Jon Stewart on Community Organizing

This is the funniest interview I’ve seen.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=189771&title=community-organizers

And it has Matthew Vadum, the latest anti-ACORN attack dog, making a total fool of himself. It is wonderful.

By the way, it includes ACORN’s wonderful Bertha Lewis, doing a marvelous deadpan straight woman role as she is interviewed about whether community organizing is a good preparation for dealing crack.

We won’t have to defend against anything that Vadum writes about any of us. We’ll just show this interview!

I am stealing the election, not ACORN

Here is Robert Greenwald’s short new video about how the right always uses bogus charges of voter fraud, usually against ACORN, as their excuse for making it very difficult for new voters and people of color to vote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdNgMKPV9xQ

Fact is, I am stealing the election. No wonder John McCain mentions my name in one of his attack ads.

Here’s how it works:

1) I brought down the entire U.S. economy by supporting the Community Reinvestment Act, according to the New York Post on Sept. 29, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. I can’t explain that, you’ll just have to take their word for it;

2) The collapse of the economy brought Barack Obama up in the polls.

3) There ya go!

So, leave ACORN alone. I know they’re at Disney World now, trying to convince Mickey Mouse to cast his ballot in Florida, but he’s insisting on supporting John McCain, so their strategy is not working at all.

Just leave it to me, guys. I’ve got it all under control.

Listen to these voicemails!

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hate-you-can-believe-acorn-deluged-threatening-and-racist-voicemails-and-emails

One side brings out the best in human nature, the other brings out the worst.  Listen to the voice mails on this link.  They are people who called ACORN after hearing John McCain say in the last debate that ACORN may be destroying the fabric of democracy.

I stand with ACORN.  Enough said.

Is Madeline Talbott a terrorist?

or did she just bring down the U.S. economy in a nice way?

According to John McCain in an ad he is running in a number of swing states, Madeline Talbott knew Barack Obama. As if that’s not bad enough, she introduced him to ACORN and helped to bring down the U.S. economy by supporting the Community Reinvestment Act. She seems, according to the “insinuendo” in the ad, to have something to do with stealing elections too.

But is she a terrorist? This gets to the heart of the matter. Which matter, you might ask. Well, that question probably proves your terrorist leanings right there, you betcha!

With Colin Powell endorsing Barack Obama today, it is harder and harder to convince people that he is a terrorist. Or, perhaps it gets easier and easier to believe that Colin Powell is a terrorist. And a Muslim. After all, he endorsed one, didn’t he?

And now it’s getting real close to home, because Colin Powell was in the Army and served in at least one war (Gulf) and my father was in the Army and served in three wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam). So, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree….there ya go!

Okay, that seems to be incontrovertible proof that I’m a terrorist, but I know I’m not a Muslim. I mean, I was raised a Catholic, went to Catholic schools through high school. And I don’t want to be a Muslim, because I have never earned my way to heaven in the Muslim church…well not exactly the Muslim CHURCH, more like the Muslim mosque.

But I did do that in the Catholic Church. We had indulgences in those days, and I went to Mass and Communion every first Friday for nine in a row AND wore my scapular (a cloth necklace with a holy picture on it) each time, and that guarantees me heaven, without any time in purgatory, which is a good thing because I am not good with pain…as I understood it when I was eight anyway, and I know of no such guarantee in the Muslim church, I mean mosque, so will you just let me stay Catholic please?

But I have to admit that it was Sister Irene who took us high school juniors out to the fields of Oregon to “clean” the migrant workers’ camps before they came in the spring, and my bet is that Sister irene is one of those folks who Sarah Palin calls anti-American, because I think she KNEW this was not just a service project but an eye-opening project because we girls from St. Mary’s could not believe that human beings were going to live in those awful tiny shacks with holes throughout the roofs and walls and no furniture except a terribly filthy dirty single mattress for a whole family.

So, there ya go. Clearly a terrorist upbringing and that’s where my concern for what we call social justice came from: the Church. Which, is, come to think of it, the Roman Catholic Church, which sounds pretty anti-American right there.

