Free Republic

On Jan. 23, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun L.S. Donovan met in Chicago with several Democratic state attorneys general (AGs) in an attempt to strong-arm them into signing up for an administration-backed agreement to settle the “robo-signing” scandal. Wall Street would pay what sounds like a large fine ($25 billion), and in exchange, the state AGs would relieve the bankers of all legal liabilities related to the fraudulent mortgage-lending practices that led directly to the 2008 financial meltdown and a 30 percent drop in U.S. home prices. The fraudulent practices of the mortgage servicers have injected...

Back in March 2009, the Obama administration unveiled the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, a program for helping delinquent borrowers save their homes from foreclosure - a problem that got worse again in reports released just last week. The goal of HAMP was to “help 3 to 4 million homeowners by 2012.” This phrase should have read “help or hurt” because hurt is exactly what has happened to hundreds of thousands of homeowners who have attempted to use HAMP to save their homes. How is it possible that a program for providing mortgage modifications could hurt homeowners? To understand...

Earlier this month, President Obama announced William Daley (brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and former executive at JP Morgan Chase) as his new chief of staff, replacing Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. Less well known is the fact that Mr. Daley was a member of the board of trustees for Third Way, which bills itself as an "influential think-tank that creates and advances moderate policy and political ideas." Therefore, last week's release by Third Way of a domestic policy memo outlining a plan for "Fixing Foreclosure-gate" may well be a trial balloon for the Obama administration's next set of...

Didn't we impeach a sitting president a decade ago for lying to a court about a much lesser matter? And why are these big-bank employees lying about these foreclosure actions? The answer lies in the subprime securitization gold rush that took place between 2004 and 2007. In their rush to move mortgages from origination to securitization (garbage to gold, the ultimate financial alchemy), the big banks created a "virtual" system for tracking who owned the mortgage notes. This virtual system, known as MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems), was founded back in 1997 to bring our nation's "archaic" land-title recording system...

Passage of the $42 billion small-business bill is virtually assured after two lame-duck Republicans joined 59 Democratic senators voting in favor of the bill on Thursday, but don't expect this new stimulus bill to help the economy avoid a double-dip recession. Why? Look no further than the two key components of the bill: $30 billion to boost lending to small businesses and $12 billion in targeted tax cuts for qualifying small businesses. First and most important, the $30 billion won't actually go to small businesses in the form of loans; it will go to small banks in the form of...

With the ink of President Obama's signature on the Barney Frank-Chris Dodd financial reform bill barely dry, the next bank bailout already has begun. How can that be, you might ask? Weren't we promised that this "landmark" legislation would end bank bailouts? Weren't we promised that this legislation ushered in a new era of transparency on Wall Street? Could it be that the politicians lied to us? Say it ain't so - but it is. If this brings to mind the backdoor bailout of Wall Street banks by AIG, it should. At just these three big banks, the taxpayers are...

edited video: American Evacuation from Lebanon, July 2006 (46,398kB WMV9)      raw video (MP4)   2244608 Jul 22 18:12 bus01.MP4   5881856 Jul 22 18:13 musterpoint01.MP4      3850240 Jul 22 18:13 musterpoint02.MP4   3850240 Jul 22 18:14 port01.MP4   3211264 Jul 22 18:14 port02.MP4   6291456 Jul 22 18:15 ship01.MP4   4947968 Jul 22 18:16 ship02.MP4  12124160 Jul 22 18:17 ship03.MP4    507904 Jul 22 18:17 ship04.MP4   2408448 Jul 22 18:18 taxi01.MP4   3850240 Jul 22 18:18 taxii02.MP4 PHOTOS RY2.QO01.jpg                             2006-JUL-21 21:51:50   236kRY2Bus01.jpg                             2006-JUL-21 21:51:50   218kRY2Bus02.jpg                             2006-JUL-21 21:51:50   133kRY2Cruise01.jpg                          2006-JUL-21 21:51:49   200kRY2Cruise02.jpg                          2006-JUL-21 21:51:49   263kRY2Cruise03.jpg                          2006-JUL-21 21:51:49   230kRY2Cruise04.jpg                          2006-JUL-21 21:51:49   227kRY2Cruise05.jpg                          2006-JUL-21 21:51:50   136kRY2Cruise06.jpg                          2006-JUL-21 21:51:50   230kRY2OrientQueen02.jpg                     2006-JUL-21 21:53:57   279kRY2OriientQueen01.jpg                    2006-JUL-21 21:53:57   252kRY2Port01.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:53:57   245kRY2Port02.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:53:57   693kRY2Port03.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:53:57   220kRY2Port04.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:55:13   289kRY2Port05.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:55:13   348kRY2Port06.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:55:13   254kRY2Port07.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:55:13   254kRY2Port09.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:55:13   216kRY2Port10.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:57:18   268kRY2Port11.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:57:18   795kRY2Port13.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 21:57:18   249kRY2Port14.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 22:09:46   227kRY2Port15.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 22:09:46   235kRY2Port16.jpg                            2006-JUL-21 22:09:46   697kRY2Preboard01.jpg                        2006-JUL-21 22:09:46   262kRY2Preboard02.jpg                        2006-JUL-21 22:09:46   280kRY2Preboard03.jpg                        2006-JUL-21 22:10:41   280kRY2Preboard04.jpg                        2006-JUL-21 22:10:41   252k

Freerepublic Exclusive: Photo Diary -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In port prior to boarding -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scenes from the muster point where evacuees check in and board buses to the Orient Queen.     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Glimpse of Safety --------------------------------------------------------------------------------   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the bus -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bus ride to the Beirut port from the muster point near the Embassy.   -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In port prior to boarding -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Buses arrive at Beirut port, Orient Queen is in the background. British helicopters arrive, land, take on evacuees from buses, and then depart.       Lebanese soldier providing port security lights up a cigarette. Lebanese navy (both ships!)...

