NO END IN SIGHT: MINNESOTA SHUTS DOWN COMPLETELY
Posted on July 4, 2011 by Neil Garfield
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EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s frustrating. Many of us did the math and came up with the only possible conclusion. State and local governments would default, starting now, in increasing numbers. They default on essential, social and other services leaving he citizens without any government at all. We wanted it to stop before it came to this. But for reasons that defy rational thinking, very few people are willing to connect the current economic crisis with the fall of the housing market, despite the fact that the housing industry has been a bell-weather for the economy for many decades.If the housing crisis was a slump caused by the common economic factors of demand (over-exuberance) and supply (over-building) fueled by negligent lending practices we could say with some assurance that it will simply play out and we will recover. But we are not recovering and things are getting worse — all because the Wall Street banks are not being held to task for committing the largest fraud in world history and because the fraud is continuing in the form of bogus foreclosures with bogus auction sales, depriving middle America of the last vestige of economic power in what is hailed as a free-market economy.States don’t have a chance of recovery. Their status is that they were robbed of their treasury by investments in bogus mortgages bonds, pillaged by the illusion of a housing boom in which they made commitments that could not be sustained because the housing market was doomed, and deprived of revenue from employed workers, small business success, and tax and fee evasions, amounting to billions of dollars in each state. Arizona lost a minimum of $3 billion according to government experts there and yet they are gridlocked on whether to collect the taxes, fees and fines together with the damages caused to the state budget by the Great Securitization illusion.None of this needs to happen, although we have gone so far kicking the can down the road that some of the damage is irreparable. States could recover in an instant if they applied their resources to the enforcement of taxes, fees, fines and damages using existing law. Their budgets, while damaged, could be restored to normal levels in a normal recession.But this is not normal recession and there is no free economy. Wall Street banks grabbed control of our government at the Federal, State and local level using a scheme so complex that they could claim anything they wanted to claim — including using state non-judicial and judicial proceedings to effectuate t he largest illegal land grab in history. This will go down in history as not only the largest fraud ever committed, and the largest ceding of power to the business sector, but the largest for all time to come as well. There won’t be another one like this for 500 years.People ask me why the law isn’t being applied. Even the most unsophisticated consumer understands that if they tried to use a straw-man at the closing of a transaction without disclosing what they were doing the other party to the transaction (the banks in this case) would cry foul, refuse to complete the transaction and probably refer the matter for criminal prosecution. Yet if the perpetrator is a bank, the rules are suspended, the law is not applied, and the continuing devastation of our society continues.The Banks have the ear of government. They say that no matter how badly they acted, they should not be brought down because if they are, the entire financial system will collapse. Not true. The entire financial system consists of both huge entities crossing international borders and at least 7,000 large and small community banks and credit unions with the exact same access to electronic services, ATM convenience and every other aspect of commercial banking.The sky is falling because the Banks are getting away with it and they continue to suck the life-blood out of our economy, changing our society forever, if we let them. Those public servants who fear their jobs will disappear if they take action are mistaken. They are dealing with a group of people without conscience and without any regard for the nation’s vital economic and security interests. They will use their tactics of undermining the narrative and preventing the application of basic law to achieve their aims. It is up to borrowers, collectively, to correct the damages because government won’t do it, even if it means, like in Minnesota, that they waive their claims against the perpetrators of this fraud.This is why I have sponsoring a group that is forming a cooperative that will save America using conventional means to inform consumers that they have remedies, that opposing the banks is a a deeply moral act of advanced citizenship. And through this Cooperative, members will be able to meet those who are offering help, assistance and services to defeat the final corruption of our society starting with the corruption of title.Is your title safe? The answer is no. Is the economy safe? The answer is no. Are we secure from unreasonable search and seizure? No. Are we protected by due process. No- not if the banks are the ones taking our liberties and privileges away despite a constitution that, once upon a time, promissed a country that would be governed by a nation of laws, not men.
