On Monday night, I watched my to start with, The Last Phrase host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Whilst O’Donnell laudably attempted to emphasis the audience’s awareness onand hopefully final, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen below for fantastic, I was overtaken, not by the pulling about the thread, plus the voracious audience he serves. It did not make me sad, it crafted me angry.
With regards to celebrities, we could be a heartless region, basking in their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Seashore. The impulse is understandable, to some diploma. It might be grating to pay attention to complaints from people today who benefit from privileges that the majority of us cannot even think of. Should you can not muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who tends to make alot more moolah to get a day’s get the job done than most of us will make within a decade’s time, I guess I cannot blame you.
Along with the speedy tempo of events on the web in addition to the facts revolution sparked from the Online world, it’s quite simple for that technologies market to imagine it’s completely unique: repeatedly breaking new ground and engaging in things that no one has at any time accomplished ahead of.
But you can get other sorts of business enterprise that have previously undergone a few of the very same radical shifts, and also have just as terrific a stake within the future.
Get healthcare, as an example.
We commonly presume of it like a immense, lumbering beast, but in truth, medicine has undergone a series of revolutions inside past 200 years which can be a minimum of equal to people we see in technologies and advice.
Much less understandable, but still within just the norms of human nature, could be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and consider the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but in the blithe interviewer Sheen’s daily life as we pass it while in the best suited lane of our everyday lives. To get honest, it might be challenging for consumers to discern the variation concerning a run-of-the-mill awareness whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its individual merits, a quote like “I Am On a Drug. It’s Called Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we can not all be anticipated to consider the complete measure of someone’s existence every single time we hear some thing humorous.
Fast forward to 2011 and I am wanting to investigate suggests of staying a bit more business-like about my hobbies (primarily music). Through the finish of January I had manned up and started off to advertise my weblogs. I had made a number of unique weblogs, which had been contributed to by acquaintances and colleagues. I promoted these actions by way of Facebook and Twitter.
2nd: the very little abomination that the Gang of 5 on the Supream Court gave us a 12 months or so back (Citizens Inebriated) literally contains a little bouncing betty of its own that can especially nicely go off during the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. As this ruling prolonged the principle of “personhood” to the two businesses and unions, to test to deny them any best suited to operate inside the legal framework that they have been organized below deprives these “persons” of the freedoms of speech, association and motion. Which suggests (the moment yet again, quoting law college trained relatives) that either the courts must uphold these rights for your unions (as person “persons” as assured by the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they have to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights should apply to important firms, also.
From Down With Tyranny: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/01/nous-ne-sommes-plus-vos-macaques-anti.html
UPDATE: Russ Baker Wants To Make Sure We’re Aware Of The Bush Connection
Baker points out that the CIA was a sponsor of Mobutu’s and that George H.W. Bush later welcomed the savage kleptocrat and tyrant to America as “one of our most valued friends.” Three days after Lumumba was murdered, JFK was sworn in as President of the United States and Baker’s nook, Family of Secrets makes a hard to deny case for the involvement of the CIA, Dulles and… George H.W. Bush. From Baker’s WhoWhatWhy:
In my book, Family of Secrets, I cite evidence that the elder Bush was deeply involved in C.I.A covert operations during the time in which both assassinations took place. I document his close ties to mining interests comparable to the ones Lumumba himself had angered– by declaring, as Hochschild recounts, that it was not enough for the Congolese to gain political independence from colonial rule, but that “Africans had to also benefit from the great wealth in their soil.”
More troubling are the many inconsistencies and gaps that I discovered in accounts by Bush and others concerning his activities on and around the day of the assassination, all of which are extensively documented and footnoted. These include:
• Bush’s noted inability to recall where he was on November 22, 1963;
• his longtime friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, a mentor and confidant to Lee Harvey Oswald;
• a declassified FBI memo identifying Bush as a C.I.A officer working with Cuban exiles at the time of the assassination;
• FBI records documenting a call Bush himself placed to the Bureau on Nov. 22 from a location near Dallas, offering to identify a possible triggerman in the assassination– a man Bush knew far better than he revealed at the time, and who he knew could not have been the triggerman
• Barbara Bush’s revelation in her 1994 book, Barbara Bush: A Memoir, that the Bushes were having lunch the week of November 22 with Alfred Ulmer, an old friend who, research shows, was one of the C.I.A.’s experts in deposing leaders.
