Who’s Afraid of the Tea Party, or, What Are Those Silly People Talking About?

At a Rand Paul rally, a woman who intended to present Paul with an ironic award (Employee of the Month from RepubliCorps) was assaulted by Paul supporters, shoved to the ground, and then stepped on. Police had nothing to do with this, it was all the supporters of one of the Tea Party leading lights. What they thought she intended to do may never be known, but they kept their candidate safe from the possibility of enduring satire and questions not drawn from the current playbook of independent American politics. Another Tea Party candidate, Steve Broden of Texas, has allowed that armed rebellion is not “off the table” should the mid-term elections not go their way. Sharron Angle of Nevada alluded to “second amendment remedies” in a number of interviews in the past six months. “Our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason, and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government,” Angle told conservative talk show host Lars Larson in January. “In fact, Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” Next to this kind of rhetoric, the vapidity of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware is more or less harmless and amusing. In a recent debate with her opponent she appeared not to know that the much-debated Separation Clause is in the First Amendment. Of course, a close hearing of that exchange suggests that what she was looking for was the exact phrase “separation of Church and State” which is not in the First Amendment. She thought she had won that exchange, as, apparently, did her staff, and they expressed dismay later when they were portrayed as having lost. The best you could give her is points for trying to make a point through disingenuous literalism. Not understanding the case law that has been built on the phrase that is in the First Amendment does not argue well for her qualifications to even have an opinion on the matter. Leading this apparently unself-critical menagerie is Sarah Palin, who despite having a dismal record in office and a clear problem with stringing sentences together has become the head cheerleader for a movement that seems poised to upset elements of both parties in the midterms. It’s one thing to throw darts and poke fun at the candidates, many of whom sound as if they have drawn their history from the John Wayne school of Hollywood hagiography and propaganda. But the real question is why so many people seem to support them. A perusal of the Tea Party website shows a list of issues over which supposedly grass roots concern is fueling the angry election season. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingWho’s Afraid of the Tea Party, or, What Are Those Silly People Talking About?

On A Christian Nation

Polls recently indicate that more and more Americans link being an American with being a Christian. Yet the consensus on what this actually means is as nonexistent as ever. We hear a lot about how this country was founded on "Christian principles" and that the Founders wanted this to be a "Christian nation." Yet with a few exceptions, most folks would likely chafe horribly should be actually try to return to anything close what that meant in 1787. The question of what the Founders intended is an interesting one, since even cursory research produces conflicting statements on both sides. Many of the most prominent clearly felt that what they had wrought in the Constitution was a device for keeping religion from distorting government. They intended, it seems, that people as individuals should decide for themselves, within a private sphere, how to believe and subsequently how to worship. The government, they claimed, should not be permitted to interfere with that. The question, of course, is whether they intended this to be the case in the other direction. In a way, it's a ridiculous question. How do you prevent an individual's religious ideas from informing his or her political actions? You don't. However the individual believes, that is what will be taken to the polls. All such questions may be similarly addressed---what goes on within your skull is yours and the government cannot interfere with it. But public displays, judicial acts, and legislation ought to be free of overt religious sentiment. Passing laws should be based on common welfare---if an exhortation to god is necessary to make a law seem "right" then that law is not Constitutional. It has to make secular sense. But the issue is muddy, because the same Framers often talked about christian principles and the common bonds of christian community, at least in private, and often in speeches. Is this a contradiction? I believe not. The problem is, the idea as currently framed and debated is simply out of context, not broad enough. What did it mean to be part of a christian community in 1787? That everyone went to church, prayed the same way, believed in the same god or description of god? At that time, I suspect, "christian community" was a label for a total package of cultural markers. One didn't have to believe overtly in any specific christian doctrine in order to accept social ideas about what made a community. Being a christian was a political, social, and economic condition as much if not more than a religious conviction. While you might not pray in that church down the street, you would defend it and move easily in the externalized community around it. What would this have meant in practice? [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingOn A Christian Nation

It’s in the First Amendment

This exchange between Republican Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell and her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, is surreal. Here's how it went, as reported by CBS News:

Coons said that creationism, which he considers "a religious doctrine," should not be taught in public schools due to the Constitution's First Amendment. He argued that it explicitly enumerates the separation of church and state. "The First Amendment does?" O'Donnell asked. "Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?" "Government shall make no establishment of religion," Coons responded, reciting from memory the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Coons was off slightly: The first amendment actually reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.") "That's in the First Amendment...?" O'Donnell responded.
I thought this had to be a spoof from the Onion when I first read it, but you can watch the video if you want proof--if you can stand to watch it. I do sympathize with Chris Coons. This is also a tragedy for America. All of the candidates running for office should be be best and the brightest. They should be familiar with the facts regarding the issues on which they opine. O'Donnell seems to have the factual competency of a fourth grader.