No End in Sight as Minnesotans Grapple With State Shutdown
By MONICA DAVEY
ST. PAUL — The state of Minnesota screeched to a stop on Friday.
State parks were barricaded, and campers, Boy Scout troops and everyone else were sent on their way.
Heading into a holiday weekend in a state that savors its summers outdoors, licenses for fishing, hunting, trapping, boats and ATVs were unavailable for purchase. And all around the State Capitol — the place where all the troubles began — the streets were eerily empty and official buildings locked, plastered with hand-taped signs that offered a gentle explanation: “This building is closed until further notice due to the current state government service interruption.”
Right up to the midnight deadline on Thursday, Minnesotans, who have been known to boast of their professional, efficient government, had held out hope that the state’s divided leadership could reach a deal on how to solve a looming budget deficit. But in the end, the fundamentally different fiscal approaches of the Republicans and the Democrats here did not change, and Minnesota began its broadest shutdown of services in state history with no end in sight.
“Now we’re just waiting and hoping this will be short-lived,” said Mark Crawford, the manager at Lake Maria State Park who on Thursday had to inform scores of campers that they needed to pack up and leave and then, on Friday, became one of 22,000 state employees out of work without pay. “We’ll have to change our lifestyle for a little bit,” said Mr. Crawford, who is 60 and has worked in the parks for 35 years.
Since 2002, there have been six such shutdowns around the nation, including one in 2005 in Minnesota. Some lasted a few hours, others for days. But this time, the two sides appear far apart, the anger is palpable, and no one is confident of a quick resolution. By Friday evening, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, said no negotiations had been scheduled for the holiday weekend.
“There’s a lot of concern about whether this is going to be for a weekend or whether it will stretch into August,” said Liz Kuoppala, the executive director of the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, which, along with a long list of other groups (on behalf of people with H.I.V., battered women, mentally ill Minnesotans) pleaded on Friday before a retired State Supreme Court justice who has been designated to consider exceptions to the state financing freeze. “Part of the hardest part for people in the homeless shelters and elsewhere,” she said, “is not knowing what’s going to happen and what’s going to be paid for and what’s not.”
In a way, the standstill here may have begun last November, when the voters turned power in St. Paul upside down and picked leaders whose ideas about budgets, even during the campaign, could not have been more different from one another.
Republicans, who took control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in almost four decades, called for reining in spending as a way to pull the state’s budget, facing a $5 billion deficit, into control. But Mr. Dayton, who became the state’s first Democratic governor in 20 years, called for collecting more in income taxes from the very highest earners to spare cuts in services to Minnesota’s most vulnerable residents.
As the state’s new budget year approached, the opposing sides had negotiated privately, day after day, under a polite “cone of silence,” in which no one shared a peep about what the other side was asking for.
All vows of silence — and politeness — had vanished by Friday after talks fell apart and Minnesota found itself the only state in the nation closing down. At least 45 states had agreed to spending plans by Friday, officials at the National Conference of State Legislatures said, and the handful of states still finishing their work did not appear at risk of shutdown.
The entire episode left some Minnesotans baffled, posing questions to anyone they came across on Friday. Were highway rest stops open? (No.) Were courts open? (Yes.) Was the Minnesota Zoo open? (No.) Was the local swimming pool open? (Yes; only state functions were affected.)
Even as the state found itself with no approved budget, certain state services deemed essential never stopped. State police patrol and prison operations went on, as did payments to the state’s schools and payments for food stamps, welfare benefits and some programs for the disabled.
Other social services programs, though, including assistance for child care and some services for the blind, had received no such exemption as of Friday, officials said. Nor did the state’s lottery, racetracks, or about 100 road construction projects that were already under way around Minnesota. Torn-up patches, marked only by lonely orange cones, were common sights on Friday.
But even within state agencies, officials found themselves sorting through what must keep going and what ought not. Most prison guards stayed put, for instance, but the state Department of Corrections said it was ending family and volunteers’ visits andyoga classes for prisoners and — if the shutdown lasts long enough for service to lapse — prisoners will see no more cable television.
