So Is It Over?

I haven't really been following the tangled disintegration of the Oregon Standoff, quote unquote, but it sounds like there might have been something of a resolution -- following an extended period of sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll. Or something.

They say even the Old Man (Bundy) was rounded up as he de-planed in Portland.

My my.

And only one killed -- so far. Poor deluded LeVoy got his (apparent) wish and was shot down in the snow by state police as twirled and ranted after a botched attempt to flee a roadblock.

Well, I saw the same video everyone else did of his execution, and there appeared to me to be no necessity to shoot him at all, any more than there is a necessity for LEOs to kill this or that suspect, individual, person in the vast majority of cases. They do it because they can, and they can get away with it in almost all cases. Further, as in the case of the poor, deluded elder Finicum, they do it pour encourager les autres. To make a statement: "Fuck with us and you die."

Finicum fucked with the law and authorities a lot, he did. So he, of all those deluded individuals, had to die. I'm sure he was targeted probably very early on. An example had to be made. And it was in spectacular though tragic fashion.

Immediately afterwards, I saw a lot of cheering commentary regarding his killing, as if this time -- of all the thousands of police killings over the last few years -- the dude really needed killing, and hurrah! for the Feds.

No. He's liable to become a martyr, that one. All because he "stood up" to the tyranny of gubment. And they -- the vast, implacable They -- shot him down for it.

That's what makes martyrs, just as has happened over and over again throughout history, triggering one revolution after another.

I make mock of Bernie's pretense to "revolution" -- a "political revolution" as he calls it -- because that's what it is, a pretense of revolution, not the thing itself. I believe it is a deliberate move to stave off the real thing from the left, pressure for which has been mounting for some time. But what about from the right?

A neo-revolution (neo-colonial, neo-conservative, neo-liberal) actually has taken place, suddenly in the aftermath of the unsettled 2000 presidential election, and then slowly consolidating ever since. Because it's not actually a rightist revolution -- though it has many aspects of rightist action and rhetoric -- many actual rightists are unsatisfied. They want more.

They see power in the wrong hands. They want for themselves. Which is what the Bundy Bunch have been after for years.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of "patriot-rebels" (they say there may be three hundred thousand of these mooks or more) are arming and prepping themselves into a frenzy of rebellion, indeed potentially of revolution, the real thing.

So is it really over? No, not by a long shot as they say.

We're going to see more and more of this as the neo-crowd continues its consolidation of wealth and power. And those who would fight that consolidation of power become more and more radicalized.

They Aren't As Smart As They Think They Are

But they have all the Power, so it's a wash, right?

I'm talking about Our Betters, those who rule us with the rod and the staff. They just aren't very bright, as we've recently seen with the candidacy of one Willard Mitt Romney, aka "Mitch" (h/t Letterman). He was simply an avatar of his class however, no brighter nor particularly less bright than any of the dozens or hundreds of minted or legacy multibazillionaires who deign to own the government and thus to acquire the right to rule.

This is how an aristocracy is established and how it rots from the inside as well. We've had plenty of experience with legacy aristos wishing to -- and frequently succeeding in -- imposing their right through some permutation of le droit du seigneur. It is, strictly speaking, a form of official and sanctioned rape -- something made quite clear during the campaign with statements and actions by Republican candidates that simply denied that "rape" was a serious or real offense against the persons of The Little People, in this case The Little People With Lady Parts.

Much as I excoriate the Republicans for their stupidity and their cruelty, I don't let the Dems off blamelessly. After all, in our duopolistic political system, their role -- which they typically perform dutifully and frequently energetically -- is that of enablers for the stupid cruelties of the Rs. It's not unlike the role of the Church vis a vis the Spanish during the Conquest. While some of the clergy remonstrated with the conquistadors over their abject bloodlust and cruelty during (and after) the Conquest -- and were sometimes eloquent and forceful in their condemnations -- the upshot was to enable even worse abuses and ever more cruelty in pursuit of the supposed salvation of the savage's souls. In other words, the victims were truly better off dead.

