Buy a House, Make Your Payments, Then Discover You've Been Foreclosed On Without Your Knowledge

By David Dayen

This should never happen, but it did, thanks to the sordid mortgage servicing industry.

A few months ago, Ceith and Louise Sinclair of Altadena, California, were told that their home had been sold. It was the first time they’d heard that it was for sale.

Their mortgage servicer, Nationstar, foreclosed on them without their knowledge, and sold the house to an investment company. If it wasn’t for the Sinclairs going to a local ABC affiliate and describing their horror story, they would have been thrown out on the street, despite never missing a mortgage payment. It’s impossible to know how many homeowners who didn’t get the media to pick up their tale have dealt with a similar catastrophe, and eventually lost their home.

As finance writer Barry Ritholtz has explained, home purchases involve a series of precise safeguards, designed to protect property rights and prevent situations where borrowers who are perfect on their payments get evicted. “In a nation of laws, contract and property rights, there is no room for errors,” Ritholtz writes. “The only way these errors could have occurred is if several people involved in the process committed criminal fraud.”

Any observer of the mortgage industry since 2009 is no stranger to foreclosure fraud, and the fact that virtually nobody has paid the price for this crime. But the case of the Sinclairs involves a new player in that rotten game: Nationstar. Unheralded just a few years ago, the firm, owned by a private equity behemoth, has been buying up the rights to service mortgages, accepting monthly payments and distributing the proceeds to the owners of the loan, taking a little off the top for itself.

Nationstar has racked up an impressively horrible customer service record in its short life, failing to honor prior agreements with borrowers and pursuing illegal foreclosures. The fact that Nationstar and other corrupt companies like it are beginning to corner the market for mortgage servicing should trouble not only homeowners, but the regulators tasked with looking out for them. It didn’t seem possible that a broken mortgage servicing industry could get worse, but it has.

Nationstar is at the forefront of a massive shift in mortgage servicing. In the past few years, the largest servicers were arms of major banks, like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi and Ally Bank. Those were the “big five” servicers sanctioned for an array of fraudulent conduct in the National Mortgage Settlement, which mandated specific standards for servicers to follow, like providing a single point of contact for customers and an end to “dual tracking,” when a servicer offers a trial modification to a borrower and pursues foreclosure at the same time.

The banks realized that they could sell the servicing rights and evade these standards, along with the higher labor costs associated with implementing them. What’s more, they would avoid new, higher capital requirements associated with holding servicing assets, allowing them to give bigger dividends to shareholders and bigger bonuses to executives.

So the big banks started selling off their servicing rights, not to other banks, but to specialty financial services firms like Green Tree, Nationstar, Walter Investment Management and Ocwen, all of whom are in kind of an arms race to become the biggest servicer.

Last October, Ocwen purchased the entire servicing portfolio of Ally Bank, covering about $329 billion in loans. Ocwen has also purchased part of JPMorgan Chase’s servicing, as well as a slice from OneWest Bank; it is attempting to dominate the market.

Nationstar acquired business from Bank of America and Aurora Bank in 2012, and more in 2013.

Wells Fargo is poised to sell some servicing rights as well, and Nationstar will surely bid for those rights. As of June 30 of this year, Nationstar has the right to collect on $318 billion worth of home loans—growing three-fold in under two years—and it will seek to add even more in the future. The company, majority owned by the private equity firm Fortress Investment Group, recently raised $1.1 billion in capital to buy up more servicing rights from banks around the country.

This means that homeowners victimized by big-bank servicers, who were supposed to get a commitment to honest treatment as part of the National Mortgage Settlement, instead got their servicing rights sold to companies no longer bound by the terms of that settlement. So homeowners lose all of their protections, and often have to start back at square one with their new servicer. For example, if a borrower was in process on a loan modification with their old servicer, the new servicer can choose to simply not recognize that modification, and demand the full monthly payment under threat of foreclosure. This is a very common practice.

What’s more, this new breed of non-bank servicers scooping up all these servicing rights has proven themselves as a bunch of cheats profiting off their customers. Green Tree Servicing has a terrible record of ripoffs. Ocwen has been sued in state court over its practices, including an innovative scam involving sending homeowners a check for $3.50, and claiming that cashing the check automatically enrolls the customer in an appliance insurance plan, which costs $54.95 a month.

Fitch, the credit rating agency, wrote in a research note in June that the growth of non-bank servicers “may pose challenges to a potential orderly transfer of servicing,” and that the involvement of private equity firms “raises questions” about the ultimate endgame for these servicers. In effect, servicing has shifted from big banks to private equity and hedge funds, and neither really have the customer’s needs in mind.

Nationstar is no different in the non-bank servicer space. While the company promised California that it would adhere to all settlement obligations on the servicing rights it purchases, the Sinclairs were subjected to familiar abuse. The family paid their mortgage on time since purchasing their home in 2003. Last year, they received a loan modification. But their servicer sold the rights to Nationstar, and Nationstar didn’t honor the modification. In June, the Sinclairs sent in their mortgage payment, and Nationstar sent it back in full. Then it sold the home. When questioned, Nationstar claimed the Sinclairs didn’t notarize one page of their modification, which turned out to be untrue.

It was a clear attempt to find an excuse to deny the modification and push the Sinclairs into foreclosure. Mortgage servicers actually make more money with foreclosures than with loan modifications, because of how their compensation structure works. Servicers load up various foreclosure fees on homeowners that they get to keep, and they get paid off first in a foreclosure sale.

A loan modification simply cuts their percentage balance on the loan.

This is not Nationstar’s only scam. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which recently started examining non-bank servicers, put out a report this summer on the illicit practices of these firms. CFPB found that servicers like Nationstar often failed to inform homeowners about the change in servicing rights when they are transferred, meaning that the homeowner kept paying the wrong servicer. This is a clever way to facilitate late fees; just don’t tell the customer where to send their money.

Servicers also delayed property taxes paid out of escrow accounts, making borrowers late on those taxes and triggering more delinquency fees; failed to refund insurance premiums and other fees due back to borrowers; did not communicate properly with borrowers in need of a loan modification; lost documents solicited from borrowers for that process and made it impossible to complete the applications; failed to even properly file documents associated with the transfer of servicing rights; and charged customers default fees “without adequately documenting the reasons for and amounts of the fees,” and neglected to waive certain fees or interest charges.

CFPB also found that non-bank servicers like Nationstar had no comprehensive compliance management system in place to ensure that they followed all applicable consumer protection laws. Many didn’t even have formal, written policies or independent auditors. They hadn’t been subject to any examination prior to CFPB, so this stands to reason.

Nationstar is being sued in New York’s Supreme Court for auctioning off non-performing loans that it would rather not service at a severe discount, shortchanging investors in the process. The company’s auction sales, made with an online auction company that its private equity parent firm has a “business affiliation” with, end up allowing Nationstar to recoup its take, with all the losses falling on the underlying loan owners. So Nationstar has managed to infuriate both sides of the mortgage deal, the lenders and the borrowers, with its unscrupulous practices.

