Posted on 10/07/2010 8:03:55 AM PDT by STARWISE
Both the left and right sides of the blogosphere are buzzing about a bipartisan TARP-style banking bailout bill that somehow reached President Obama’s desk in the legislative rush before Congress adjourned for the midterm election break.
The sordid episode underscores everything I’ve spotlighted about the culture of corruption over the last two years — sabotage of the deliberative process, circumventing of rules, backroom deals, and contempt for the will of the people.
Yes, the Vampire Congress strikes again.
The bill is HR3808, the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010,” which requires courts to accept as valid notarized letters made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents. Here’s the legislative history of the bill.
Reuters lays out the basic story:
*snip*
And now, the dirty details of the legislative legerdemain that paved the bill’s path to Obama’s desk:
After languishing for months in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill passed the Senate with lightning speed and with hardly any public awareness of the bill’s existence on September 27, the day before the Senate recessed for midterm election campaign.
The bill’s approval involved invocation of a special procedure. Democratic Senator Robert Casey, shepherding last-minute legislation on behalf of the Senate leadership, had the bill taken away from the Senate Judiciary committee, which hadn’t acted on it.
The full Senate then immediately passed the bill without debate, by unanimous consent. No debates.
No amendments.
No roll call votes.
More:
The House had passed the bill in April. The House actually had passed identical bills twice before, but both times they died when the Senate Judiciary Committee failed to act.
Some House and Senate staffers said the Senate committee had let the bills languish because of concerns that they would interfere with individual state’s rights to regulate notarizations.
Senate staffers familiar with the judiciary committee’s actions said the latest one passed by the House seemed destined for the same fate. But shortly before the Senate’s recess, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pressed to have the bill rushed through the special procedure, after Leahy “constituents” called him and pressed for passage.
The staffers said they didn’t know who these constituents were or if anyone representing the mortgage industry or other interests had pressed for the bill to go through.
These staffers said that, in an unusual display of bipartisanship, Senator Jeff Sessions, the committee’s senior Republican, also helped to engineer the Senate’s unanimous consent for the bill.
Neither Leahy’s nor Session’s offices responded to requests for comment Wednesday.
~~~~~~
Sen. Sessions: how could you ??? I thought you were one of the good guys ... dang!
.. Ping!
I think it’s time to FLUSH, the POT is full of crap.
I’ve been watching those that found themselves on this list.
http://republicanwhip.house.gov/newsroom/2009/04/national-council-for-a-new-america-formed.html
Our National Panel of Experts:
Governor Haley Barbour
Governor Jeb Bush
Governor Bobby Jindal
Senator John McCain
Governor Mitt Romney
(snip)
Sincerely,
John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John Carter, Pete Sessions, David Dreier, Kevin McCarthy, Roy Blunt
Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Lamar Alexander, John Ensign, John Cornyn, John Thune, Kay Bailey Hutchison
//
Gingrich Joins Cantor’s Effort To Remake GOP
Absolutely!!
THROW ‘EM OUT .. THEN:
TERM LIMITS !!!!
Are they involved also with this steal TARP
bill ?
Personally I’m suspicious how the democrats conveniently got out of town before it hit the fan.
Another Outrage of the Day!
This deserves a protest! A serious Pitchforks and Torches protest!
Before the new congress is seated, before the new year, I would love to see 100,000 Americans on the Capital Mall in a nighttime protest, where I’d love to see 100,000 angry tax-paying Americans light their torches and march up to the White House or the Capital and shake our pitchforks and torches at them. I would call it the “Fair Warning” march.
I would be willing to donate hay, pitch, labor in making torches, I would gladly pass them out and would absolutely delight in watching these torches be lit one by one...
I would be willing to donate pillows (or feathers) and I am sure I could find someone willing to donate at least one large bucket of cold tar.
After a few speaches and the lighting of the torches, march up to the Capital for a few chants, a few speaches, and then we can sing a few patriotic songs. The last words from some speaker/leader will be “You are duly warned.”
And then we can all leave in a deafening silence.