There is no People's Voice in the midst of this. The People are little more than resources for exploitation or waste for disposal. The People's very existence is a bother to their Betters.

And that, perhaps, is the stupidest aspect of our current Ruling Class; they see the rest of us as a bothersome and ultimately irrelevant burden on their beautiful minds and lives, when in fact, it is the People who are responsible for providing all the benefits and comforts the Rulers desire and demand. Treat the People well, and all good things flow to those who serve them. Treat them poorly and the Ruling Class totters, eventually causing its own extinction.

The People are not abstractions or impediments. The People are the foundation upon which everything else is constructed. Our Betters once knew this and acted on it -- perhaps with some reluctance, but still...

They have forgotten.

The People have immense intrinsic power under the circumstances, but there is a general reluctance to use it, partly because there is no institutional memory among the masses of what to do when those who rule are as stupid and cruel as the ones we have today.

The Occupy Movement (which has by no means gone away) was an attempt to formulate some kind of mass opposition to the character of the rule we are subject to. Whereas I saw it initially as the Revolution itself, I realized later it was at best a precursor -- a necessary one to be sure because the People do not know what to do in the face of such gross cruelty and incompetence by those in charge.

During the last 30 or 40 years the knowledge has been largely beaten, bred, and "educated" out of them. It all has to be relearned, in many cases from the ground up.  There is no political opposition to the rule of the stupid and cruel, and part of the learning process that's been going on has been finding the means and methods of sidestepping the politics while forcing the political system to be responsive and responsible. So far, nothing tried has really worked, though there are those who claim that what's been done to date has had a profound effect on the Ruling Class (I don't see it that way at all, but that's just me.)

Re-learning the basics of mass movements and social and revolutionary theory takes time, and actually using it takes lots of practice. There are no real shortcuts, though the Gene Sharp Method proposes a sort of short-cut to Revolution -- one that unfortunately leads too often to the triumph of neo-liberalism and greater misery for more people than before the Sharpian Revolutions. This is not exactly what we need at this time. We are already in the triumphant phase of a neo-liberal revolution among the ruling classes. We need to get beyond that.

There is a widespread lack of enthusiasm for the confirmation of  Team Obama in office -- along with simple disgust at the same sort of gridlocked Congress we've had for the last several years. The electorate apparently said keep them around to do their will, but we don't really know what their will is -- except that we can be sure it will include further depredations on the masses as a matter of course and right. Further stupidity. Further avoidance of the correct path toward the future.

And yet seemingly spontaneously all of it can change in a twinkling.

A Wells Fargo Horror Story -- and an Update On The Van

Rousseau House in California, plundered by a series of banksters

I came across this story over at Naked Capitalism the other day, then I read that the homeowner had killed himself just days before the scheduled eviction in May. And I read the linked amended complaint.

And I thought "JFC on a merry go round, this is the most outrageous WF horror story yet." Almost beyond belief, and yet given all the other horror stories I've read, it's only unusual in that the homeowners had/have decent legal advice, and that the poor guy was driven to suicide.

Notice that the house above is quite a modest little house, similar to many I've been inside during parts of my working career. That the final refinance in 2007 was for over $350,000 is somewhat shocking, but that's what was still happening to real estate values in California at the time. In fact, I was dealing with a lot of builders, brokers and construction contractors during the boom before the crash, and by 2007, the warning signs were very clear that the crash was about to come, indeed had already come, in some cases that I can't detail here, but people were still refinancing and some were able to take cash out of their homes until well into 2008.

I say $350,000 is somewhat shocking for this house because in a realistic market it wouldn't be worth much over $200,000 if that. It's probably appraised for under that now, though WF ultimately acquired the house for a trustees sale bid of over $400,000.

So the homeowner was being screwed, whether or not there was fraud in the final refinance.

Nevertheless, according to the story, the homeowners were diligent in making mortgage payments. The problem came because they made those payments in person with cashier's checks at a Wachovia branch.