Continue ReadingIt’s in the First Amendment

A Celebration of the Book

What follows is a public service announcement. I’m taking some time to put on my President’s hat and talk about our upcoming event. We’re a week away from the Celebration. October 23rd at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. If you’ve been reading this blog any length of time, then you know about my involvement. For the last 8 1/2 years I’ve been working for it, trying to make it better, five of those years as president. We’ve done some pretty cool things in that time. The Missouri Center for the Book has, like most such organizations, been undergoing some ups and downs the last few years. We have been reorganizing in order to be a more vital part of the literary and reading community in Missouri. Among the things that we have done over the last few years is the establishment of the Poet Laureate office for the state. We are instrumental in running the program and selecting the candidates for the post every two years. The program has been very popular. We also continue to run the state Letters About Literature Awards for students. Every year we send representatives to the National Book Festival. And we put on our annual Celebration. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingA Celebration of the Book

An outrageous prediction regarding millions of illegal foreclosures conducted by banks

We now know that many of the “foreclosure experts” who were signing many thousands (perhaps millions) of affidavits that allowed banks to kick delinquent homeowners out of their homes were utterly unqualified to understand the sorts of technical information they were spewing while under oath. In short, the banks were allowing and requiring incompetent employees to lie under oath in order to allow foreclosures to go forward:

In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says. In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.

Even under the assumption that many or most of these homeowners were actually delinquent, this is incredibly disturbing. Richard H. Neiman, New York's top bank regulator and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel, a federal bailout watchdog, has expressed concern:

"In recent days, it has become apparent that a number of mortgage loan servicers have submitted affidavits or other foreclosure documents that appear to have procedural defects," the Conference of State Bank Supervisors said in a statement. "In addition, many affidavits may have been signed without a notary public being present.

NPR has provided a more detailed description about the kind of people who served as “robo-signers”:

ARNOLD: [T]his GMAC employee told him that even though he was supposed to be certifying the accuracy of the documents in a homeowner's file... Mr. COX: He said he that doesn't look at them. He doesn't bother to go search them out in the computer to look at them. ARNOLD: And Cox said the sheer volume of foreclosures appeared to make doing a thorough job impossible. Stefan testified he's signing between eight and 10,000 documents a month. Mr. COX: That works out to be about one a minute. Some of those loan files contain a hundred or more documents. ARNOLD: Housing advocates call employees like this robo-signers. They say they barely have a chance to glance at all the documents that they're asked to sign.

These fraudulent foreclosure cases are hitting the courts all over. And they should, because many of these homeowners were lied to on the way in (about "yield spread premiums" and exploding ARM's and hidden penalties), and now they (and the courts) are being lied to on the way out. In fact, based on my personal experience as a consumer lawyer, the lies on the way in, and the shodding servicing, led to the foreclosure. Here’s a synopsis of a lawsuit filed Oct 1, 2010 by Center for Responsible Lending:

Five Maine residents filed a complaint today against GMAC Mortgage, LLC (GMAC) on behalf of themselves and a class of Maine homeowners, alleging that the company routinely and systematically files false certifications that it has a right to foreclose on Maine homeowners, and false affidavits when asking courts to enter foreclosure judgments.

The homeowners complain that GMAC files these false documents knowing that the courts in Maine will rely on them in deciding whether foreclosures can go forward and in allowing GMAC to sell their homes. Depositions of GMAC employees revealed that they do not verify the truth of information necessary to give GMAC the right to foreclose when they sign these court documents and that these improper practices have been in place since at least 2004.

This situation is horrendous. It justifies impolite synonyms for banks: house-jackers. Banksters. If you cringe at this language and consider it overbroad, ask yourself whether "innocent" bankers knew of this problem and whether they often discussed it at the country club with the evil bankers. And they didn't step up and report it. Consider also that the banks so often preach the importance of the “letter of the law” when slapping huge fees and penalties on home-owners, even when the homeowners are only a day late with their payments. Now here are those same banks, absolutely unable to establish a chain of title necessary for a foreclosure, but they utterly don’t give a rat's ass about the letter of the law, because this archaic rule (letter of the law) is now a burden to the banks. From the perspective of the banks, the solution to the problem that they can't figure out how to establish their case in the context of the convoluted system that they themselves created, is to systematically lie under oath. Over and over and over. And now that the banks have been caught by the national media, and because the media is paying attention, the politicians also need to pay attention to this problem, and everything has become awkward for the banks. Very Inconvenient. They might have to pay big money to send thousands of lobbyists to Congress to fix this problem. And then they will have to jack up their rates and penalties and other tricks and traps to pay for those lobbyists. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingAn outrageous prediction regarding millions of illegal foreclosures conducted by banks