• Bush’s close relationship with the military intelligence official whose unit and unit members played an astonishing array of roles on November 22, from forcing their way into the lead car of Kennedy’s motorcade to providing the interpreter who framed Marina Oswald’s statements in a way that implicated her husband.
Labels: Belgium, CIA, Congo, George H.W. Bush, Patrice Lumumba, Russ Baker
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 10:00 AM
You may know by now that American Banker has uncovered the 27-page term sheet that could form part of a global settlement between state and federal regulators and mortgage servicers. The term sheet describes a host of actions to which the servicers would have to conform, most of which reflect current law with a couple that go a little bit further.
I’m a slight bit late to discussing this term sheet, so I’ll refer you to some other worthy commentators and analysts for the details. Cheyenne Hopkins at American Banker has a nice synopsis of the terms, as does HuffPo’s Shahien Nasiripour. Georgetown Law Professor Adam Levitin finds the terms to be strong, while Felix Salmon finds any settlement of this type to be doomed, mainly because of the lack of strong enforcement for non-compliance.
Here’s what I can add to this. This morning, there just so happens to be a field hearing of the House Oversight Committee in Baltimore. In fact, it just started at 9am ET. Rep. Elijah Cummings, who represents the area, called the hearing, which will feature the mayor of Baltimore and the Governor of Maryland, among others, to examine the foreclosure crisis and the abuse carried out by mortgage servicers. I got a chance to talk with the star witness yesterday.
His name is Sgt. Kevin Matthews, and he served in Iraq in 2005-2006. He was wounded in the line of duty and returned to the US a disabled veteran. He bought his home in 2008 and then lost his job a year later. He exhausted all of his funds to keep up with the mortgage payments, but eventually went into default. In the second half of 2009 he sought a variety of modification packages with his mortgage servicer, USAA (GMAC Mortgage actually serviced the loan, but Matthews interfaced with USAA). “I basically got the runaround,” Matthews said.
In February of 2010, Matthews received the notice of intent to foreclose within 45 days, but by then he had been approved for disability from his injuries. He had a local housing agency put in for a modification for him, reflecting this new information, in April 2010.
The crucial piece of information here is that Matthews had a VA loan. “With a VA loan, foreclosure is supposed to be the last option,” Matthews explained. “By contract, they cannot foreclose until all options are exhausted: a modification, deed-in-lieu, or a short sale.”
But instead of reacting to the new information in the modification package received in April 2010, Matthews’ servicer simply ignored it, and made good on the foreclosure sale on May 21, 2010. Under the law governing federally-funded VA loans, the servicer was to rescind that sale date as they pursued a modification. “They got the package but never pushed back the sale date,” Matthews said.
Here’s where the story takes quite a turn. Matthews was away at school on June 8, 2010, and he returned home to find the locks changed on his house. The servicer had gone into the house and taken all of his belongings out, in preparation for the foreclosure sale. This violated Maryland law, because the servicer needed to file a writ of possession to remove Matthews from the home. “They stole my stuff, stole my kid’s stuff,” Matthews said. “They took everything in the house. They took my lawn mower.”
As it turned out, Matthews had a very unique situation. His legal defense, the Baltimore-based non-profit Civil Justice, discovered that his foreclosure affidavit was signed by none other than Jeffrey Stephan, GMAC’s infamous robo-signer. After months in court, GMAC dismissed the case against Matthews and rescinded the foreclosure sale. GMAC has the ability to re-file the case, but has yet to do so thus far.
Matthews has returned to the home, where he’s still trying to obtain a permanent loan modification. He’s also still trying to get his possessions back. His lawyer, Anthony DePastina, called the phone number made available to inquire about his belongings, but nobody ever answered. The servicer, in ransacking the house, also damaged it. They broke the hot water heater and cracked a drain pipe. They stuck Matthews with all the water bills, and he also wound up with a citation for overgrown weeds on the property. “In Maryland, if a citation is not remedied, it becomes a misdemeanor,” Matthews explained. “But how can I cut the grass, they stole my lawn mower!”