That and grossly false, misleading and predatory lending practices by World/Wachovia.

From the narrative in the amended complaint, the homeowners presented a cashiers check at the bank in April, 2009, in the amount of $1615, the stated mortgage payment amount. The check was handled by an employee who -- apparently -- entered a keystroke wrong during the transaction so that the check was not properly credited to the correct account. The homeowners received a receipt for the check and went on their way.

The next day, the check cleared, but what happened to the money is a mystery. There is also the mysterious claim of a stop payment being ordered on the check, which is simply not something that can happen on a cashiers check.

According to the complaint:

On or about May 5, 2009, while making the monthly payment at the WACHOVIA branch, Plaintiff O. ROUSSEAU the teller confirmed that their account still showed a missing payment for April. At Plaintiff’s request, Branch Manager PERI KERMANI called the corporate office to inquire about the disputed payment. Plaintiff was given a facsimile number to send a written dispute and proof of payment.

Which Plaintiffs (the homeowners) did.

From then on, the situation deteriorated alarmingly. While the homeowners continued to be diligent about making payments until the bank refused to accept them, they were dicked around and lied to by bank personnel constantly throughout a torturous process of trying to rectify the erroneous April "delinquency." They submitted all the documentation necessary to clear the supposed "delinquency" and never once did the bank actually clear it, though they were told it had been taken care of. They were assessed more and more collection fees, NSF fees, a constant tidal wave of fees while they not only tried to straighten out the mess the bank had caused, they were attempting to get their loan modified because of loss of income due to unemployment.

 As has so often been the case, while they were attempting to get the loan modification, the bank was proceeding with foreclosure, which the homeowners tried to get them to stop but were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, even as the bank was refusing to accept offered mortgage payments, they were constantly calling and dunning the homeowners for payment.

As has so often been the case, while attempting to secure a loan modification, the homeowners were repeatedly told that required documents had not been received -- though they had been sent over and over again -- and thus they could not get the modification, and then, apparently, the missing documents would somehow be found and the modification process would supposedly continue only to stop again.

Meanwhile, the foreclosure process churned along, oblivious.

Finally, from what I gather, the homeowners were denied a modification and told to pay up the arrears or get out. By the time they found out how much they had to pay to satisfy the largely bogus debt that was caused by a bank error in the first place, they had one hour to meet a deadline to deliver more than $26,000 demanded to the bank's collection agency in Texas. They had the money, but they couldn't meet the deadline because they couldn't access that much at one time given cash withdrawal restrictions on the account in question.

Wells Fargo acquired the property at a trustees sale purportedly held November 22, 2010, five days after the homeowners were told how much to pay and given a deadline they couldn't meet to satisfy the alleged default. At the time of the court filing, dated January 11, 2011, WF was under temporary injunction from enforcing an unlawful detainer against the Rousseaus. Apparently the injunction was lifted in May of 2012, and the Rousseaus were informed that they would be evicted on May 15, 2012; two days beforehand, when Norman Rousseau was unable to complete repairs on the engine of a motorhome that the couple intended to move into once they were evicted, Mr. Rousseau fatally shot himself.

All because a teller at Wachovia failed to credit the correct account for a payment made in April of 2009 and no one at any of the participating financial institutions and collection agencies between then and the date of Norman Rousseau's suicide had the courage or the brains to recognize that the bank had made a simple -- and not uncommon -- mistake that could have been and should have been easily corrected years before Norman Rousseau took his own life.

That and all the appalling fraud and deceit that went into the Rousseau's final refinance.

And all the lies they were told and the promises that were broken.

And the many tens of thousands of dollars that were being pillaged and looted all along the way.

This is a snapshot of a completely brainless and totally out of control modern banking practice. I'm sure that none of the institutions or people involved on the banking end believe they actually did anything wrong or that they are in any way responsible for the Rousseau's agony and eventually for Norman Rousseau's suicide. They never think that way. They can't. There are no personal relationships at all in these situations. Everything is objectified and scripts and flowcharts rule. "If this, then that." There is no provision for acknowledging or correcting errors, even simple ones such as mis-keying a payment.

