There is a stark contrast between Al Franken and Sen. Norm Coleman. Al stood up against the right wing noise machine when nobody else was through his books and his radio show. After weaseling his senate seat after the tragic death of Paul Wellstone, Norm has been a reliable vote for the Bush Administration and his corporate donors. Al has been a champion of progressive causes and Norm has been the Senator that Minnesotans can count on when it doesn't matter. The home foreclosure crisis is an example of the vast gulf between the two.
Norm proposed the HOME Act which went nowhere in the Senate because nobody would consider it. Mainly because it was a gift to the mortgage industry which had gotten itself into quite a mess:
- The essence of the bill is it would allow the banking industries to get at the retirement assets of defaulting home owners. The Home Act would allow homeowners more than 60 days overdue on the mortgage payment to withdraw up to $100,000 from their retirement accounts without penalty or taxes to deal with their crisis. They would have to pay that back within three years or the government would place a tax lien on their home. If the homeowner were to go bankrupt, the banks could not otherwise get at their retirement savings.
(Norm Coleman Weasel Meter's home foreclosure crisis page)
In contrast Al Franken thinks this issue affects the value of everybody's home and wants to help actual people. Plus he's not funded by the mortgage industry. Here's Al's position:
- 1. Protect struggling borrowers.
- Implement a temporary (120-day) moratorium on foreclosures and mandate financial counseling and a “work-out” for anyone at risk of losing their home.
- Allow bankruptcy judges to re-write terms of loans on primary residences.
2. Help communities escape the foreclosure spiral.
- Make significantly more funding available to distressed cities and localities to redevelop – and, where possible, retrofit for energy efficiency – abandoned and foreclosed homes, resulting in construction jobs, pride in new home ownership, a productive tax base, and an increase in neighborhood home values.
- Offer pre-purchase, pre-lending home ownership counseling to reduce the number of people likely to be at risk of foreclosures.
3. Crack down on predatory lending.
- Require a minimum federal standard for state licensing and registration programs for brokers who originate mortgages.
- Establish minimum standards for sub-prime loans, including requiring brokers to prove that borrowers have an ability to pay, and give brokers a fiduciary responsibility to their customers – just like we do in Minnesota
Stumble It!
you can see the priorities in the
two approaches. Norm's top priority is to make sure that the lenders get paid. Al's top priority is to make sure that a working Minnesota family isn't driven from its home because of a bad economy.
By the way--I live in GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann's 6th distict, where you will find five of the ten counties with the most home foreclosures. The problem was rampant under Bachmann's predecessor GOP Rep. Mark Kennedy, too. Is there some GOP by-law, or something, that prevents Republicans from acting to save voters' homes, after they promised those voters a better economy? There must be; protecting the lobbyists instead of the voters is apparently some kind of religion with the GOP.
As Dick would say...
"the markets are working".
"The fact is, the markets work, and they are working," said Cheney in an interview in his White House office.
Then there was this gem: The same goes for Democratic efforts to curb the predatory lending practices that left naive homeowners in trouble, says Cheney: "We don't want to interfere with the basic, fundamental working of the markets."
Yeppers, don't interfere because it might affect profits. Their bottom lines, stated explicitly in comments like these, are to protect profits. They will protect profits over homeowners, they will protect profits over soldier's lives in Iraq. They will protect profit over any citizen concern. It is maddening.
I understand that corporations main goal is toward profit and the share holders. That is fine, and it has a place in our economy. But when the people elected to represent us, do not, in fact represent us, the system falls apart.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/22/magazines/fortune/cheney.fortune/index.htm
Justice will only exist where those not affected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignaation as those offended.
Fair Markets were always Regulated Markets
Even going back to the bible, the local governments had to intervene to make sure the scales that measured food were not rigged. Basically this is why "law" exists.