Turning Left or Right?

Driving towards Los Angeles, if you take the 22 West exit with the intention of going into Long Beach near Alamitos Bay, the first exit is Studebaker to the right and then you turn left. At the end of Studebaker, you come to 2nd Street. You can't drive forward anymore because there is no more road. It's a fenced-off field of scrub, weeds and random palm trees next to the San Gabriel River Wash that leads out to the Pacific. In order to continue your trip, you have to make a decision: turn left or right.

And I find this is kind of a parallel story to what my life is like right now. I worked in finance and in the mortgage industry. I  took a road that was different, working in the file room as a contractor/Supervisor for a year and a half at USCIS, but it was at the end of that organization's five- year contract, really due to no fault of my own and just shear decisions to retain those with the more tenure, I came to its intersection in the last week of  November of last year when I was laid off for a brief moment.  I have to think that it was my boss that saved me from the unemployment rolls temporarily for another 6 months due to others retiring and moving on to other more permanent roles at USCIS in Adjudication, Naturalization, and Asylum. (And I'm not convinced in the least that his subordinate was enthused about any of these changes/decisions in the least. Which is an entirely another discussion I won't get into now.) I thought I was going to go drive down a different road turning left or right which I was OK with, but I  also came to terms with the fact that I knew my health was paramount, so work gave me this shitty narrow path with a significant pay cut and what I find out now is crappier health insurance coverage (worse than I even had when I paid for it myself on the CA Healthcare Exchange) to keep traveling on their path. Don't think that I'm not grateful, I am, I just don't like what I've become at this point and I have no control over it. My boss does. Until the end of the contract or until I get a better job, whichever comes first.

It's the beginning of March and I want this to be over on my terms and not be laid off on May 2nd. I've been applying to jobs that pay more than what I'm earning now just to have the satisfaction and be able to say that," I'll be O.K... my new job pays more than this place", and to build up my self-confidence knowing that I've made changes mid-career and have come back from being jobless before and I can do it again.

At this point in my life though, I'm fairly cynical and retrospective about work which doesn't really help and the economy is one that has tamped down on hourly wages hard. I've sat on the other side of that hiring desk trying to figure out how well that candidate can fill the role. Do you pick someone with a degree who had never did the role before and train or do you hire someone with experience and pay for it? The decision is out of my hands.

And I'm wary about recruiters. The last time I got involved with one of those,  I took a job in Simi Valley as a federal contractor to Fannie Mae right after Countrywide defaulted and Bank of America was buying them but not before the credit crunch of Oct '08. It was a strange time to be where I was and watch it all happen.

I've been contacted by no less than three recruiters. None of the first two seem sustaining. The third one is intriguing, but can I make that hard left turn and continue on?

Yahoo! News Story - JPMorgan dismisses mortgage head Lowman - Yahoo! News

JPMorgan dismisses mortgage head Lowman - Yahoo! Newshttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110614/bs_nm/us_jpm_mortgage_3
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Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/

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Why am I highlighting this article over other similar ones posted on the internet?

This one has a bit more meat than the others and one can appreciate that if you've been in this business for awhile. My comments from this point on are in blue.

"Lowman joined JPMorgan from Citigroup in 2006. During his tenure at JPMorgan, the bank picked up bad mortgage assets through its acquisitions of investment bank Bear Stearns & Co and retail bank Washington Mutual. They make it sound as though they picked up a germy virus. No, they willingly bought the bad loans of these two companies.

acquisitions: a decision made at a meeting by all the major banks at the time and the Fed of what company among them could bear (pardon the pun) the debt that WAMU and BS had on their books. WAMU's underwriting was crap due to long standing technology issues. Among other loans purchased, BS was buying up much of the remaining RTC securitizations and repackaging them trying to make a pool of marginally performing loans shiny, newish and attractive to investors. JPMC knowingly bought bad mortgage assets by acquiring these companies. WAMU in September 2008 after a FDIC seizure. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/bear-stearns-fraud-emails_n_813855.html

Lowman was pushed aside in February by JPMorgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, who assigned his top aide, Bisignano, to the company's retail banking unit to fix its mortgage business.