As has long been obvious, all of the incentives for banks and mortgage servicers are aligned toward pushing homeowners into foreclosure. Despite ostensible programs to prevent foreclosure, the financial and corporate-bureaucratic incentives are still toward foreclosure. Consequently, millions of people are still losing their homes every year when it is highly likely that foreclosure is actually the least desirable outcome not just for the homeowner but for everyone involved including the banks and servicers who are incentivised to foreclose.

How many of these cases are due to fraud at the outset, errors along the way, and corporate-bureaucratic blindness is anybody's guess, but I am sure the Rousseau's situation is not unique. I've read too many similar stories.

It's one reason I was an advocate long ago for the nationalization of the banks; they are simply too hidebound, blind and dumb to function on behalf of even themselves let alone on behalf of the People in the current financial climate.

They should be run strictly in the public interest for the duration.  But until somebody with clout picks up that cudgel, we'll continue to encounter tragic stories like that of the Rousseaus.

None of this has to happen.

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As for the van, I spent part of the morning in Atwater discussing options with repair folks face to face instead of on the phone. I also drove the van for a short distance, and it was obvious that it wasn't going to make it much farther at all. I got it to the repair shop across the street from where I had left it last Saturday, and when the proprietor saw me drive up and said: "You've got a transmission problem." He explained how he had come to that conclusion when Omar at the first shop had brought the van over for a diagnosis on Monday. I asked about the differential. He said he didn't drive the van, but all the sound he heard when the van was on the lift was coming from the transmission and he thought there was metal on metal (oh yes) requiring a rebuild. I asked him whether he could do it, how soon he could have it ready, and how much he'd charge. He said he most certainly could do it; probably take until until Wednesday of next week, and it would cost X number of dollars (a good deal less than I was anticipating.)  I said, "Let's do it."

The vans that I had been considering as replacements were either sold before I could get to them or they were inappropriate for my needs; as I've said, this red Astro van has been a very good friend on the road for a number of years now. I bought it specifically for the trips back and forth between New Mexico and California, and despite the occasional mechanical problem and infrequent breakdown, it has been a godsend and a jewel. And then I think how lucky I am to be able to write that last sentence at all.

So many Americans don't have the option to just go out and "buy a van" or have it repaired as needed let alone to have a second home in New Mexico to go back and forth to. Those are just a few of the examples of the privileges we have. And when I think about the real struggles so many Americans are facing, struggles that are so far beyond my minor inconveniences (in perspective a broken down van or stalled refinancing are minor inconveniences, yes) I'm humbled.

The Rousseau's story is devastating. That sort of thing is happening to way too many Americans, and there seems to be nothing to thwart the demons of destruction abroad in the land.

Rise up, resist, refuse. It's a start!

Does Anybody Even Know What A Cable Is Anymore?

I'm not sure I recall the last time I got a telegram, but I think it was when my father died. More than 40 years ago. A telegram is not quite the same as a cable, in that the telegram is sent by telegraph and the cablegram is sent by cable, duh, but they used to be very similar, in fact indistinguishable by the recipient. The method of travel, whether over telegraph wires or undersea cable, was the main difference.

Shortly, we are breathlessly informed, WikiLeaks will release up to 3 million diplomatic cables (which I assume are really emails), at least some of which will likely contain messages uncomplimentary of allied governments and personnel. Oh. Dear.

My memory of history may be faulty, but I seem to recall something like this happening a long time ago and the release of uncomplimentary information was a prelude to war. That's all we need.

Apparently, though who can say, the Government has been busy notifying embassies and presidential palaces to be warned of the coming dump and be prepared for some unkind things reported. It sounds like the State Department knows pretty much which cables will be the most troublesome and has made every effort to let the other governments know in advance what was said and by whom.

But still, there is a palpable collective breath-holding while awaiting the release.