Sarah Palin says that people in small towns in the “pro-America” parts of the U.S. are good people. Which leaves us to only imagine where the anti-America parts of the U.S. are, and what we should do about them.

I’m guessing that Missouri has become anti-American. Those 100,000 people showing up for the Obama rally guaranteed them their infamous status.

I’m supposing that any state that votes Democratic is likely to be anti-American, in the book according to to Palin. And I have admitted publicly that I already voted early for Barack Obama, in Illinois of all places, so I don’t even think there’s a question about whether I’m anti or pro American…you can figure out which it is.

Or Jon Stewart can.  here’s a link to his  show  where he talks about pro America and anti, Sarah Palin and Cong. Michele Bachman

show

As the lady in Ohio said in a recent interview, “a lot of Muslims are nice people, but Obama is one of the wicked Muslims.”

And she is one of the enlightened McCain supporters, I suppose.

Okay, I’m glad to have answered that question. Any others?

Crying Fire in a crowded room

It’s not funny when John McCain and Sarah Palin move their supporters to violence and threats of violence. Calling a U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Un-American and sayng that he consorts with terrorists and groups who are destroying the fabric of our democracy is not funny. Inciting followers to break into and vandalize ACORN offices in Boston and Seattle (see today’s Tampa Tribune): http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/18/co-vandals-hit-2-offices-of-liberal-acorn/ and to email threats to ACORN organizers, to yell insults at Barack Obama and about him, including Muslim, Terrorist, Kill Him, etc….it has gone too far.

I’m not laughing now. Also very worrisome is the return of the Karl Rovian strategy of using the institutuions of the federal government for Republican electoral campaign purposes. That is such a crossing of the line. When two officials of the FBI told the Associated Press that they were investigating ACORN on voter fraud charges this close to an election, many of us realized that that is a violation of their policies at the Justice Department where they are not supposed ot use their tremendous power close to an election because of the danger of impacting the electoral process.

A special prosecutor is already investigating Karl Rove for ordering U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to fire some of his U.S. Atrorneys during the Congressional election two years ago because they would not bring charges of voter fraud against ACORN. U.S. Attorney Iglesias in New Mexico refused to bring those chargees, based on unsubstantiated claims by the New Mexicy go Republican Party, and he was fired. Many others were fired for not taking orders from Republican Party operatives, and now there’s an investigation. Now, here they go again, using the Justice Department again to claim that there is an FBI investigation of ACORN.

ACORN hasn’t been approached about such an investigation, but Karl Rove and the Republican Party and John McCain and Sarah Palin should be. They are clearly seeking to intimidate and distract ACORN from moving their newly registered 1.3 million voters to the polls. They are seeking to create a climate that makes it easier to challenge new voters, prevent their votes from being counted and provide cover to their intimidation and suppression efforts against low income voters and people of color.

I’m no longer with ACORN, but I stand with ACORN in this emergency, and I stand against the use of the institutions of our government for partisan political purposes.

But hey, it’s Saturday morning in Tampa, Florida, and I’m heading out to canvass up some support for Barack Obama. If the right is going to try to steal this election, we need to make sure that it’s not close enough to steal. That takes everyone of us.

I think Stanley Kurtz has a thing for me

Don’t tell Keith, but he seems to really care for me.

William F. Buckley would be rolling over in his grave.

Because all this attention started with Stanley Kurtz, who is an anti-Obama attacker who has occasionally appeared in the National Review Online (used to be William F. Buckley’s journal, but they recently fired his son because he came out for Barack Obama!) Stanley Kurtz has a thing for ACORN, and Chicago ACORN especially, when I was there. He is far more flattering, in some ways, about me and our accomplishments when we were ACORN, than most other journalists. It is true that Stanley really, really hates minimum wage increases and living wages and anything remotely dealing with equality or equity, as near as I can tell. He gives me and Chicago ACORN credit for supporting the redistribution of power and wealth in America, and he seems to not much like that. I believe that Stanley has a secret crush on me, but I can’t be sure. Here is the link to his May 29 National Review article about ACORN, Barack Obama and me:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=#more

There are huge inaccuracies here, largely caused by the fact that Stanley never checked a single “fact”, as near as I can tell. Note how he refers to an article by Toni Foulkes, and refers to her as “he”, and clearly has no idea who he is talking about. But that’s just Stanley.