Getting examiners inside these “specialty” companies is a start, and new servicer rules coming from CFPB in January would cover non-bank servicers as well. But no regulator has the resources to deal with such flagrant abuses. Mortgage servicing is a sewer, and it needs to be completely overhauled from the ground up. If Nationstar represents the future, then until it faces real penalties or an expulsion from the industry for its conduct, private property rights in America will have to be seen as theoretical. Just ask the Sinclairs.

David Dayen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter at @ddayen.

I Will Gladly Knock Alex Jones The FUCK Out!

By David Sparks

Radio Host Alex Jones makes his living connecting seemingly unconnected events, and connecting them with his world view of a giant global oligarchical movement to enslave all souls.

But what Jones really does, is make it harder for people to question the possibility of actual conspiracies, because he has enabled the mainstream narrative to label all who don't buy the official line of conventional wisdom as kooks, through his hyperbolic baboonish behavior.

And since Jones claims that he likes to fight so much, I decided to offer him up the chance to the world to show what a tough guy he is in an old-fashioned boxing match.

Chinese Chicken, Food Safety, and the USDA

By rickpace1

Here’s a bit of news that might make you drop that chicken nugget midbite.

Just before the start of the long holiday weekend last Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quietly announced that it was ending a ban on processed chicken imports from China. The kicker: These products can now be sold in the U.S. without a country-of-origin label.

For starters, just four Chinese processing plants will be allowed to export cooked chicken products to the U.S., as first reported by Politico. The plants in question passed USDA inspection in March.

Initially, these processors will only be allowed to export chicken products made from birds that were raised in the U.S. and Canada. Because of that, the poultry processors won’t be required to have a USDA inspector on site, as The New York Times notes, adding:

“And because the poultry will be processed, it will not require country-of-origin labeling. Nor will consumers eating chicken noodle soup from a can or chicken nuggets in a fast-food restaurant know if the chicken came from Chinese processing plants.”

Earlier in the week I reported on the concerns that small farmers have about the newly proposed FDA food safety regulations. Now I read the USDA allows CHINESE poultry processing plants to convert American or Canadian chickens (chickens raised 2,000 miles from the processor) and to market them WITHOUT country-of-origin labeling. The Chinese processor will also NOT need a poultry processing inspector on site.

Don’t get me wrong…I want all the people of the world to prosper and be healthy…and the Chinese are part of ‘all the people of the world’.

Call me crazy, but combining what I know about the new FDA proposed food safety regulations with what I know about this recent USDA ruling….I think the American political leaders on food and agriculture look like fools.

Again I’m going to go out on a political limb – but it does not appear that these policies are being driven by government decision-making in the public interest.

And there is more:

And, chicken lovers, brace yourselves: There’s more. A report suggests chicken inspections here in the U.S. might be poised to take a turn for the worse. The Government Accountability Office report said this week it has serious “questions about the validity” of the new procedures for inspecting poultry across the country.

Basically, these changes would replace many USDA inspectors on chicken processing lines with employees from the poultry companies themselves. The USDA has been piloting the new procedures, which will save money and significantly speed up processing lines, in 29 chicken plants. As The Washington Post , the plan is to roll out the new procedures eventually to “most of the country’s 239 chicken and 96 turkey plants.”

The problem? According to the GAO, the USDA did a poor job of evaluating the effectiveness of the pilot programs it has in place.

As a result, the report concludes, it’s hard to justify the USDA’s conclusions that the new procedures will do a better job than current approaches at cutting down on the number of dangerous bacteria like salmonella that pop up on the birds that will later end up on our dinner tables.

LOVELY!

Here is the NPR Report

Here is one of the many comments at the NPR Report (I find it too cynical, but the reference to food as ‘protein’ is totally valid commentary on our industrial food industry’s mechanistic view of what nourishes us.)

I think US-Based poultry producers are playing The Long Game here, looking for a quid pro quo from China hoping it will now open its doors to US produced chicken – it’s all about the money – Agra-producers of protein need to push the cheapest possible product out to the largest number of consumers, regardless of the ethical questions of how the animals are raised or slaughtered, regardless of the conditions of the workers who do the processing, and regardless of the safety of product that finds it’s way onto the tables of our families. It’s about a Machine that processes protein worldwide for mass consumption at the lowest possible unit cost. It’s about how Industry’s money subverts the safety process via purchased politicians. It’s going to happen, and there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it.

Here is the USDA Ruling on the Chinese Processors.

And, by the way, I think there ARE things you and I can do about these food ethics issues!

A full-blown crisis on Capitol Hill

The House passed a resolution to fund the government and defund The Affordable Health Care Act.

After the Senate turns it down, the bill goes back to the House.

Can John Boehner convince his caucus not to hold the government hostage to what’s become their only issue?

NBC White House Correspondent Kristen Wekler reports on President Obama’s call to John Boehner.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., talk about the situation with MSNBC’s Karen Finney.

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Defund the Affordable Health Care Act? This is like the Civil War

By Morgan Whitaker

With Friday’s vote, the Republican party moved one step closer towards their goal of stopping President Obama’s healthcare reform law from going into effect, an effort that could very well lead to a government shutdown. Sadly, after the political battles of the last few years, the threat of a government shutdown is no longer unique.

Whether they are bargaining for spending cuts, or in this case, pushing back against a law they openly oppose, the debt ceiling has become a negotiating tool.

But when Rev. Sharpton asked one of his favorite professors, Melissa Harris-Perry, to put the current debate into historical context, she argued that it’s the worst intransigence we’ve seen since the Civil War.

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“Of course we’ve seen this before, and the last time that we saw this, this level of dysfunction, this level of unwillingness to implement the laws of the land, it led to the Civil War,” she said.

“Now, I don’t think that we are on the brink of a civil war,” she added. “But the kind of behavior that we are seeing here, where a set of states and individual congresspersons have such an ideological disagreement with the fundamental laws of the nation that they are willing literally to secede from those laws, to not implement them, to not be part of them. Yes, we’ve seen this before and it nearly destroyed us.”

While the House and Senate still has a little over a week to come to an agreement to keep the lights on in Washington, President Obama showed no signs of backing down from the battle.

According to House Speaker John Boehner’s office, the President reached out to the speaker late Friday to tell him he had no plans to negotiate.

“The President called the speaker this evening to tell him he wouldn’t negotiate with him on the debt limit,” Press Secretary Brendan Buck told NBC News. “Given the long history of using debt limit increases to achieve bipartisan deficit reduction and economic reforms, the speaker was disappointed but told the President that the two chambers of Congress will chart the path ahead. It was a brief call.”

With the possible government shutdown looming, President Obama calls out Republicans for being on the verge of failing to pass a budget.

