then, but sadly, many of us are not able to make a meal without it coming out of a box or a can. Baking your own sourdough bread is a great skill to have, and homemade bread can be made for a fraction of the price of store-bought bread.

5. Sewing: Patching old clothes and sewing your own clothing was an essential skill for those living on a low budget, but it’s rare nowadays to find someone who still knows how to do that. For parents, knowing how to take in clothes for younger kids, or patch the knees of pants can save quite a bit of money and resources. Our grandparents also knew how to darn socks, and I have yet to meet someone who still knows how to do that.

Woman Blames Bank Of America For Husband’s Death

The Huffington Post | Julian Hattem
First Posted: 10- 8-09 04:44 PM | Updated: 10- 8-09 06:32 PM

As part of the Huffington Post’s efforts to bear witness to the effects of the current economic environment on ordinary Americans, we’re rounding up some of the most compelling stories reported by local news organizations around the country.

Darleen Burbridge, a widow in Staten Island, New York, blames her husband’s fatal heart attack on stress from dealing with a bad mortgage, reports Karen O’Shea of Staten Island’s SI Live. Her late husband, John, died after months of struggling to change their mortgage plan once Darleen was laid off.

The two struggled to keep up with their payments, even borrowing money from their son, who also lost his job this year. In May they missed their first mortgage payment. In June John had a heart attack as he was getting ready for work. Darleen blamed the stress and anxiety caused by Bank of America’s unresponsiveness to their repeated efforts to get a loan modification.. “I hold you responsible for killing my husband,” she told them. She is still fighting to hold onto her house.

Burbridge now owes more than the home is worth, but has since acquired the assistance of state Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island), whose office has seen an uptick in calls for help. The bank maintains that it is continuing to work with Burbridge to finance her home.
******

Kassy Fatooh and her husband had a good life. Then, reports Chris
Colin of SF Gate, everything fell apart. First her husband lost his job. Then the two divorced. Then Fatooh and her two children got sick with mono, which turned into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for her and her teenage son. This turned into fibromyalgia, a condition that causes pain and extreme reactions to physical pressure. The medical bills piled up, Fatooh became too ill to continue going to work and, before long, the bank foreclosed on her house.

Now she and the children are living in a friend’s mother’s house. Fatooh, who lives in the county with the highest per-capita income in the nation, has been considering moving into a campground after being placed on a three-year-long waiting list for the county housing authority’s affordable housing units. Too many people are in her position, she said, and the lines for assistance are too long.

“I hear the recession is over,” she said, “but I don’t see that.”

******

Kenneth and Diane “Dee” Hetrick, of North Canton, Ohio, were already struggling under thousands of dollars of medical bills from Kenneth’s muscular dystrophy. Then he lost his job and the bottom fell out. They filed for bankruptcy in 2005, reports Robert Want of the GateHouse
News Service, but were still lost and confused about how Kenneth could continue to receive treatment. A counselor at a local medical center suggested a solution: get divorced. If Kenneth Hetrick were single he would be eligible to qualify for Medicaid. So, knowing that it would help Kenneth with the medical support he desperately needed, they did. Not because they didn’t love each other, but so that he could continue to get treatment. (It’s not rare a suggestion as
it should be.)

“It was awful standing up there in divorce court saying I didn’t want to be married to the love of my life,” Dee Hetrick later wrote in an e-mail. “He has to sign a waiver at the hospital just so they can talk to me after his surgeries, because I’m not his wife!”

The strain of their debt turned into real relationship trouble, and earlier this year Kenneth moved out. What started as an administrative divorce to get him the medical care he needed turned into a real problem for a couple that just wanted to stay healthy. “I hope that the [health care] problem gets solved, so other people don’t have to live through what I’ve suffered through,” he said. “It don’t have to be this way.”
******

A couple near Martinsville, Ohio, are suing Bank of America for threatening to foreclose on their home. Gary Huffenberge of the Wilmington News Journal
reports that Michael and Tamara Florea have been paying their loan as agreed upon under a mortgage modification made in January with Countrywide Home Loans. Later that month Countrywide was acquired by the Bank of America, which allegedly ignored the modification.

According to the Floreas’ lawyers, Mrs. Florea made several calls to Bank of America and each person said the Floreas’ loan modification was still being processed. In late July, Mrs. Florea was told by phone that the Bank of America would initiate foreclosure proceedings if she and her husband did not pay the past due balance and resume monthly payments of $924.