Blog Smear on Google

During the presidential campaign, Stanley is tied into a network of right wing bloggers, so when he publishes something, they pick it up. In this case, the National Review article got picked up and served a very important purpose, I think: it turned the results of any search of my name on Google, Yahoo, etc. into dozens or perhaps hundreds of copies of the same Stanley Kurtz artlcles, all picked up by different blogs. Very difficult to find anything positive about me now on google, for instance, and very easy to get corroboration for anything negative that you might hear. This is a tactic that folks who are familiar with the internet know how to use. There must be a name for it. I don’t speak the language, but some of you can tell me more about it.

Search Madeline Talbott, or Madeline Talbot now if you like, to see what I’m talking about.

Rupert Murdoch’s rag

Next, Stanley wrote an outrageous article and tried to get it picked up by a more “mainstream” paper. I have heard, but don’t know for sure, that he tried to shop the next article to the op ed page editors of the Wall Street Journal. Now, the WSJ has some great journalism, but the editorial page and op ed page are about as far hard right as there is. But even they would not buy Stanley’s next article. So, he turned to the NY Post.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0

“ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was
Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies.

“Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in ‘direct action’ – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a ‘living wage’ law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.”

The NY Post is owned by the same guy that Fox News is owned by: Rupert Murdoch. So, they had no problem running Stanley’s op ed, and editorializing from the so-called “information” contained in it the same day.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/editorials/the_meltdowns_acorn_131274.htm

This gives me pretty much sole responsibility for bringing down the economy of the U.S. and perhaps the world. At least, “Talbott and company” get that honor, which at times seems to mean ACORN, and at other times Barack Obama. Please don’t misunderstand. I believe the economic problems are awful and will hurt people the most who can least afford them. But to Stanley, I am way more powerful than I ever wanted to be. Stanley, you see, has a thing for me, I’m guessing. I think he likes powerful women.

Well we can’t go into every detail. Suffice it to say that folks who have a stronger stomach than I do and actually watch Fox News and Lou Dobbs and listen to Rush Limbaugh have called to tell me that they are talking about me. Not about anything that makes sense, just making me the connection that puts Senator Obama in the line of responsibility for the financial crisis, voter fraud, stealing the election and other nefarious deeds. I am the connector, though they change their minds often about whether I recruited and corrupted Senator Obama, or he trained and corrupted me and my “personal staff” (didn’t you always kind of want a personal staff at times? I mean, someone to clean up the house and answer the cell phone and email messages and get you into shape and stop you—well, I guess I mean me– from eating too much pasta, and control my calendar and still get a nice healthy low calorie dinner on the table that everyone would want to eat?).

So, at that point, I guess my name had been mentioned a few times, but it was still an inside politics game…no one in the real world who did not already know me or Stanley really cared that much about me. Then came Senator McCain’s attack ads.

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Multimedia/Player.aspx?guid=4c34dbc7-d1a9-48a0-994f-18fc59cbb81a

I thought there were two, the other one was similar, but called “Blind Ambition”, but now it’s missing…started disappearing last Friday, the day it first appeared. The blind ambition tag is still in the other ad, though, and so’s my name.

There’s something about being mentioned in an attack ad that makes you stand proud. I mean, the McCain camp doesn’t have all that much money. And these ads have Senator McCain saying, right where you can see him, “I approved this message”.

He had to pay good money for these ads, and every second is worth, well, millions, because he runs them in all of the battleground states, and I think they may only be 30 second ads to begin with, so to spend a few seconds to say my name, and then to run it over and over again, well, my goodness, it makes a girl feel…I don’t mean to be this way, but it makes me feel proud. Yes it does.