The point would be to let them know, we came to give them a warning, that we love America, and if they continue to ruin it, and fail to heed our warning, they need to leave.
They need to fear us.
April 14 should be Tax REVOLT Day if they allow this to happen. Everyone files the forms, but sends in a check marked VOID. In the memo, I would put, “You no long have consent to govern.” Even if only 3% of returns are done this way, it would be enough to starve Leviathan.
We need to show them we are serious.
PITCHFORKS! TORCHES! TAR! FEATHERS!
And notice that it was a GOP House member who authored the bill - both in this session of Congress and the previous one.
This is why the GOP cannot be trusted. They’re snakes. They’re fully willing to step-n-fetch for the bankers, just as the DNC is.
That looks like a list of the “old guard”.
Oh, and NB that it passed on voice vote in the House, and by UC in the Senate.
There’s no way to know who was “acclaiming” this piece of crap.
I completely agree traitors to the people all of them! This screws the people who did the right thing, paid their bills, bought what they could afford I am so disgusted with all of this.
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At least they could outsource it all to Pakistan and have Shuria courts do it cheap!
I will gladly pass out pitchforks and torches at a rally. I would love to see some patriot Americans show up in their colonial garb carrying long muskets, drum and fife, toting the Gadsden flag.
I would love to see all those torches lit up at night and hear us singing on the Capital steps about the country we love.
I would love to see the photos afterward of the Mall all lit up with our torches, light glistening off the tines of the pitchforks, the small clouds of feathers, reflected in the bucket of tar.
And I’d gladly volunteer for trash duty afterward.
I will gladly pass out pitchforks and torches at a rally. I would love to see some patriot Americans show up in their colonial garb carrying long muskets, drum and fife, toting the Gadsden flag.
I would love to see all those torches lit up at night and hear us singing on the Capital steps about the country we love.
I would love to see the photos afterward of the Mall all lit up with our torches, light glistening off the tines of the pitchforks, the small clouds of feathers, reflected in the bucket of tar.
And I’d gladly volunteer for trash duty afterward.
I had apartment buildings a few years back, and I had to deal with contractors all the time for electricity, plumbing, roofing, etc etc etc..
In my experience it is the ones who tell you “You can trust me” that are the ones you can trust the least.
Something like that never occurs to the real honest people.
But the liars are always always always trying to convince you that they are not lying to you.
When some one has to tell you that he will run “the most transparent” govt ever you can be pretty certain he will pull more back door bull$h!t that you ever expect.
“The bill is HR3808, the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010,” which requires courts to accept as valid notarized letters made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents.”
Ok. The law extends full faith and credit to a notarized signature if it was obtained under the laws of the state where the signature was notarized. It gives a presumption of validity to the signature and shifts the burden of proving it is fraudulent to anyone challenging its authenticity.
I guess I don’t exactly see this as a TARP-like bailout for banks unless there are allegations that signatures were notarized fraudulently on a systemic basis. To the extent it does shift the burden of proof from perhaps the bank to a mortgagor, I frankly think the mortgagor should have the burden of proving his or her signature was not validly obtained.
A valid notary does not invalidate a fraudulent deal. The only thing a notary generally establishes is that the person who signed the document presented evidence they were the person whose name is on the document. Some states do have different requirements. In California, for example, any transaction involving real estate requires a thumbprint. The requirements recently changed to no longer allow notaries to skip the valid identification documents if that notary personally knows the signer and attests to that fact.
If people are arguing that a past notary is no longer valid because it doesn’t meet new or out-of-state requirements, then it appears they are trying to get off on a technicality. It does not appear that anything in the new law precludes someone from arguing the deal was fraudulent but, when the documents look official and follow the notary rules of the time and place when obtained, I think the burden belongs with the person seeking to invalidate that signature.
Educate me if I am misperceiving this law but it appears fairly neutral and might be needed in these days of interstate transactions and securitization of financial documents. Now, if you want to argue that financial documents ought not be securitized, have at it. That’s an entirely different matter.
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