Koch Brothers Behind Creepy Uncle Sam Ad

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Republicans vote to slash food stamps

By Morgan Whitaker

Conservative Republicans in the House passed a bill that will cut $39 billion from food stamps over the next decade, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

Passed in a 217 to 210 vote, the bill–supported only by Republicans–amends the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with an number of new provisions expected to knock nearly 4 million people out of the program in 2014, and an average of nearly 3 million people each year through 2023.

This is the second version of the food stamps bill pushed by House Republicans this year, after an earlier plan to cut $20.5 billion failed to pass the House–in part because many conservative Republicans believed the cuts were insufficient.

This version of the legislation, split off from the rest of the farm bill after the plan to cut $20.5 billion was rejected, creates new provisions that nearly double cuts, primarily by imposing new work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents between the age of 18 and 50, limiting them to three months of benefits in a three-year period unless they work part-time, or are in a job-training program. Currently, those recipients can obtain waivers during times of high unemployment.

According to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill allows states to cut people out of the program “even if they are actively looking for work, even if they’re on a waiting list for job training, and even if they’re working, but for less than 20 hours a week while they try to find a full-time job.”

According to CBO estimates, that provision alone will drop 1.7 million people out of the program in 2014, and an average of 1 million people each year over the next decade. Another provision restricting eligibility requirements could cut an average of 1.8 million people a year over the next decade.

The CBO also estimates that 12 million people will “naturally” leave the food stamps program over the next decade as the economy improves, without any legislative changes to the program.

 

The number of food stamp recipients across the country has jumped in recent years, in large part due to the recession. Thursday’s vote came on the heels of a series of reports showing that while the wealthiest Americans have largely recovered from the economic downturn, most Americans–particularly those on the lower end of the economic scale–have not. The vote too place even as Wall Street profits soared.

 

SNAP benefits primarily go to households with children, the elderly, and the disabled, who make up 76% of those in the program as of 2011. Of those who can work, 58% do. The new legislation could also cut off support to 170,000 of the nearly 1 million military veterans who receive SNAP benefits each month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders joins Rev. Sharpton to discuss the House GOP’s vote to slash nearly $40 billion from food stamps over the next decade.

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Like many bills championed by the most conservative members of the House, the bill has little chance of making it through the Senate in its current form. The Senate’s version of the bill cuts only $4 billion from the food stamp program. Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, slammed the House’s bill in a statement released shortly after the vote.

“We have never before seen this kind of partisanship injected into a Farm Bill,” she said in a statement. “Not only does this House bill represent a shameful attempt to kick millions of families in need off of food assistance, it’s also a monumental waste of time. The bill will never pass the Senate, and will never be signed by the President.”

But she indicated she was hopeful that a reasonable solution could be found when House and Senate conferees come together to resolve their respective bills.

“The good news is now that this vote is behind us, we are close to the finish line. If House Republican leaders drop the divisive issues, appoint conferees and work with us in a bipartisan way, we can finalize a farm bill that creates jobs, reforms agriculture policy, and reduces the deficit by tens of billions of dollars. It’s time to get a comprehensive farm bill done to give farmers and ranchers the certainty they need to continue growing the economy.”

Ultimately 15 Republicans joined Republicans to oppose the bill, including Rep. Peter King of New York, who told reporters Wednesday he thought it went too far.

“It’s just too much, too quick, and we can’t be talking about possibly shutting the government down at the same time we’re cutting food stamps. We have to do one thing at a time,” he said.

Alaska’s Don Young voted against the cuts as well, which he defended in a statement released shortly after the vote.

“These proposed cuts would result in approximately 10,000 Alaskans losing SNAP support and harm food security for families throughout the state, particularly in rural areas. In fact, many Alaskans use SNAP to supplement their subsistence hunting and fishing,” Young said. “Isolated villages in Alaska face unique and burdensome economic barriers, and SNAP often provides a critical lifeline for residents. While I agree with many of my colleagues that we should continue to improve SNAP, making such drastic reductions in funding is not the best way forward.”

Were it to somehow make its way out of the Senate, the bill already faces a veto threat from the White House.

The bill has also drawn the ire of religious communities, including Sister Simone Campbell of the Catholic social justice group, NETWORK, and the Circle of Protection, a coalition of more than 65 heads of evangelical and Catholic leaders.

Do You Want to Know Why People Are Angry?

Wackos intend to cage themselves in Idaho

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

I haven't heard such enthusiastic, downright raucous applause since Texas Gov. "Oops" Perry suggested in 2009 that his state just might withdraw from the union. Unfortunately for him, the applauders were not Texans, but the people of the other 49 states.

This year, though, Idaho is the recipient of hip-hip-hoorays from across the country. Why? Because it has been selected as the site of an extraordinary new town to be named "III Citadel." This will be a walled, heavily-fortified, one-square-mile settlement of some 7,000 armed & angry, ideologically-pure, anti-government extremists drawn from cities, towns and gopher holes all across America. Lucky you, Idaho!

Founder and apocalyptic visionary Christian Allen Kerodin, says the Roman numeral III in the name of his Citadel scheme represents what he calls the "3 percenters" – the percentage of Americans who are superpatriot survivalists capable of withstanding the coming economic doomsday and social upheaval. He says that, once established, he and his fellow Citadellians will take it upon themselves to restore America to Americans: "The Southwest will be purged of Latinos," he explains, and "Enclaves of Muslims such as in Detroit will be culled… by fed-up Americans looking for some payback." In Kerodin's barricaded utopia, everyone older than 13 "must possess an AR-15 assault rifle, five magazines, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition." In an odd comparison, he declares that his last bastion of liberty will be like Disneyland – "a walled, gated private property." Yeah – only Goofyer.

Of course, the III in the Citadel's name could also refer to Kerodin's three felony convictions.

Nonetheless, he's doing America a favor if he can actually bring 7,000 like-minded zealots into his compound. Once they're inside, we can sneak up and lock the gates from the outside.

"7,000 Gun-Loving "Patriots" Living in an Walled Citadel Built Around an Arms Factory in Idaho - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" www.alternet.org, August 15, 2013.

Buy Jesse Jackson Jr.'s Mink Capes

By Jozen Cummings

One of the more shocking things revealed in Jesse Jackson Jr.'s scandal, in which the Chicago politician was found guilty of illegally spending campaign funds on superfluous items, was his taste in clothing. Jackson had a penchant for mink capes, as if he were trying to bring back the 1970's.

As Halloween fast approaches, those who are interested in dressing up like the disgraced son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson now have their chance to do so, according to the Associated Press.

The U.S. Marshals Service said it will start selling 13 items in an online auction Tuesday - with proceeds going to help repay $750,000 in campaign funds that the Chicago Democrat illegally spent.

‘Something is wrong here’: Trauma center doctor pleads for an end to gun violence

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By Sarah Muller, @digimuller

The head doctor at a trauma center handling victims of the deadly Washington Navy Yard rampage gave an emotional plea to end gun violence in America.

