Why can't we bail out the homeowners

Who would then pay off the bank loans and everybody would be happy?

Brave New Foundation Asks 1.3 Million Supporters to Urge Congress to Pass 'Helping Families Save Their Homes' Act

LOS ANGELES - Yesterday, Brave New Foundation asked its email list of 1.3 million people to call their Congressional Representatives and ask them to support H.R. 1106, Rep. John Conyers' new bill authorizing judges to modify home loans in bankruptcy proceedings.

As part of its "Fighting For Our Homes" campaign, Brave New Foundation has released a new online documentary video featuring a former subprime lender speaking anonymously about the mortgage sales industry, describing club promoters and drug dealers being hired and trained to deliberately mislead people into taking out loans they could not afford.

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNBqP5j1FZQ

Over the last several weeks, Brave New Foundation's "Fighting For Our Homes" campaign has collected dozens of stories in text and video of people all over the country who are impacted by the housing meltdown. These stories are aggregated at FightingForOurHomes.com, a website that seeks to put a human face on the foreclosure crisis.

Now, the Fighting For Our Homes campaign is encouraging people to take action in support of struggling homeowners.

Congressman John Conyers, the author of the new bill, was recently interviewed by Brave New Foundation about his legislation in a state-of-the-art newscast that appeared exclusively online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9GTqpTKddk

Prior to that interview, Rep. Marcy Kaptur from Ohio also spoke to Brave New Foundation about the foreclosure crisis, stating that if not repaired soon, the housing crisis "will crush finance in this country for years to come." See video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHl_tXvBmO4&feature=channel_page

Contact:

Nathan Havey
310-204-0448 x231
nhavey@bravenewfoundation.org

Medicare For All

Petition

Dear Representative,

I urge you to co-sponsor H.R. 676, the "Medicare For All" Bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers.

Our health care system is broken. We have nearly 50 million citizens with no health coverage, and at least 18,000 of them die unnecessarily each year as a result. Millions more have inadequate insurance coverage.

Every other industrialized country in the world makes sure its population has access to basic healthcare. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee access to health care as a human right.

28 industrialized nations have single payer universal health care systems like the type proposed in this bill - privately delivered health care, publicly financed - and none spend as much per capita on health care as the United States. The United States ranks near the bottom among industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy (20th) to infant mortality (23rd).

Under H.R. 676, a family of four making the median income of $56,200 would pay about $2,700 in payroll tax for all health care costs. No deductibles, no co-pays, no worrying about catastrophic coverage.

The services covered include primary care, inpatient, outpatient and emergency hospital care, prescription drugs, durable medical equipment, hearing, dental and vision care, chiropractic treatment, mental health services, and long-term care.

Physicians for a National Health Program estimates the nation could save over $286 billion dollars a year in total health care costs. That's enough to cover all the uninsured and provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone in the United States.

No other issue so directly impacts Americans. Please sign on to co-sponsor this vital bill. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

(link via Hipparchia of Over The Cliff, Onto The Rocks)

If we don't address it

It will come back, and next time with unchallenged precedent.

(click pic for source)

I get an email from Credo Action:

We are already making great progress in moving forward on President Obama's agenda — but the memory remains of a president and vice president whose disregard for our founding principles will be their true historical legacy.

On January 6th, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers introduced House Resolution 104, "to establish a national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties."

The bill would impanel a Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate potential crimes and Constitutional violations committed by the Bush Administration under the seemingly impenetrable curtain of "unreviewable war powers." The commission would be comprised of non-governmental experts on the relevant subject matter, and it would have the subpoena powers necessary to do their important work.

We have progressive majorities in both houses of Congress and a progressive in the White House. So why is H.R. 104 buried in committee?

This is a critically important piece of legislation — without it, we may never know the breadth of crimes committed by Bush Administration officials, what lengths they went to in order to dupe the public into a war that has cost thousands of lives, or how many innocent men and women have been kidnapped and tortured and denied due process in violation of both the Geneva Convention and our own Constitution. Additionally, the legislation would only cost $3 million — pocket change in the world of Congressional appropriations.

Americans deserve to know the truth about the Bush Administration's alleged crimes — and we need to make sure no president ever repeats them. We are hopeful about the future, but that does not mean we can afford not to be vigilant about our past.

Click here to ask your member of Congress to co-sponsor H.R. 104 — the more co-sponsors we get, the better our chances of passing this crucial legislation.

Thank you for working to build a better world.

Kate Stayman-London, Campaign Manager


We need to know the truth.

CREDO approves H.R. 104, which establishes a commission to investigate whether the Bush Administration violated any laws — or even the Constitution.

Do it because I say so

No longer seems to work for Georgie and his cabal.

Bryan of Why Now? explains:

In his Saturday liar-side chat™, the Shrubbery complained that the surveillance law needs to keep up with technology. What he was probably looking for was cover for some of the illegal activities that the cheney-bots have been up to for years.

He apparently thought that Congress was going to rubber-stamp a law to help him, but what he got was a response from a veteran of political battles, John Conyers: Committee demanding details of NSA data-mining.

Gee, you mean governing actually means being accountable and explaining yourself to people? I think they haven't yet gotten the memo.

Sorghum Crow of Sorghum Crow's General Store detects a pattern.

Contempt charges passed in the House

Reading the final line of the quote, I get the mental picture of the Bush cabal hunkered down in the White House yelling out the window, "Yer never gonna git me, sheriff! I owns the judge!" (my bold):

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.

The 22-17 party-line vote - which would sanction for pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors - advanced the citation to the full House.

A senior Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the House itself likely would take up the citations after Congress' August recess. The official declined to speak on the record because no date had been set for the House vote.

Committee Chairman John Conyers said the panel had nothing to lose by advancing the citations because it could not allow presidential aides to flout Congress' authority. Republicans warned that a contempt citation would lose in federal court even if it got that far.

Anything that the boyking touches

Is covered under executive privilege:

In a letter to the RNC, Emmet Flood, a special counsel to President Bush, “today again raised the possibility of an executive-privilege claim on e-mails and other documents from private e-mail accounts used by senior White House officials” but controlled by the RNC. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) called the request “extreme and unnecessary” and said it was “a clear attempt, on the Administration’s part, to delay this process and keep the wheels of Justice turning slowly.”

I don't think it works that way, Georgie. Hand over those emails and back away slowly....

Greg Palast exposes the mini-Rovian tactics of Timothy Griffin, a new US Attorney thanks to the Patriot Act

Greg Palast:

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush's firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn't bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove's assistant, the President's pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin's hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn't mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos.

However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of sending the emails - potential evidence of a crime - to email addresses ending with the domain name "@GeorgeWBush.com" he sent them to "@GeorgeWBush.ORG," a website run by prankster John Wooden, who owns "GeorgeWBush.org." When Wooden got the treasure trove of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us.

And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called "Caging" lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts.

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts, marked "Do not forward." Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city's State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as "suspect" and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these 'cages' captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.

But it is illegal to challenge voters en masse where race is an element in the targeting. So several lawyers told us, including Ralph Neas, famed civil rights attorney with People for the American Way.

Griffin himself ducked our cameras, but his RNC team tried to sell us the notion that the caging sheets were, in fact, not illegal voter hit lists, but a roster of donors to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. Republican donors at homeless shelters?

Over the past weeks, Griffin has said he would step down if he had to face Congressional confirmation. However, the President appointed Griffin to the law enforcement post using an odd little provision of the USA Patriot Act that could allow Griffin to skip Congressional questioning altogether.