For many here, though, the largest question was how Minnesota’s leaders might ever reach some accord.
For all the talk of compromise and suggestions by Republicans at one point on Thursday that a deal might be close, it appeared by Friday that the central philosophical divide — between holding the line on spending and raising taxes to maintain services for those most in need — had never really been crossed. Each group retreated to its own side.
“This is a night of deep sorrow for me because I don’t want to see this shutdown occur,” Mr. Dayton told reporters shortly before the midnight deadline on Thursday. “But I think there are basic principles and the well-being of millions of people in Minnesota that would be damaged not just for the next week or whatever long it takes, but the next two years and beyond with these kind of permanent cuts in personal care attendants and home health services and college tuition increases.”
That evening, hundreds of protesters demanding a solution to the impasse gathered outside the Capitol, and Republican lawmakers, describing themselves as discouraged and disheartened, held what some described as a “sit-in” in their chambers urging the governor to call a special session so some state services might be kept running temporarily.
“We’re talking about runaway spending that we can’t afford,” Kurt Zellers, the Republican House speaker, said. “And we will not saddle our children and grandchildren with mounds of debts with promises for funding levels that will not be there in the future.”
David Maki-Waller, 41 and a resident of Northfield, was also thinking of his children on Friday, but of a more immediate problem: how to keep the four of them (15, 11 and 8-year-old twins) entertained over the long weekend now that the family’s reservation to camp at Frontenac State Park — secured months ago — had been canceled along with everyone else’s.
“They’ve been asking me for a Plan B,” Mr. Maki-Waller said. “What are we going to do this weekend? I don’t know. Everyone wanted to go camping.”
Lori Moore contributed reporting from New York.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor,Mortgage, securities fraud Tagged: | bankruptcy, bond defaults, bonds, borrower, countrywide,disclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, foreclosures, fraud, LOAN MODIFICATION, MBS, modification, quiet title, rescission, RESPA, RMBS, securitization, State default, TILA audit, trustee, WEISBAND
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EVERYTHING IS FRAUDULENT FROM THE MINUTE YOU SIGNED YOUR ORIGINAL LOAN DOCS INCLUDING ANY LOAN MODS AFTERWARDS…the banks and servicers are doing the “loan mod shuffle” with you…don’t EVER expect them to be honest and forthright in ANYTHING.
Here’s what you ask them: “Will you please send me absolute proof of conveyance of my “loan” to the trust, and proof that the trust even exists, because if you can’t, then this is fraudulent.”
break the law.
On 6/17 I was informed all of our hamp documents were finally in and our point of contact said she gave them to her supervisor. On 6/24 I recieved mail from Wells Fargo, dated 6/22, that our hamp loan would be disqualified if they didn’t get the documents that were missing. ( there was no list, of course, of the documents that they needed). I immediately called my single point of contact at W.F. and informed her of the letter. She appologized for the letter saying she knew nothing of this document. (I have all this recorded btw). I was told to await the hamp decision on 6/25 by my Single Point Of Contact(S.P.O.C.)-(beam me up scotty). On 6/30 I was contacted by my S.P.O.C. and informed we qualified for the unemployement mortgage program, to our surprise, becuase my wife is on unemployment and there is no W-2. (this IS recorded). I explained to her that this was possibly fraud becuase my wife had filed a 1099 stateing that she worked for an employer part time while she collected the balance in unemployment. My S.P.O.C. was basically telling us to Lie to wells fargo and all other involved parties. If W.F. has all the hamp documents, including 2010 tax returns and the 1099 form from my unemployed wife for this year, shouldn’t they have known we did not qualify for this NEW loan my S.P.O.C. was trying to sell us? If what she said is true, and they have all of our documents….isn’t this some kind of fraud. She certainly claims, on tape, that we still havent been turned down by hamp, and that I need no more paper work, and this back dates all the way to 6/17. I’ve certainly caught them in a lie and I have it documented. What is my recourse if any?