“I may be the chief medical officer of a very large trauma center, but there’s something wrong here when we have these multiple shootings, these multiple injuries, there’s something wrong,” said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Janis Orlowski of MedStar Washington Hospital Center during a press briefing.

“The only thing I can say is we have to work together to get rid of it.”

“I’d like you to put my trauma center out of business,” Orlowski added.

MedStar Washington Hospital Center has been treating three gunshot victims–all who are expected to survive—after a heavily-armed gunman opened fire Monday morning Washington, D.C.’s Navy Yard.

While authorities continue to investigate the attack, police have identified the suspected shooter as Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old civilian contractor for the Navy. Officials said the 34-year-old civilian contractor for the Navy is now dead, bringing the overall death toll to 13 people. At least 8 others were injured.

Orlowski said she spoke out not only as a doctor, but as a mother and a concerned member of the community.

“I worry about this, I worry about our community,” she told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “Mass murders – people walking through schools, people walking through movie theaters, people walking through work places –unfortunately is common, or more common than what it should be. And I spoke from the heart when I said that we’ve got to work together to stop this.”

President Obama addressed the increasing pattern of shooting sprees across the country, even in the places one might least expect it. “We are confronting yet another mass shooting,” Obama said Monday. “And today it happened on a military installation in our nation’s capital.”

Following the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary school and the Aurora movie theater, the Obama administration has been pushing for tighter gun control measures across the country. But the Senate bill to require background checks ultimately failed, dealing a major blow to gun control advocates.

Just last week, Colorado also recalled two Democratic state lawmakers who voted in favor of tighter gun restrictions.

Verizon's diabolical plan to turn the Web into pay-per-view

By Bill Snyder | InfoWorld

Think of all the things that tick you off about cable TV. Along with brainless programming and crummy customer service, the very worst aspect of it is forced bundling. You can't pay just for the couple of dozen channels you actually watch. Instead, you have to pay for a couple of hundred channels, because the good stuff is scattered among a number of overstuffed packages.

Now, imagine that the Internet worked that way. You'd hate it, of course. But that's the direction that Verizon, with the support of many wired and wireless carriers, would like to push the Web.

That's not hypothetical. The country's No. 1 carrier is fighting in court to end the Federal Communications Commission's policy of Net neutrality, a move that would open the gates to a whole new - and wholly bad - economic model on the Web.

As it stands now, you pay your Internet service provider and go wherever you want on the Web. Packets of bits are just packets and have to be treated equally. That's the essence of Net neutrality.

But Verizon's plan, which the company has outlined during hearings in federal court and before Congress, would change that. Verizon and its allies would like to charge websites that carry popular content for the privilege of moving their packets to your connected device. Again, that's not hypothetical.

ESPN, for example, is in negotiations with at least one major cellular carrier to pay to exempt its content from subscribers' cellular data caps. And what's wrong with that? Well, ESPN is big and rich and can pay for that exemption, but other content providers - think of your local jazz station that streams audio - couldn't afford it and would be out of business. Or, they'd make you pay to visit their websites. Indeed, if that system had been in place 10 years ago, fledglings like Google or YouTube or Facebook might never have gotten out of the nest.

Susan Crawford, a tech policy expert and professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, says Verizon wants to "cable-ize the Internet." She writes in her blog that "The question presented by the case is: Does the U.S. government have any role in ensuring ubiquitous, open, world-class, interconnected, reasonably priced Internet access?"

Verizon: the new Standard Oil

Verizon and other carriers answer that question by saying no.

They argue that because they spent megabucks to build and maintain the network, they should be able to have a say over what content travels over it. They say that because Google and Facebook and other Internet companies make money by moving traffic over "their" networks, they should get a bigger piece of the action. (Never mind that pretty much every person and business that accesses Google or Facebook is already paying for the privilege, and paying more while getting less speed than users in most of Europe.)

In 2005, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre famously remarked that upstarts like Google would like to "use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it."

That's bad enough, but Verizon goes even further. It claims that it has a right to free speech and, like a newspaper that may or may not publish a story about something, it can choose which content it chooses to carry. "Broadband providers possess 'editorial discretion.' Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others," Verizon's lawyers argue in a brief (PDF).

That's so crazy I won't bother to address it. But the FCC has done such a poor job of spelling out what it thinks it has the right to regulate and how that should work that the door is wide open for the carriers' bizarre - not to mention anticonsumer -- strategies and arguments.

I don't want to get down in the regulatory weeds, but there is one bit of legalese that's worth knowing: common carrier. Simply put, it means that the company doing the shipping can't mess with the contents. A railroad is a common carrier, and as such it can't decide whose cargo it will carry and whose it won't.

Before railroads were common carriers, they did things like favor products made by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, which made him even richer and also led to the creation of a wildly out-of-control monopoly. (Yeshiva's Crawford has an in-depth but readable explanation of these issues in her book "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age."

But the FCC has never ruled that ISP's are common carriers, partly because it's afraid of the power of the lobbyists to influence Congress and partly because its directors lack spine. And now that lack of spine is about to bite the butt of everyone who uses the Web.

According to people who follow this stuff closely, because ISP's are not common carriers the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., are looking askance at the FCC's defense against Verizon's lawsuit, although a verdict isn't likely for months.

Here are the stakes: "If Verizon - or any ISP - can go to a website and demand extra money just to reach Verizon subscribers, the fundamental fairness of competing on the Internet would be disrupted. It would immediately make Verizon the gatekeeper to what would and would not succeed online. ISP's - not users, not the market - would decide which websites and services succeed," writes Michael Weinberg, vice president of Public Knowledge, a digital advocacy group.

A taste of the Web's future: The Time Warner vs. CBS dust-up

You don't have to wait for the Verizon verdict to get a taste of what the New Web Order would be like. Time Warner Cable and CBS just had a dust-up over how much Time Warner would pay CBS to carry its programming. When the pair couldn't agree, the cable giant stopped carrying CBS programming in New York City, Los Angeles, and Dallas. CBS then retaliated by stopping Time Warner subscribers from streaming its programming over the Internet.

They settled after about a month. Staying true to form, Time Warner refused to give customers a rebate as compensation for lost programming.

That's not exactly the same issue that we're facing in the fight over Net neutrality, but it should give you a sense of what life is like when the giants fight it out over what you're allowed to access and for how much. Users get caught in the middle, and the rights we've taken for granted simply disappear.

I welcome your comments, tips, and suggestions. Post them here (Add a comment) so that all our readers can share them, or reach me at bill@billsnyder.biz. Follow me on Twitter at BSnyderSF.
This article, "Verizon's diabolical plan to turn the Web into pay-per-view," was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder's Tech's Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Raspberry Pi as an Ad Blocking Access Point

Ads? What Ads?

Advertising is prevalent on the web. It's a necessary evil at times, but can also be greatly overused by companies slowing down your page loads, and bringing your connected devices to a crawl. Learn how to block these ads using your Raspberry Pi.