Senator McCain had his choice of talking about any associates of Senator Obama; his father from Kenya; his pastor, Rev.Wright; Bill Ayers, for heaven’s sake; some other “associate” that Senator Obama spoke to once on the street, or attended a fundraiser with or sat on a Board with; the red shirted ACORN folks, the blue shirted Action Now folks; but no, he chose to spend a few seconds talking about me.

I don’t know why.

And now I have my own blog and website too, which tries to talk about who I am in my eyes, since mostly you get who I am in Stanley Kurtz’ eyes when you google me (could it be true that he only has eyes for me?)

www.madelinetalbott.com

And of course, we are taking a look at this on the Action Now website as well:

www.actionnow.org
**
Did Stanley post the photo of “Madeline Talbott”?

Check out the photo that the right is now identifying as me.

This is me, according to the right wing.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Madeline+Talbott&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=

Isn’t that priceless? It’s not very nice of Stanley or someone else on the right to use a photo of a French speaking Quebec lady (her name is Madeleine Talbot, and Stanley and his friends definitely knew she was not me when they posted her photo without her permission as “ACORN’s Madeline Talbott”) and taint her with all of the insinuendos about me, but I do enjoy sharing her personality, which really kind of comes through. a really warm and friendly and maternal kind of person, I would say, Exactly the kind of radical I want to be some day.

Maybe John McCain doesn’t really hate me.

He thinks I look like a nice, friendly grandma, after all. A kind of elderly housewife. Gets her hair done once a week, and cooks a nice meal for the family every night. Nothing wrong with that!

You have to check out the photo that is supposed to be me:

Me, according to the right.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Madeline+Talbott&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

Yes, it’s the second image, the one labeled “ACORN’s Madeline Talbott”.

I don’t know who this is a picture of, but I love it. She looks warm and friendly and she is comfortable with herself, not the least bit worried about anything except maybe when to put the chocolate chip cookies in the oven for the grandkids! And maybe she’ll just sneak a few for herself while she’s at it. Did she bring the entire world economy crashing down? I don’t think so!

If you are a friend of mine, do not post any more real photos of me anywhere, please, for now. There is a reason the other side is posting fake photos, and I want to find out what it is before we correct them

Tomorrow, we will discuss the CRA. The next day, we will get into voter fraud. But for today, you have to look at the photo. My stomach hurts from laughing too hard, but I think if I just go put some cookies in the oven, I’ll feel better right away.

***

Okay, just heard from Larry, who found out whose photo this is:

http://www.investorsgroup.com/francais/aboutUs/careers/consultant/mgrWords/talbot.shtml

Belongs to Madeleine Talbot in Quebec, Montreal! Right wingers messing with another good person!

Why Does John McCain Still Hate Me?