BEIRUT — Thousands of Americans whose vacations and business trips to Lebanon have degenerated with sickening speed into stints in a battle zone remained stranded here under Israeli bombardment Monday, their frustration and anger mounting because the U.S. government hasn't gotten them out faster. Waiting around Beirut with bags packed and fingers crossed, U.S. citizens derided the embassy for busy phone lines, a lack of information and gnawing uncertainty over when and whether they will get out. Hundreds were expected to be shipped to Cyprus today, but how long the full evacuation will take remains uncertain.

SYDNEY, Australia — A United Airlines flight from Australia (search) to Los Angeles (search) returned to Sydney International Airport on Tuesday after staff found a note carrying a bomb threat, Australia's transport minister said.

The 16 members of President Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security should be required to read Theodore Roszak's latest book, "Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders" (Berkeley Hills Books, $15). It might give them pause in their headlong efforts to "save" a so- called broken system through partial privatization, benefits cuts and increases in the retirement age. Professor Roszak's book — a revised and updated edition of his 1998 "America the Wise: The Longevity Revolution and the True Wealth of Nations" — continues his theme that America's growing number of older people is a positive social development that should be ...

This biracial stuff started when white women began giving birth to mixed-race babies, my mother maintains. So I emphasize Alex's blackness, hoping she will not be tempted to devalue it, that she will be able to withstand the cultural whisperings that still tell us white is better.

Are Chads Democrats? An Analysis of the Florida Presidential Recount MATTHEW I. SPIEGEL Yale School of Management; International Center for Finance at Yale School of Management December 2, 2000 Yale ICF Working Paper No. 00-23; Yale SOM Working Paper No. ICF - 00-23 Abstract: This paper presents the results from a statistical analysis of the first Florida recount. The findings indicate that it is highly unlikely that the relative increase in Gore's vote total can be explained by mechanical reading errors. Rather it appears partisan biases influenced the outcome. Estimates indicate that on average if a ballot's status changed from ...

CHICAGO –– The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Thursday he will amend the tax return of one of his nonprofit groups to reflect money paid to a staffer who was his mistress. The staffer, Karin Stanford, was not included on the 1999 tax return filed by the Citizenship Education Fund. Other staff members' names also were omitted. Jackson called the omissions inadvertent. "It was an oversight. It is in the process of being corrected," Billy Owens, chief financial officer for Rainbow/PUSH, said at a news conference Thursday. Jackson has been under scrutiny since his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition acknowledged in January that it ...

Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina fired the state prisons director today after two prison guards were accused of allowing inmates to have sex at the Governor's Mansion in Columbia. The inmates, two men and two women, were among 44 minimum- security prisoners who work as maids, cooks, groundskeepers and butlers at the governor's residence. Two guards who supervise them were charged Wednesday with misconduct in office in connection with allowing the sex and planning an abortion for one of the inmates. After a series of other sex scandals in the Corrections Department over the last year, the incident was ...

The Census Bureau received more than 2.4 million forms during the 2000 Census that, at first blush, appeared to be duplicates, census officials said today. After sifting through them officials allowed more than 2.3 million people listed on the forms to remain in the census count. snip Census officials say the only way to get a handle on the size of both the undercount and the overcount is to use data from a 314,000-household survey known as ACE, or accuracy and coverage evaluation. Whether to use the survey to adjust the census has been the subject of a fight between ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- With a judge expressing fear the presidential election in New Mexico had been compromised, the state's most populous county withheld the release of final tabulations Friday and Republicans threatened legal action over the fate of 252 unaccounted-for ballots. The delay also left a key legislative race in limbo. Democrat Raymond Sanchez, speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives, was left wondering whether he would lose his House seat to Republican John Sanchez, a roofing contractor. Bernalillo County election officials planned to reconvene at 10 a.m. to try to resolve the discrepancy. As officials went over vote ...

TALLAHASSEE -- With backers of Republican George W. Bush warning the nation could be harmed by "endless challenges" to the presidential election results, officials in two Florida counties will start counting tens of thousands of ballots by hand Saturday. Palm Beach and Volusia counties agreed to conduct the time-consuming recounts after widespread complaints about voter confusion and computer malfunctions during Tuesday's election. Broward County will start a similar recount Monday. The stakes are enormous: With Bush topping Democrat Al Gore by only a few hundred votes in Florida, changes in the counties' results could help swing the election. "We've asked ...

Nearly 22,000 Duval County votes for president were nullified after voters chose more than one candidate, the supervisor of elections confirmed Friday, resulting in an unusually high strikeout rate. Supervisor John Stafford and his spokeswoman, Susan Tucker Johnson, attributed the voided presidential votes to a ballot listing 10 presidential candidates over two pages. Voters, they said, probably picked a president on page one, then voted again on the second page. Just the presidential portion of the ballot would then be thrown out, not the entire ballot. The ballots tossed were more than found in Palm Beach County where the focus ...

With the nation watching, three heavily pro-Al Gore precincts in Broward County will be closely scrutinized on Monday as officials sift through almost 4,000 presidential ballots by hand. The county canvassing committee agreed Friday to a Democratic Party request to review balloting in Precinct 6C, a predominantly black district in Pompano Beach, and in precincts 1F and 6F in the Coconut Creek retirement community of Wynmoor. "We should bend over backwards to protect this democracy," said Broward County Commissioner Suzanne Gunzburger, a member of the three-person canvassing committee and a Democrat. Broward County Judge Robert W. Lee, also a Democrat, ...