Learn More

The Day John Boehner Admitted He's Totally at a Loss

The speaker is out of ideas for dealing with his restive right wing.

 

By Molly Ball  

  

On Tuesday, after John Boehner’s last gambit to pass a government-funding bill ran aground in the face of a Tea Party revolt, a reporter asked the House speaker if he had any idea what he’d do next.

“No. Do you have an idea?” Boehner replied, according to Politico. “They’ll just shoot it down anyway.”

Boehner’s dilemma -- finding a way to satisfy the right wing of his caucus that doesn’t involve shutting down the government -- isn’t new. The debate rages in Washington over whether he has an impossible job or whether he’s just terrible at it, but it doesn't really matter.

Throughout it all, as Congress lurches from crisis to crisis, he has always evinced a survivor’s weary optimism that this, too, shall pass. But now he is finally, totally, out of ideas.

This COUNTRY Is NEVER GOING FORWARD Unless WE END Right Wing Rule In The House

Ring of Fire 9/8/13

Farron Cousins from The Trial Lawyer Magazine will be sitting in for Pap this week.

American CEO's are being handsomely rewarded for destroying the businesses that they are running, and Zoe Carpenter from The Nation magazine will tell us how these CEOs continuously "fail upwards."

We'll also be discussing the pay-to-play scandals that could finally take down the Keystone XL pipeline.

And we'll be taking a look at a mini-documentary produced by Ring of Fire. The flim features Ring of Fire hosts Mike Papantonio and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discussing the history of corporate fraud against the government, and the role that whistleblowers play in helping to keep corporations from taking advantage of federal contracts.

Written by Michael Sallah, Debbie Cenziper, Steven Rich

Graphics by Ted Mellnik, Emily Chow, Laura Stanton

Photos by Michael S. Williamson

Published on September 8, 2013

This man owed $134 in property taxes. The District sold the lien to an investor who foreclosed on his $197,000 house and sold it. He and many other homeowners like him were

Left with nothing.

On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.

Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered.

By sundown, he had nowhere to go.

All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill.

The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale — an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.

For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid.

But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.

 As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.

Families have been forced to borrow or strike payment plans to save their homes.

Others weren’t as lucky. Tax lien purchasers have foreclosed on nearly 200 houses since 2005 and are now pressing to take 1,200 more, many owned free and clear by families for generations.

Investors also took storefronts, parking lots and vacant land — about 500 properties in all, or an average of one a week. In dozens of cases, the liens were less than $500.

Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home. His debt had snowballed to $4,999 — 37 times the original tax bill. Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies.

“This is destroying lives,” said Christopher Leinberger, a distinguished scholar and research professor of urban real estate at George Washington University.

Officials at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue said that without tax sales, property owners wouldn’t feel compelled to pay their bills.

“The tax sale is the last resort. It’s also the first resort — it’s the only way in the statute to collect debt,” said deputy chief financial officer Stephen Cordi.

But the District, a hotbed for the tax lien industry, has done little to shield its most vulnerable homeowners from unscrupulous operators.

Foreclosures have upended families in some of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. Houses were taken from a housekeeper, a department store clerk, a seamstress and even the estates of dead people. The hardest hit: elderly homeowners, who were often sick or dying when tax lien purchasers seized their houses.

One 65-year-old flower shop owner lost his Northwest Washington home of 40 years after a company from Florida paid his back taxes — $1,025 — and then took the house through foreclosure while he was in hospice, dying of cancer. A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home.

Other cities and states took steps to curb abuses, such as capping the fees, safeguarding houses owned by the elderly or scrapping tax sales altogether and instead collecting the money themselves.

“Where is the justice? They’re taking people’s lives,” said Beverly Smalls, whose elderly aunt lost her home in Northeast Washington. “It’s just not right.”

Colbert: Every Time I Watch Eric Bolling, I Want to Kill Myself

By Heather 



Stephen Colbert gave Eric Bolling the treatment he deserved this Thursday evening, after Bolling suggested saving taxpayer money by sending a suicide manual to violent inmates earlier this week.

About all I can say is the feeling is mutual after watching too much of anyone on that network and I'm guessing Colbert is not alone when it comes to Bolling.

Here's more from Raw Story: Colbert: Watching Eric Bolling ‘makes me want to kill myself’:

On Thursday night’s edition of “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert praised Eric Bolling of Fox News’ “The Five” and said that Bolling’s ingenious solution to lowering prison costs might be a brilliant way of saving taxpayer money. In fact, Colbert said, why not extend the idea of cash-saving suicides to Social Security recipients and other “freeloaders?” [...]

When he needs a little lift, said Colbert, he turns to “Stephen Colbert’s Smile File” for some happy news. “Tonight’s Smile File,” he said, “Ariel Castro.”

“Now folks, you might be saying, ‘Stephen, Ariel Castro is a vile monster whose suicide this week is just the dark end of a dark life. How can anything associated with that man possibly make me smile?’” he explained. “That’s what I thought.”

“Until I tuned in to Fox News’ ‘The Five,’ starring Eric Bolling, who always sees the glass as half full,” he explained, before rolling video of Bolling announcing Castro’s suicide and crowing delightedly that taxpayers are off the hook for his care and feeding during his imprisonment. Read on...

Liberal Firebrand Alan Grayson Leads The Opposition To Strike On Syria

By Deborah Montesano

Rep. Grayson (D-FL) on military intervention in Syria: ‘You notice how, with 196 countries in the world, no one else wants to touch this problem.’ Photo from The Blaze.

The controversy over whether to punish the Syrian government for the chemical weapons attack that took place there has done the unbelievable. It split the political parties and forged new alliances, creating unlikely bonds between Tea Partiers and liberals. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-FL, has become one of the loudest voices leading the opposition to military intervention in Syria.

Grayson is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which questioned Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday about the chemical weapons episode. On Thursday, the congressman appeared on the PBS News Hour and Democracy Now to express, first of all, his appreciation that President Obama put the question before Congress — but secondly, to make the case for not doing as the President requested. He sums up his own conclusion, that a ‘limited strike’ would not be a good idea, with four major points:

1. It not only isn’t our responsibility, but it’s especially not our responsibility to act unilaterally. He said:

You notice how, with 196 countries in the world, no one else wants to touch this problem … The international community has spoken. We are the only ones who are contemplating anything like this.

2. There is not a clear result that a strike can accomplish. It won’t end the regime or the civil war or even prevent another use of chemical warfare:

We cannot dictate, much less even influence, what goes on in Syria. It started as a civil war. It’s evolving into a proxy war between Shiite Muslim fundamentalists and Sunni Muslim fundamentalists, both of whom historically are our enemies.

3. A strike would be expensive, costing up to a billion dollars:

The best guess at this point is that the attack we’re talking about here, as it’s been described in general terms, will cost a billion dollars. That’s a billion dollars that could be spent, at least in part, on humanitarian aid to help the almost two million refugees who are now in Jordan and Turkey. It’s also a billion dollars that could be used for domestic needs.