"This could be bad." Indeed.

If it is, it will be the first time for a WikiLeaks Leak. And so I won't be surprised if it is, and I won't be surprised if it isn't.

In fact, nothing that WikiLeaks has leaked so far has been of particular world-shaking importance, and despite what Daniel Ellsberg says, the importance of WikiLeaks' Leakage has always been somewhat less than advertised.

Of course that could change.

I was discussing the situation with a close friend, and I mentioned that it seemed very strange to me that such a low level military intelligence grunt would have free access to so much supposedly "secret" information, particularly something as potentially froughtful as diplomatic cables, which shouldn't be in military intelligence files at all. I still wonder how that happened. The ability to protect diplomatic communications has always been a fundamental aspect of government -- for hundreds if not thousands of years. When that communications security is breached, very bad things can happen. And they often do.

Military field reports, for the most part, don't need to be classified, at least not for more than a short time, and with only a few strategic redactions on release. The field reports that WikiLeaks Leaked were standard communications and reports from the field. They were not sensational nor did they reveal "secrets" that weren't already mostly known of at least in outline if not detail. But then, that's the nature of these reports.

Diplomatic cables are something else altogether, and the fact that Bradley Manning, if he's the leaker, had access to any of them at all, let alone to millions of them, is nothing short of a monumental governmental malpractice. This could be very dangerous for all kinds of people.

On the other hand, maybe not. We'll see.

So Here's What Has to Happen -- and of course it won't

Protests in Washington DC at the first G W Bush inaugural -- that most Americans still have no idea happened at all -- on January 20, 2001. 

The Department of Justice must be abolished. The Federal Courts must be shut down. The Supreme Court must be reformed and the radical justices must be removed.

Of course it can't happen and it won't happen because no authority will take on the responsibility for doing it. The Congress is a joke, and the Executive has Other Priorities. The People have no direct power -- that they're willing to use -- at all.

Throughout the years since the Supreme Court lawlessly cancelled the 2000 election vote count and awarded the Presidency to George W. Bush, the very concept of the Rule of Law has come undone. It's simply meaningless. And the the fact that the vast majority of the DoJ's legal staff stays on the job no matter what, and the courts continue to follow the lead of a lawless and dangerous Supreme Court, and the Congress tries to come up with even more outrageous lawlessness, and the White House doesn't care and is generally disinterested in the whole mess makes a mockery of "justice" in this country.

Of course the DoJ could be shut down tomorrow if the legal staff walked out. They won't do it, but that would shut it down. If the SCOTUS minority simply refused to participate in any more rulings by that body and requested that, say, the Congress initiate impeachment proceedings -- for the entire Court -- there would be some notice taken.

If the either of those things happened, the Federal Courts could not function. And if all of it happened at once, perhaps the public would notice that the entire federal justice system has become so corrupted and politicized in this country that it shouldn't be allowed to function any longer.

It deserves to be shut down and regenerated/reformed from the ground up.

Which is why it will never happen barring Revolution that overthrows the entire rotten bunch of criminals who rule from behind the gates of their Palace on the Potomac.

Instead of what should be done, we will be treated to more endless arguments over more endless years, arguments over legal minutiae and parsing, we'll see ever more corrupt investigations and prosecutions, more authoritarianism, more autocracy, more torture, more excuses, and more dithering by the representatives of the People in Congress assembled, more outrageous and lawless rulings from the bench, more tired ennui from the legal profession, more careerism, more failure.

This path was laid out when protest against the lawlessness of the Supreme Court's rendering on December 12, 2000, was allowed to fade away and the ruling was widely accepted.

We know what's happened since, in the Name of the Law, and it ain't pretty.

Scott Horton has been chewing this cud for quite a while and his ruminations over the OPR report on the Torture Memos is worth a gander. But like too many others with a JD and a platform in this country, he is resigned to accept this outcome as just another sorry example of Things Gone Awry. Nothing to be done about it now. Pity.

Sigh.