I have recently been mentioned in two of John McCain’s ads. I have also turned up in the NY Post as being responsible, along with Barack Obama, for creating the collapse in the financial sector. So, I thought I owed you an explanation. Or rather, I guess I thought these attacks provided me an opportunity to invite you to engage in some discussion. Here are the things I would like to discuss: 1) What on earth John McCain thinks he is doing by claiming that Madeline Talbott and ACORN, by supporting the Community Reinvestment Act, somehow brought down the world’s economy? 2) How it is that I became such a vile influence on people, that Barack Obama’s coming in contact with me even a little bit as a professional acquaintance would have served to contaminate him in some vague and unspecified way. 3) Why John and Cindy McCain, with their seven plus houses, believe they can libel me in this way without ending up having to deed at least one of those homes over to me? (and if they really own 13 houses, well, I’m not sure I want any of them, because they’re all unlucky) I look forward to your help in explaining all this. I mean, my Dad fought in three wars, my mother was a loyal Army wife, I was a good Catholic girl and did well in school and got my degree, my husband and girls are baptized and we pay our taxes and work for better communities, living wage jobs, etc. What’s not to like? I even spent years part time as an adjunct instructor at a conservative Christian college, North Park University. I occasionally went to jail for a cause like getting seniors’ heat turned back on in the dead of winter, but that was very occasional. Where did I go wrong? Why does John McCain hate me? My mother liked him, even had his poster up on her living room wall back in the day, til she found out he voted 18 times to cut Medicare and 27 times against prescription drug coverage under Medicare. When she discovers that he is trashing me in his ads, oh my, it is not good to get my mother mad at you. Trust me. Best back down now. (Uh oh, just heard that she saw one of the ads, she is not happy…sorry Senator McCain, I hoped to warn you first, but too late!) But why does John McCain hate me? I fell for his line for quite some time that he was a maverick, until I found out that he voted against expanding children’s health insurance last year, and supported Bush’s cuts to Medicare last summer, which thank God, were overridden when Barack Obama and others U.S. Senators returned to the Senate to take their historic vote. Healthcare workers won’t soon forget that one. McCain didn’t show up, and he was campaigning for the cuts from the sidelines. So why does John McCain hate me? Because I am a community organizer with Action Now. (www.actionnow.org) …well, I have to admit, I like working for living wage jobs, and Grow Your Own Teachers and the Big Box Living Wage, and the increase in the state minimum wage (we are currently up to $7.75 per hour in IL and still rising; still worth less than the $1.60 I used to get back in the day (which would be worth nearly $10 today) and equitable education and quality and affordable healthcare for all and safe communities and immigrant rights and civil rights, but honestly, aren’t those the things that every politician in America puts all over their brochures and mailers? So, really, why does John McCain hate me? Is it because I believe in civil disobedience, the choice that some of us make when we see things that are wrong and feel that we can no longer be associated with them, so we break with them, call attention to them, make clear that a democracy is not some great behemoth, but just each of us giving our consent to be governed by the majority for the common good, and it is up to each of us to make that consent active, not passive. The first person I know who wrote about Civil Disobedience was Henry David Thoreau, the quintessentially American writer who is loved by the right for suggesting, in his essay on civil disobedience, that that government is best which governs least, and that government best advanced the cause of enterprise by the speed with which it got out of the way. I could swear that I heard Sarah Palin paraphrase that statement more than once recently, so we may share in our admiration of the man But honestly, wasn’t it civil disobedience when the colonial residents dumped the tea into Boston Harbor rather than agree to taxation without representation in the great American Tea Party? Wasn’t it the great American hero, Martin Luther King, who referred to Thoreau when he explained his own civil disobedience? And let’s face it, his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, which I find new insights in whenever I read it, was not exactly written from one of John McCain’s seven or 13 houses, no it wasn’t, but from a dirty, nasty jail cell on the margins of a newspaper and even on some toilet tissue as he hoped for his release for attempting to parade without a permit or some other charge. Why does John McCain hate me when neither he nor any of his staff nor any of the right wing bloggers who write about me nor Fox News nor the NY Post have ever called me or emailed me or interviewed me or anything? I don’t hate John McCain. I don’t like his policies on the war or healthcare or his lack of policies on the economy, but I haven’t put up any ads against him on the web or TV. I won’t vote for him, I no longer think he’s a maverick and I’m beginning to think he’s been taken hostage and replaced by a Stepford candidate, or even a Manchurian candidate. So, maybe John McCain doesn’t hate me. Maybe it’s just Karl Rove, dressed up as John McCain, but he doesn’t quite fit into his face or body, so he seems awkward and angry and out of sorts a lot. Now, that I could understand From About Madeline Talbott, 2008/10/11 at 10:38 PM	2008/10/11	Approve | Unapprove | Spam | Delete

Why does John McCain hate me?

Yesterday he posted two ads that mentioned my name. One is on TV in the battleground states, the other is on his website. He seems to believe that I am guilty of being a very bad and vicious person, because somehow I brought down the U.S. or maybe the world financial sector and, even worse, I knew Barack Obama. So who is Madeline Talbott? Check out www.madelinetalbott.com.