4. It could spin out of control:

It’s clear that if the Syrian government does anything other than simply taking a pounding and ignoring it and brushing it off, and it retaliates in virtually any way, then there will be a war between Syria and the United States, and it will involve boots on the ground.

Grayson then puts the matter in perspective by talking about the enormous problems that the U.S. faces, that must be dealt with by Congress, and soon. Yet, valuable time is consumed by the debate over Syria at what is an extremely crucial moment:

… three weeks from now, there’s going to be a government shutdown, and five weeks from now, the government runs out of money when we reach the debt limit.

It’s appalling to me, appalling to me, that we spend two or three or four weeks debating whether to create a whole new category of war called humanitarian war, rather than dealing with our own problems and trying to solve them.

Americans largely agree. The Congressman told interviewer Jeffrey Brown that he and his colleagues in the House are hearing opposition to the president’s proposed strike by a ratio of 100 to 1. Furthermore, at the time the News Hour aired, only 20 members of Congress were supportive of the idea and 183 opposed.

It’s a novel idea that Congress might actually be listening to the people on this issue and that a new coalition, however temporary, is coming out of the process. The participants in the coalition surely don’t all have the same motivation, but what Grayson wants is to focus on the real concerns of the American people — the 20 million who are still looking for full-time work, the 50 million who don’t have food security, and the 40 million who can’t afford to see a doctor.

And he especially wants them to continue making their voices heard. In order to facilitate the process, he has set up a website, dontattacksyria.com. By signing the site’s petition, the people can send a clear message to Congress: military intervention in Syria is totally unacceptable.

Here’s a video from Grayson’s interview with PBS on why he opposes military intervention in Syria:

Muted labor protests amid fears of Walmart retaliation

By Ned Resnikoff

PICO RIVERA, CA – MAY 30: Walmart cashier Martha Sellers (C) walks a picket line with supporters to protest Walmart’s retaliation against workers who speak out on May 30, 2013 in Pico Rivera, California. Sellers and several other striking Walmart employees and their supporters borded a bus to start a 1,500-mile bus journey titled “Ride for Respect,”‘ ending at the company’s annual meeting at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Two fired Walmart workers and one current employee were arrested Thursday during a national wave of demonstrations against the company.

The protesters, members of the labor group OUR Walmart, were demonstrating outside the Manhattan office of investment banker Christopher Williams, a member of the Walmart board of directors. The protesters hoped to deliver Williams a petition demanding that Walmart pay all employees a minimum wage of $25,000 annually and stop its alleged retaliation against strikers. Two weeks ago, OUR Walmart promised an escalation in the ongoing dispute with the company if those demands were not met by Labor Day.

OUR Walmart organizers promise similar events and rallies across 15 cities nationwide over the course of the day. The rolling series of actions, which organizers say will include hundreds of Walmart employees and thousands more community supporters, is expected to be the largest anti-Walmart event since last year’s Black Friday strike.

But this time, nobody is going to be striking; and even though organizers are not asking Walmart employees to walk off the job, fewer are expected to show up than during Black Friday. If Walmart did lay off some 20 organized workers to send a message, as OUR Walmart claims and Walmart denies, then it appears to be working.

“People are scared because they see how Walmart retaliates,” said Colby Harris, an OUR Walmart member and Walmart employee based in Dallas, Texas. He claimed that OUR Walmart has more members than ever, but “not everyone has spoken out because of the reality of losing their jobs.”

In late May and early June, roughly 100 Walmart employees affiliated with OUR Walmart engaged in what they said was an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike against the company. Strikers are protected from termination by the National Labor Relations Act, but Walmart has argued that the category doesn’t apply to workers who engage in what Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg has called “hit-and-run intermittent work stoppages that are part of a coordinated union plan.”

“We actually have a very strict policy against retaliation at Walmart,” said Walmart spokesperson Brooke Buchanan. “And the associates who were terminated were terminated for other reasons, violating our policies, and it did not have anything to do with their association with this group or any other group. If a Walmart associate alleges retaliation has occurred, we will look into the situation, investigate, and take appropriate action.”

Dominic Ware, an OUR Walmart member and former Walmart employee based in the Bay Area, said he was fired in early July and that management told him specifically it was because of his participation in the May-June strike.

“They said the strike was not recognized as a ULP strike,” he said. Though Ware has tried to discuss the firing with his former manager, “to this day, he will not have an open door with me.”

In addition to the 20 workers which OUR Walmart claims have been wrongfully fired, they say another 50 or so have been disciplined for organizing. Harris, though he is still employed at Walmart, told MSNBC he had been written up three times already.

Buchanan shrugged off the latest protests, describing them as “a handful of union-orchestrated media stunts” and saying that OUR Walmart grossly exaggerated the number of Walmart employees involved.

“This is not an associate-based demonstration,” said Buchanan. “This has been sponsored and put on by the unions, something they’ve attempted and failed to be successful at over the last couple of years.” She also claimed that many demonstrators were paid to appear at protests, an allegation which OUR Walmart said is untrue.

This Summer’s Parasites and Viruses Continue to Make People Sick

This summer’s two prolonged outbreaks, one caused by a parasite and the other by a rare Hepatitis A virus, are continuing to add confirmed cases. Neither the parasite nor the viruses are common to North America, but both have moved in for an extended stay.

As of Sept. 3, the Hepatitis A virus has sickened 161 people in 10 states, including Arizona (23), California (78), Colorado (28), Hawaii (8), New Hampshire (1), New Jersey (1), New Mexico (11), Nevada (6), Utah (3) and Wisconsin (2).

The common source for the rare virus strain was a frozen berry mix called “Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend” sold by Costco stores.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the four cases attributed to Wisconsin, New Jersey and New Hampshire involved consumption of the virus-contaminated berries in Western states. Six other cases are thought to be due to secondary exposure to other confirmed cases.

The illnesses are winding down as the onset dates for the illnesses range from March 31 to July 26.

Almost half of those sickened (70) required hospitalization, but no deaths have been reported.

The majority of victims, or 55 percent, are women. Ages range from one to 84 years of age. Eleven children younger than 18 years were ill, and none were vaccinated for Hep A. The bulk of those sickened, or 57 percent, fell between 40 and 64 years of age.

Summer’s other lingering outbreak involving the Cyclospora parasite has reached 659 cases in 24 states. Texas, where the outbreak has hit hard in the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area, has seen its case count exceed 300 for the first time, coming in at 305.

After Texas comes Iowa (156), Nebraska (86), Florida (32), Wisconsin (16), Illinois (11), Arkansas (10), Georgia (5), New York, (7) Missouri (5), Kansas (4), New Jersey (4) Louisiana (3), Virginia, (3) Connecticut (2), Ohio (2), Minnesota (2), and one each for Michigan, California, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.

Like the other outbreak, in a handful of cases the parasites were likely acquired outside of the state where the case was reported.