The case is still underway, but on Tuesday the Floreas had a minor victory when a court barred the bank for filing foreclosure while the case is pending.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/woman-blames-bank-of-amer_n_314315.html

Maddow, Bernie Sanders Highlight Contradictions In Congress Targeting ACORN

When Congress rushed to stop sending federal money to ACORN in the wake of the prostitution scandal involving a few of their employees, Republicans wrote the bill so broadly that it applied to any organization that had been charged with breaking federal or state laws, as well as various lobbying and campaign finance laws. As HuffPost’s Ryan Grim wrote, “In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.”

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-Mn.), however, has introduced a bill called the ACORN act, which “respects the Constitution by requiring that a corporation be convicted of a felony before federal funds are cut off.” Since ACORN has yet to be convicted of a felony, they would still be eligible to receive federal funds. Massive corporations like the drug company Pfizer and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin would be cut off from government money (of which they receive far more than ACORN) because they have been convicted of defrauding the taxpayers (and still received new government contracts and payouts).

Senator Bernie Sanders has taken up this cause in the Senate, and he joins Rachel Maddow to discuss his attempts to get a grip on the Pentagon’s continued relationships with defense contractors that have abused the public’s trust.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/maddow-bernie-sanders-hig_n_310935.html

Betsy McCaughey, Dylan Ratigan Spar Over Health Care Reform

Betsy McCaughey is a famous liar whom the media keep inviting on their programs to continue to lie about health care, instead of banishing her to some wilderness, where she belongs, to lie to woodland creatures. And so, today she ended up on Dylan Ratigan’s Morning Meeting with Representative Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). There was a brief, mad moment where I thought that this might end well, but it didn’t.

I’m getting used to the tactics McCaughey deploys in situations like this: heavy-duty pretense that she supports health care reform, the Palin-esque answer-a-question-with-an-answer-to-a-question-of-her-liking technique, the ability to quickly provide information and opinion that’s completely beside the point, et cetera. Unfortunately, Ratigan wanted to have a discussion on health care competition and cost containment, and that didn’t dovetail too well with what McCaughey prefers to do in such a debate: set aside all substantive issues so that she can fearmonger about seniors being killed by the government.

McCaughey did her best, though, defaulting to the secondary position of insisting that there wasn’t enough tort reform in the bill. Ratigan was quick to point out that as a cost-containment measure, tort reform would be a spectacularly insignificant one: “Why would you start with tort reform when you have an aniti-trust exemption for insurance companies?” Weiner attempted to inject actual facts, noting that the CBO determined that eliminating 30 percent of all tort claims would yield marginal savings of .04 percent, because most of the states already cap tort claims.

And so, McCaughey just unleashed her SENIOR CITIZEN HEALTH CARE APOCALYPSE nonsense, accusing Weiner of being ignorant and telling Ratigan that he wasn’t a “fair moderator,” to which Ratigan replied, “Well, you’re not a fair answerer.” Ratigan gamely attempted to get McCaughey to reconcile how she’d continue to provide the current level of unsustainable funding to Medicare without updating the system to address its inefficiencies, to no avail.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/betsy-mccaughey-dylan-rat_n_311044.html

Rachel Maddow confronts notorious corporate lobbyist Rick Berman

Rachel Maddow confronted notorious corporate lobbyist Rick Berman over his advocacy for corporate interests that are at best extremely questionable, and at worst downright detrimental to the public’s health.

Rick Berman is responsible for such “educational” websites as FishScam.com, a site dedicated to informing readers that high mercury levels in fish are not bad for you, as well as SunLightScam.com, which claims that tanning beds pose no health hazards. Berman runs his operation through non-profits so he can hide the identities of those paying him to, say, advocate that trans fats can actually unclog your arteries.

One of Berman’s specialties is creating fake grass-roots websites and movements, most recently against ACORN, that claim to be representing the average outraged American but in fact are far more likely to be funded by corporations looking to obscure the truth.

Berman, to his credit, calmly made his case (after a lengthy and fairly damning introduction from Maddow) that he simply represents one side and is trying to balance the debate. He also defended his use of non-profits to conceal the identities of his donors as something that happens on both the right and the left, framing it as a free speech issue.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/rachel-maddow-confronts-n_n_312334.html