Anyway, can’t tell if I was supposed to have corrupted Barack Obama or he was supposed to have corrupted me. It seems that there is this logical progression:

1) Madeline Talbott hired Barack Obama to train her staff (false, but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea, as he was a good man and a talented community organizer; just so happened that Barack Obama was a competitor to ACORN when I was there, and a darned good one, and I kept an eye on him because he moved more people and had more success in making positive community change. Much later, I did invite him in to be a guest in a session we had for about 15 of our volunteer community members, for one hour one year and another hour a year or two later. Of course we didn’t hire him or pay him and he talked with us for an hour each time. I never attempted to hire Barack Obama because it was inconceivable, we were operating in different circles, it would have been an insulting offer.)

2) Madeline Talbott works for ACORN, or is a leader of ACORN (false, I had differences with ACORN and left, am an organizer with Action Now, www.actionnow.org, though ACORN is in the process of resolving its problems and is become good again, so there you go; the current Karl Rovian attacks on ACORN will only work very temporarily…media is already beginning to get it that they got snookered).

3) Madeline Talbott, or ACORN, or Barack Obama or all three are responsible for the collapse of the U.S. or world economy because we supported the Community Reinvestment Act, which was a law that encouraged banks to provide conventional mortgages to working families and families of color (well, I can go into this, but it is such a bizarre claim that you’ll have to ask me about it; I mean, loans made under the CRA are some of the safest and best loans to this day, and I have the studies to prove it, and we were so much against the predatory lenders, from the first moment they surfaced, and we fought them so hard, and we were so opposed to the relaxation of regulations on the financial sector, I mean we had hundreds of folk marching in the streets against the Gramm-Leach Deregulation Bill in Chicago, when most people didn’t even know what it was, with yard signs against it and calling on our Congresspersons to oppose it, and they did, most of them, at least in the Chicago area we got it right…)

4) ACORN is guilty of voter fraud. Not true at all, absolutely untrue, but Karl Rove discovered in 2004 that ACORN could threaten his plans by registering a lot of poor people, so he started on his campaign to make voter fraud synonymous with ACORN. Fact is, ACORN turns in any registration that is a duplicate or was done incorrectly or was made up by a voter registrar who just got tired and decided to sit in McDonald’s and fill out registrations rather than go out into the hot sun or rain to do the job, but get this, ACORN identifies the incorrect registrations for the election board so they don’t have to find them themselves (which they would do, because after all, how difficult is it to figure out when you are verifying registrations that Mickey Mouse is not a real voter, and neither is Tony Romo a voter in Nevada). But Karl Rove discovered in 2004 that he could get local election officials who were partisan or just mad at ACORN for making them do a whole lot more work to complain about the fake registrations and he could blow it up like it was a huge case of voter fraud, even if it was ACORN who identified the problem and let the election board know about it.

So, Karl Rove and the Rovians are at it again, screaming voter fraud loudly enough that they hope no one will notice when they refuse to set up early voting sites in African American parts of Northwest Indiana, or when they try to challenge every voter who is a student at historically black colleges, or when they demand that each voter have a piece of i.d. on them that shows the same address as their voting address, even though they may be low income and moving a lot to find work and they’ll be fired if they’re late for work so they don’t go home and get the utility bill but just do without voting instead

5. Therefore, as the Karl Rove and John McCain logic goes, Barack Obama is an Arab. I mean he’s scary. I mean a terrorist. I mean un-American. I mean he ruined the economy. I mean he engages in voter fraud. Well, I have trouble following all this, but I think it comes down, through the rational process known as “insinuendo”, to incontrovertible proof that there is something sinister going on that we should all be very afraid of.

Here’s the problem for John McCain. If there IS something sinister going on, if we all should be very afraid, then we are likely to gravitate toward the candidate with the cool head, the one who is calm and decent and a nice guy. I remember the moment when John McCain said something like that in the last debate…something about at this time, with all of these problems, it is important for Americans to elect someone as president who has a cool head, who they can trust.. and I thought, omigod, why is John McCain campaigning for Barack Obama?