The Iowa-Nebraska cases were sourced to a mixed salad from Taylor Farms de Mexico, which were served by Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants, among other outlets.

Taylor suspended product shipments to the U.S. from Aug. 12-25, 2013. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the other states continue work to source the illnesses in those states.

Watch_Dogs: Player Freedom and Multiplayer

Ohio kidnapper Ariel Castro dead, suicide suspected

By Traci G. Lee, @traciglee

1:37 AM on 09/04/2013

Convicted Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro was found dead Tuesday night, a prison spokesperson confirmed. Castro, the 53-year-old man arrested and found guilty of kidnapping and raping three women for a decade, was reportedly found hanged in his prison cell in an apparent suicide.

According to a statement from the Ohio Department of Corrections, Castro was discovered in his cell at 9:20 p.m., and transported to the Ohio State University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead 90 minutes later. ”He was housed in protective custody, which means he was in a cell by himself and rounds are required every 30 minutes at staggered intervals,” the department’s statement read.

Castro was arrested in May after Amanda Berry, one of the three women he held in captivity for a decade, escaped and called for help. The three— Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight—were abducted separately by Castro between 2002 and 2004, and assaulted and raped for years. Castro pleaded guilty in August to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape, and agreed to a life sentence plus 1,000 years without parole.

A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Corrections says an investigation into Castro’s death is under way.

Will Holder Really Get Tough on Voting Rights?

By Brad Friedman




Note 1: Pardon the herky-jerky Skype web cam video.

Note 2: The BRAD BLOG article about Eric Holder that I believe my friend Mike Papantonio cited during our conversation, was actually written by our legal analyst Ernest Canning. But, of course, I'm proud to stand behind it 100%! Just wanted to give credit where due.

Note 2a: There are several different issues currently in court between TX and the DoJ, and they get a bit conflated during my conversation with Pap. One issue is the filing by the DoJ asking the court to order that the state of Texas be added, or "bailed in", to the list of jurisdictions requiring federal preclearance for all new voting-related laws, given their history of purposeful discrimination with such laws. The current list of jurisdictions is now empty, since the U.S. Supreme Court killed the Voting Rights Act formula used to determine who should be on that list. The other TX/DoJ case we discuss is the DoJ's suit to block the TX GOP's disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction.

That law, though it was found discriminatory in 2012 by both the DoJ and a federal court, was re-enacted by TX immediately after SCOTUS gutted the VRA. The DoJ, and other parties, are now suing to block it under the still-existing Section 2 of the VRA, as well as on Constitutional grounds. (We hope to have more details on the lawsuits against the TX GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction law soon. And, I'll add, our coverage should offer some pretty encouraging news for voting rights advocates who, unlike Ernest Canning, may not have dug into all the legal details and already-established facts of the case.)

 Note 3: Enjoy!

Nothing Says You Care Like a Missile Strike

WTF is wrong with Dave Chappelle?

Rumors of Dave Chappelle 'Meltdown' Go Viral

Did he or did he not have a tantrum while walking offstage? Twitter investigates.

Dave Chappelle (Chad Buchanan/Getty Images)

By Tracy Clayton

(The Root) - Late last night, tweets began to fly from audience members of a Dave Chappelle show in Hartford, Conn.

Though all tweets confirm that Chappelle did, in fact, walk offstage - there is video of him walking off as Kanye's "New Slaves" plays -- details vary among those who claim they were in attendance. 

Some say that Chappelle had a full meltdown onstage; others say he just sat down and read a book.

Many angrily blamed Chappelle for the show's end, referencing his record of walking off stages and off his own hit show. But others, like audience member Mike Wellman, point the finger at the crowd, who they say was loud and unruly and became rude once it was clear that Chappelle was not simply going to regurgitate famed lines from his popular television show.

So Dave Chapelle just went on stage, told jokes for around 3 minutes, and the audience wouldnt stop yelling things at him so he stopped
— Mike Wellman (@mikewellman88) August 30, 2013

Everybody hates Dave Chapelle now. I dont. People were not heckling the other comedians
— Mike Wellman (@mikewellman88) August 30, 2013

At one point Chapelle told the crowd “If someone sitting next you is yelling, punch them in the kidney”
— Mike Wellman (@mikewellman88) August 30, 2013

I did want to hear Chapelles jokes but people were literally yelling and yelling
— Mike Wellman (@mikewellman88) August 30, 2013

Based on this account -- and this one by Lesli-Ann Lewis, who wrote about her experience at the show for Ebony -- it sounds as if Chappelle walked offstage for the same reason he walked away from his show: The crowd was only interested in catchphrases and superficial snips. They came to laugh at him, not with him. This is especially easy to believe when you happen upon those in attendance referring to him as a "scum nigger."

There appears to be a pretty clear racial divide in the opinions surrounding the show, generally speaking. Most white commentators seem to view Chappelle's actions as those of a diva throwing a tantrum, while most black observers say he was standing up for himself and protecting his art.

For the ppl who heckled Dave Chappelle tonight, let this be a lesson: you don't disrespect a person & then expect them to perform for you.
— Brian Fleurantin (@BrFleurantin) August 30, 2013

Money has folks feeling super entitled. I paid for this show so I can act a fool. Actually, no you can't. You can act a fool at your house.
— Ashykins (@ASmith86) August 30, 2013

Dave Chappelle reminds me of Lauryn Hill. Everyone wants him to be the guy from the show. He's not that guy anymore, guys.
— Carolyn Edgar (@carolynedgar) August 30, 2013

#TeamChapelle
— Tyrion's Ladyfriend (@larimah) August 30, 2013

Read more at Colorlines.

Tracy Clayton is a writer, humorist and blogger from Louisville, Ky.
Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Ilford Opens Up a Photo Lab in California, Will Process Your Film by Mail

By D.L. Cade

Good news isn’t always easy to come by in the world of film; more often than not, the stories we run have to do with film being discontinued. But that’s not always the case, and the most recent news out of Ilford should give film lovers something to smile about.

According to Imaging Resource, Harman Technology — the folks behind Ilford — have decided to open up an Ilford lab in California. This means that high-quality black-and-white processing and printing services are now available by mail to all of North America via the Ilford US website.

“It has become more and more difficult for black and white film users to have their films processed and printed to a high quality on real black and white paper,” explains Harman Director of Marketing and North American Sales Steven Brierley. And since their successful UK lab has seen a consistent increase in interest from overseas, Harman is “excited to announce that … we can now offer the same service from a base in California.”

The lab is able to work with black-and-white, C-41 color negative and E-6 transparency films in both the 35mm and 120 formats. Prints will be delivered on Ilford photo paper, and turnaround time is only 2-3 days.

Prices start at $16 per roll, with upgrades, enlargements and digital scans costing extra. To learn more or go ahead and place your first order by mail, check out the full press release or head over to the Ilford US website by clicking here.

