Who is getting pinched the most?- CNNMoney.com

CNN Money has an interactive map showing foreclosure rates and bank failures across the country.  Have a look at what's going on.

022709 002 bankfailures4941 Who is getting pinched the most?  CNNMoney.com

Who is getting pinched the most?- CNNMoney.com.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Rep: Foreclosed owners should squat in their own homes

CNN has recently done a report on an Ohio Congresswoman urging people that have been foreclosed on to not leave their homes.  There are many laws protecting  the home-owner, and even evidence that many banks have "lost or destroyed" the paperwork proving they hold the ownership of the loan, letting many people off the hook if challenged. Full story here.
If you're poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has a plan for you. Just squat, she says. Yes, this Ohio Democrat is actually encouraging her financially distressed constituents whose homes have been foreclosed upon, to simply stay put. In a Friday report, CNN's Drew Griffin explored the case of Ohioan Andrea Geiss, whose home was foreclosed upon in April. "Behind in payments, out of work, a husband sick, she had nowhere to go," said Griffin. "So, she decided to follow the advice of her Congresswoman and go nowhere." In Lucas County, Ohio, over 4,000 properties were foreclosed upon in 2008, reports CNN. "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes," said Congresswoman Kaptur before the House of Representatives. "Don't you leave." She's called on all of her foreclosed-upon constituents to stay in their homes and refuse to leave without "an attorney and a fight," said CNN. "If they've had no legal representation of a high quality, I tell them stay in their homes," Kaptur told Griffin. Kaptur is a high-profile advocate of an increasingly popular mode of fighting foreclosures best known for it's key phrase: "Produce the note." By telling a bank to "produce the note," a homeowner can delay foreclosure by forcing the lender to prove the suing institution is actually the same which owns the debt. "During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street," explains the Consumer Warning Network. "In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note strategy." And Friday's segment on this growing foreclosure fighting "movement" was not the network's first. Earlier in January, CNN explored one person's strategy in demanding her bank "produce the note," only to find that the lender had "lost or destroyed" the evidence of debt ownership. Such a revelation can significantly strengthen a homeowner's position when asking to renegotiate a mortgage. That these banks, many of which received billions of dollars in government bailout funds, continue to boot defaulted owners from their homes, makes them "vultures" says Kaptur. "They prey on our property assets," she said. "I guess the reason I'm so adamant on this is because I know property law and its power to protect the individual homeowner. And I believe that 99.9 percent of our people have not had good legal representation in this."

Popularity: 1% [?]

Palin's Problems

I am not a fan of McCain's pick of VP Sarah Palin.  I also haven't been a fan of the spin of her pick either. The first problem is that true or not, it seems apparent that the number one reason to pick her was to steal Hillary/Woman supporters away from Obama.  The very sad thing, it's working with some.  I saw a lady on CNN at the Republican Convention, a registered Democrat and I quote:  " Woman are smart enough to vote based on more than one issue.  That's why I'm here.  I'm here to help shatter the glass ceiling for woman." ....... WHAT?  So you're not voting on one issue by voting on the one issue of voting for a woman?  How does that even make any sense. There were also MUCH more capable woman candidates that weren't even vetted for the position.  Yet any claim that Palin isn't qualified based on very real questions is being deflected as "sexism". A month ago she didn't even know what  a Vice President did except take over if the President died. They're claiming executive experience from being a mayor of a town of 9000, and now 2 years as governor of Alaska.   So that's all it takes now?  Well then why isn't she running for President with McCain as the VP? Now Republican's are claiming she has "foreign relations" experience by being governor of Alaska, because it's the state closest to Russia.  Governor's have nothing to do with foreign relations.  All the northern states can now claim experience because of Canada, and southern ones because of Mexico.  Except Florida which has Cuba. Finally, they're saying she will work well with McCain in "reform" and that not to worry because she's only the VICE President, and won't be the President herself.   I think these people forget why the position of Vice President exists.   John McCain is 72 years old.  Not to be morbid, but realistically there's a good chance he's going to die during his term.  Many people survive past 80, many don't.  If he were to die in the first week in office, Palin would be President.  How is SHE qualified to be the President?  Even near the end of his first term, 3 years in, would she be qualified to take over then if he were to die?  We don't know. These aren't idle complaints or worries.  This is our country we could be putting in her hands.

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Useful E-mail Addresses

Below are some very useful e-mail addresses for various functions.  You may want to add them to your address book for future use.

  • [email protected]—Converts any attached Microsoft Visio or Word file (including the 2007/.docx kind) to PDF files, and supports multiple file attachments. Ignore the "iphone" in the address, as it works from any device or computer, but only supports files up to 1 MB in size.
  • [email protected]—Converts Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint files to PDFs. Like the other Koolwire addresses below, it accepts files up to 10 MB in size.
  • [email protected]—Convert PDFs to Word or Rich Text Format files.
  • [email protected]—Convert WAV files to MP3s.
  • [email protected]—Convert MP3s to WAV files.
  • [email protected] - Send a PDF document to this email address as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file.
  • [email protected] - Send an email with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).
  • [email protected] - it will also fetch websites for you through email though in this case, the site address should go in the body of the email message.

Popularity: 1% [?]