Foreclosure Mediation Begins in Cook County

Beginning July 1, 2009, until the end of August, there will be a moratorium on most foreclosures in Cook County while foreclosure court reorganizes, categorizes cases by owner occupancy, size, and other factors, and assesses where cases should be dismissed, where mediation would likely produce a settlement and how it should best proceed under a virtual onslaught of more than 50,000 foreclosure cases.

Mediation instead of Retribution

For the first time in Cook County history, Chancery Court has now made mediation an option for foreclosures here. That means that borrowers or plaintiffs can request mediation and, if there is income on the side of the borrower, and self interest on the side of the lender/servicer, a loan modification can be reached.

Action Now Congratulates the Judges

Action Now, the grassroots organization of working families in high foreclosure neighborhoods of the Chicago metro area, applauds the move to permit mediation as an option. Action Now began nearly a year ago to call for a mediation program in the Cook County Circuit Courts. We are pleased that Chief Judge Timothy Evans, Presiding Judge at Chancery Dorothy Kinnaird and Supervising Judge at Foreclosure Lewis Nixon have moved to implement the program.

The Only Route to Loan Modifications

Because loan servicers have shown so little interest or capacity in dealing with loan modification proposals from borrowers and housing counselors to date, mediation is useful to the extent that it brings decision makers from the servicer institution to the table to negotiate loan mods that are in their own self interest.

Strange and awful, in its way, that the borrowers and their advocates would have to use our own resources and political capital to force the owners of the mortgages and their servicers to do what is in their own interest, but that is the case.

Win-Win for Both Sides

Recently Action Now talked with a CEO of a bank that was holding a mortgage in West Englewood. His bank had foreclosed on the borrower, who had lost her job due to illness but was now working again. Though the loan was clearly predatory (interest rate had risen to 14% and was going to go up again soon), it was clear that the bank could make money by accepting a reasonable monthly payment from the homeowner, who could afford to do that.

However, the bank instead had a foreclosure department that had hired a foreclosure law firm to win a judgment, go to judicial sale, and then had hired an REO firm to manage the property after the bank was the only bidder in the sale (bidding the outstanding amount of the mortgage).

We explained that there were nine other vacant, foreclosed homes on that block, and no one, no one, would be purchasing that house for anything like the amount that the homeowner was still willing to pay through her regular monthly payments.

The CEO was from the East Coast, knew nothing about Englewood or Chicago, and expressed faith in his REO firm in getting a sale at a good price. Anyone living here and driving the block would have known that what the REO firm would get was an eventual demolition lien on the property, and lots of liability, fees and fines under the city’s vacant property ordinance.

It was happenstance that we reached the CEO that day. We were interested to understand why he was going down what seemed like an irrational road. We understood by the end of the conversation that basically it is easier for loanholders and servicers to lose money, because there are foreclosure attorneys and REO companies that will help you do so for a reasonable fee. Who is set up to help you save money on foreclosures that can be saved? Community organizations, housing counselors, legal assistance agencies…in short, groups that you don’t trust because you don’t understand them, and there is too much new turf to negotiate in dealing with them.

If the Feds Won’t Do It, the County Courts Will Have To

That’s where Chancery Court comes in. True, Timothy Geithner or HUD could have become the location for mass loan modifications, but our side must have lost the battle in the administration over that, if there even was a battle. True, Durbin’s bankruptcy bill which would have allowed bankruptcy judges to renegotiate the terms of the mortgage would have created a huge incentive for lenders and servicers to offer workable loan modifications, but the administration permitted that one to fail.

So, what we have left is the power of the County Courts. Why would the taxpayers foot the bill to ease the way for foreclosure judgments that will destroy their own county communities and tax base by leaving homes vacant and easily open to trespass? Why not instead use the power of the foreclosure courts to force the servicers to respond to loan modification proposals?