---

Image credit: Black & White by DaveBleasdale

GOP leader chose oil industry over MLK marchers

By Alex Seitz-Wald, Published: August 29 at 9:36 am E-mail the writer

The March on Washington anniversary celebration. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

There are 233 Republicans in the House of Representatives, 46 in the Senate and 30 in governor’s mansions across the country. Guess how many made the effort to appear at Wednesday’s giant rally commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Zero. Ed O’Keefe reports:

Not a single Republican elected official stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday with activists, actors, lawmakers and former presidents invited to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington — a notable absence for a party seeking to attract the support of minority voters.

Event organizers said Wednesday that they invited top Republicans, all of whom declined to attend because of scheduling conflicts or ill health.

Democratic congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, weren’t there either, having attended a July commemoration of the march especially for lawmakers — which also included Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia — but the Democratic party was well represented Wednesday by three presidents and a smattering of lawmakers, including civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.

It seems pretty obvious, but if you want to change the fact that your party is viewed skeptically by minorities, and you want to claim Martin Luther King Jr.’s mantel — I’m looking at you Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) – then blowing off the highest profile civil rights event of the year is probably not a smart move, if for no other reason than “optics.” After their losses in the 2012 election, Republicans vowed to make a better effort to reach out to minorities, and just two weeks ago at its summer meeting, the GOP launched a program to attract minority voters by highlighting young “rising stars” in the party.

So what gives? According to O’Keefe, the lawmakers said they “received formal invitations only in recent weeks, making it too late to alter their summer recess schedules.” Republicans had no problem appearing in droves at a hastily organized tea party rally in June, where “[GOP] lawmakers sweltered in a long line waiting to take the stage,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Some weren’t even invited but just showed up hoping to get a chance to speak to the party faithful.

To be fair, Congress was in session then so it was easy for them to merely step outside and into line, but in today’s age, how hard is it to book a plane ticket and reschedule a few meetings? Lawmakers make last-minute changes to their schedules all the time — there is someone in every congressional office whose job is to manage their schedules — so “weeks” seems like enough time to find at least one or two Republicans willing to attend.

So what was did they do instead? Well, Boehner was in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and had no public events scheduled, but he has been headlining GOP fundraisers all this month, so it’s a fairly safe to assume that he was raising cash at the time. Cantor, meanwhile was touring an oil field in North Dakota. The Grand Forks Herald reports:

Cantor, hosted by Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., met with energy industry and community leaders at a crew camp in Williston, toured a drilling site and other oilfield locations in the Bakken and met with North Dakota Petroleum Council members in Watford City.

Cantor praised North Dakota’s approach to energy development and said the country needs to follow the state’s example and adopt a national energy policy.

“I hope to be able to tell the president that there’s a lot for him to learn here as far as energy production here in America,” Cantor said. “North Dakota seems to have gotten it right.”

The North Dakota Petroleum Council, by the way, is a lobby group that represents the state’s oil and gas industry. That’s what Cantor was doing on the day of the march.

“They asked a long list of Republicans to come,” civl rights leader Julian Bond told MSNBC yesterday, “and to a man and woman they said ‘no.’ And that they would turn their backs on this event was telling of them, and the fact that they seem to want to get black votes, they’re not gonna get ‘em this way.” (Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina and the only black member of the Senate, said he was not invited to the march, though leaders say they invited every member of Congress.)

Bond did credit Cantor for trying hard to find a replacement speaker, but, ultimately, the leader was unable to find a single Republican to attend the event.

Assad flees to Iran

By Kevin Brent

Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad and his family arrived in Tehran Aug 28, landing at Khomeini Airport aboard his presidential jet. Iranian foreign ministry sources confirmed this with the Lebanese newspaper a-Nahar.

Accompanying the Assad family was a group of senior Syrian government officials who together with Assad are officially there to hold talks with the Iranian government about a Syrian response to a possible US strike on Syrian WMD assets which is expected to take place in the near future.

As this information made its way into a-Nahar, Syrian Army generals continued their dire warning that if Syria is attacked, ‘Israel will burn’ and that if Syria weakens, ‘certain irresponsible groups’ will be formed that would endanger Israel.

Pres. Assad and his family fleeing to Tehran is no surprise. Iran and Syria have been decade’s long allies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. The Assad’s are Alawite Muslims, which are an offshoot of Shia Islam which is the predominant Muslim sect in Iran.

Syria under the Assad Dynasty of first Hafez and then son Bashar al-Assad were instrumental in helping Iran build, train, equip and supply the terror army known as Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to threaten Israel. Without Assad in control of Syria, Hezbollah can not survive.

Assad's fleeing likely means a Western military strike cannot be far off. If the strike is limited strictly to a brief missile and air campaign, then Assad could return to Damascus once it’s over. If however, events lead to a sustained campaign and/or a ground invasion of Syria by Turkey, Israel or a coalition of nations then Assad’s departure will be permanent.

The most likely reason for the mass chemical weapons attack in the first place, was that Assad’s Fourth Armored Division was in danger of being overrun and they were the last line of defense in central Damascus. Rebels are likely regrouping for a renewed offensive and if Assad does not have any WMD as an option, then returning to Damascus would mean his capture or execution.

There is now a coalition of 36 nations forming for a strike on Syria including Britain, France, Turkey, Australia and Canada among the more powerful nations. It remains to be seen however, whether the United States will participate.

Pres. Obama has been dragging his feet with US allies eager to strike Syrian WMD delivery vehicles and weapons by insisting on a UN Security Council Resolution on Syria, awaiting a UN weapons inspector report when those inspectors have indefinitely postponed any further inspections; and telling world leaders that there has to be accountability assigned before any strike can be authorized.

The governments of Britain, France and Turkey have indicated a willingness to go ahead without the UN on board and have each called their respective Parliaments in to special session for legislative authorization for the use of force. Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan has taken the further measure of asking the Turkish Parliament for a new mandate with language allowing him to act in Syria without a UN mandate or NATO sanction. The existing Syria mandate required one or the other for anything more than defensive operations.

Pres. Assad fleeing to Iran, and with wife and family in tow along with senior regime cronies, is indication that and attack is forthcoming with or without the United States onboard and that someone has tipped off Assad that the attack is pending.

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Representative government, my ass

By woo me with science

America does not support strikes on Syria.

Congress is less popular than cockroaches, and strikes in Syria are less popular than Congress.

These corporate pod people we allowed to slither into office over the past 30 years do not represent us. They rule us. We are hostages at this point, not citizens, when it comes to most areas of policy.

Over and over again, we get the big FUCK YOU from our government. They do whatever the hell they want and they use our money to do it. Our tax dollars poured into surveillance systems aimed at us, private prisons, bailouts for billionaires, assaults on journalism, and now yet another bloody war for profit. Meanwhile, they are replacing our paved roads with gravel, shutting down our children's schools, and dismantling our social support systems.

Our "representative government" is an obscene joke at this point, both parties. WE DID NOT VOTE FOR THIS SHIT.