Now, why do I bring up this particular servicer horror story? Mainly because this was a VA loan. And therefore, a great many of the elements of the settlement term sheet are similar to how the servicer is required to deal with a VA loan. The VA Home Loan Program spells out specifically how their products are to be treated. And still, in this case, the servicer violated the guidelines. Not only that, but they stole everything in the borrowers’ home to boot. Additionally, in this case the legal system actually worked. Matthews got his home back because of faulty affidavits. But that has not helped him get back everything he owned.
The main point is this: you can make all the guidelines you want, and basically, the 27-page term sheet has most of them. You can demand a single point of contact for borrowers, an end to the dual track process of the servicer pursuing modifications and foreclosures simultaneously, specific mandates for modifications and all the rest. You can even set stricter guidelines for dealing with military families. All of those are in the term sheet, and many of those kinds of guidelines are in the VA Home Loan that Sgt. Kevin Matthews received. It didn’t matter. Neither did all the promises servicers have made to reform their systems going back to 2003. Servicers pretty much don’t follow the law. That’s why they were under investigation. A document that tells them to comply with the law, in language the banks are already using, doesn’t seem like it’ll make much of a difference.
Two more things. Without rigorous enforcement, the guidelines are approximately meaningless. State AGs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would serve as the enforcement monitors under the terms of the agreement. And CFPB adds a new wrinkle to this. However, if servicers have been abusing their customers for this long, and the term sheet mostly reinforces the same laws that they broke all this time (with a couple additional strictures), who’s to say that they won’t simply treat the Kevin Matthewses of the world the same way again?
The final issue is this. The term sheet sets the basic standards for conduct in the servicing industry that servicers should have followed all along. But this is supposed to be a sanction, for violations of law. So now the penalty for failing to follow the law is having to sign an agreement saying you’ll really follow the law this time? We don’t know what monetary penalties or quotas for principal mods will come along with this yet. But we do know this. Kevin Matthews had all his possessions stolen from him, and nobody under this agreement will go to jail for that theft.
Source: http://removeripoffreports.net/ corporate Reputation Management
Fix your company's bad reputation today!
cheeser
March 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
hes aight,… nuthin new tho.. where are the unique new artists that arent following trends..
concept is cool and kinda new… but noone sings anymore
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Tawny
March 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
He’s the future.
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Tony
March 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Best song on the album.
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My2Cents
March 6th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Novacane Is Also A GREAT Track.
Brilliant FRESH New Artist.
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La'Wayne
March 6th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
aka Lonny Breaux…He’s off the fuckin chain
this aint his best tho
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DEEPERthanRAP
March 6th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
R&B??? wtf?
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Lil' Nello
March 6th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Song is pretty good except for the couple parts where he sounds to much like Wiz!
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The Beast
March 6th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Yonkers was some scary sh*t. I like this though.
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hey
March 6th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Ciara tweeted about this guy! listen to novacane!
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jaa
March 6th, 2011 at 11:39 pm
‘strawberry swing’ is a devastating song.
same goes for ‘there will be tear’
i like the off center subject matter.
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Leon
March 7th, 2011 at 4:10 am
The world doesn’t need another Drake; the one we have is devoid of worth and significance.
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Douchebag Dude
March 7th, 2011 at 4:16 am
Nobody sings anymore. Even “love songs” arent real love songs. I’d rather these idiots copy Stevie Wonder or other classic artists than the current bs out now.
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AAA
March 7th, 2011 at 5:26 am
I love this song I heard it!!!!!!! So good
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Yes SIR
March 7th, 2011 at 8:05 am
Novocane is a helluva SONG!.. Frank Ocean is my near favorite artist!
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Bernie
March 7th, 2011 at 10:36 am
dam iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit !
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HipHopDiva
March 7th, 2011 at 11:58 pm
his ablum is really good. don’t sleep. check out “we all try” its a beautiful song :) here’s the link youtube.com/watch?v=NtZh_zWEcpY
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