What We Still Need to Make Mediation Work

This will only work if:

1) The County and City fund a borrower outreach program that gets the borrowers into court. Ninety-two percent of all foreclosure judgments in Cook County in 2008 were against borrowers who never filed an appearance in court. We have to get the borrowers to understand that now they will have a chance to save their homes, so come down to Room 1303 in the Richard J. Daley Center, the Chancery Advice Desk, and ask to waive your fees, file an appearance and an argument. Then, when they go into court, ask the judge for mediation! We can reach borrowers door-to-door; that’s what works best.

2) The Courts treat the mediation session like a settlement conference. The borrower must bring in their income documents and fill out a loan modification proposal, but the servicer must respond to the proposal within 30 days or be considered to have accepted it with the case dismissed. Because servicers’ payments to the loan pool investors only stop with foreclosure filings, the biggest incentive for servicers to respond to loan modification proposals is the threat of a foreclosure case dismissal.

So, glad to see mediation at last, but the proof is in the pudding. We’re waiting to see what the courts do and how the city and county choose to fund it!

Foreclosures: thinking about how to stop them

Foreclosures are destroying whole communities on the south side of Chicago and throughout Cook County. We had 43,000 foreclosures filed in Cook County in 2008, are on pace for 53,000 in 2009.

But at Action Now we are looking at two programs that give us some hope:

1) Obama’s “Making Home Affordable” plan, which provides a way for owner occupants to pay 31% of their income towards their PITI (principal, interest, taxes, insurance) each month and keep their home, and

2) The Chancery Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County’s mediation program, which is part of their case management process. Under this program, which currently exists but is about to be ramped up significantly, it is possible for any borrower (defendant) in a foreclosure case to request mediation. If the judge grants it (and he/she is likely to if there is a good chance that an agreement can be reached between the lender or servicer and the borrower), the judge can then require that the lender and borrower meet with a trained mediator from the Center for Conflict Resolution. If they reach a settlement, the foreclosure can be avoided.

Since the biggest problem we are facing is getting a decision maker at the mortgage company to respond to the borrower’s proposal for a loan modification, we are hoping that the mediation procedure will provide a way to require a decision maker to be on the phone with the lender’s representative during the mediation.

Thanks to Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird, the presiding judge of the Chancery Division, Timothy C. Evans, the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court and Dorothy Brown, the Clerk of the Circuit Court, we have a chance to make the courts work for everyone.

The key is to get the borrowers to show up in court, which does not happen now. Most foreclosure judgments are “default” judgments, meaning the defendant (borrower) doesn’t ever appear in court. But there is a help desk on the 13th floor of the Daley Center that can get borrowers a pro bono attorney, or assist them in waiving fees, filing appearances and answers and filing motions.

Will there be enough resources at the help desk to assist the large number of borrowers who should be showing up for their foreclosure cases? Will there be enough mediators, and even enough small rooms for the mediations? Can we find the foreclosure victims and get them to come to court, when they are currently working so many jobs so they can figure out how to move and get back on their feet? And when they are so embarrassed about having to move out of their homes and away from their neighbors that they often do so without a fight, in the middle of the night? And when the blocks in some neighborhoods are becoming so boarded up and vacant that the remaining homeowners increasingly have no neighborhood to fight for?

We will try some pilot projects in the next few weeks to figure this out, and see if we can make all this work.

1) We’ll visit foreclosure defendants door to door and see if we can talk them into going to court;

2) We’ll track what happens with some of them, to see if they can figure out their way into mediation, without a lawyer;

3) We’ll work with the judges to alert them about problems along the way and get their ideas about how to make this work;

4) We’ll work with the Cook County board and the Chicago City Council to come up with revenue from the foreclosure process that can be used to pay for outreach, housing counseling, and increased costs of help desk, mediation and extra space.

It will take a lot of organizations and leaders to make all of this happen, but it is worth a try. Otherwise, whole neighborhoods are going under fast.