If you look up Frank Bisignano on Forbes.com, you can see that he has a been at Citigroup since 2000. If you look up David Lowman, you can review on  the press release that he came from a place where he appeared to have no or minimal mortgage background. http://www.forbes.com/2006/10/27/leadership-careers-jobs-lead-careers-cx_ll_1027hfr.html

During Lowman's tenure, the unit was so disorganized that the bank seized homes of at least 33 U.S. military servicemen on active duty, violating federal law and prompting Dimon to apologize at the company's annual shareholder meeting. The bank has said it is forgiving those loans.


The above paragraph is particularly nasty because of the Soldiers & Sailors Civil Relief Act that was revised and went into effect in 2003 (one of the good things that came about during the Bush presidency) which grants certain protections for military troops on active duty. Protections like the fact that you cannot foreclose on the home of active military personnel.

Lowman could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. Technically, he can't comment because he'll sign a paper that says he can't discuss any business dealings by his former employer. Lowman appeared before congressional committees last year ( http://www.ncsha.org/blog/house-and-senate-committees-address-foreclosure-crisis-and-loan-modification-problems ) where he was chastised for his division's refusal to cooperate with borrowers and modify mortgages. Read the article. Ahem - we learned a new word today kids - robo-signing. Now we're making up words because acronyms in the mortgage industry are not confusing enough. Reminds me of dangling chads and how the general public had no clue what the news media were talking about at the time.

I imagine Lowman was probably told by the CEO to minimize losses. Regarding loan modifications: Simply put, if you don't have an earned income (many people lost their jobs over the credit crunch), you won't get your loan modified. If you don't want to provide your financial statements (because you're trying to hide the fact that you didn't qualify for the loan in the first place), you won't get your loan modified.  If you botch the documents requested of you in anyway (late, missing, erroneous), you won't get your loan modified. If you don't like the terms of your loan, they suggest that you refinance instead. 

Lowman said in a June 2010 hearing that the bank was understaffed, (at that point they probably had a RIF throughout the  entire organization, not just in mortgage lending) but was adding employees to work on problematic mortgages. They opened temporary regional offices called "ChaseWorks" dedicated to help distressed mortgagors.
 In a hearing in November, Lowman acknowledged mistakes in foreclosure paperwork and said the bank was cleaning up errors." Mistakes happen, but they can also be fixed.

A Thought Provoking Question on C-Span Today

The question posed to callers on C-Span today was, "Do you see signs of an economic recovery?"

It provoked a lot of different answers, many of which reflected confused and disgruntled citizens, in my opinion. How the host was able to keep a straight face when some of the people rambleed on regurgitating the news blurbs that are spoon fed to them, was beyond me. I imagine it's a very high stress job and that's why the host constantly changes.

The one gentleman who seemed to be conscious and on topic was, thankfully, engaged by the host to answer a few more questions.

If I ever had the nerve to call into this show, this is what I'd have to say on the topic.

California's economy is in a shambles and it's mode to recovery is sadly "one step forward-two steps back".

We see new business development in the form of Kohl's Department stores opening up in spaces where the bankrupt Mervyn's once stood, stimulating the economy of the cities where they are located bring tax dollars once again, but the majority of the jobs in these stores are low wage, part-time and come with no benefits.

We see road construction along our major highways, but that construction was spurred by bond measures the people voted for years ago and will have to pay for in the years to come while the repair of our city streets lay waiting. I recognize that one of President Obama's initiatives was to fix this country's roads. Those companies who fix roads the people who work there are in that business specifically and you're not going to find an out of work roofer or framer or an automobile dashboard assembler being hired on a road crew to repair potholes or widen streets. You may be able to employ that water truck driver or that materials hauler or the heavy equipment operator for a time, but that is not enough.

...and this is where the discussion turns from economic recovery to economic despair.

In this instance, the goal was big, but not big enough. Modeled after an era where train track was necessary to connect one community to another, public transportation in the form of high speed trains should of been the top priority to replace an ailing government owned AmTrack system. Look at the devastating train accident that occurred in Chatsworth, California, on September 12, 2008. Look at the technology that could have, that should have been in place to stop a train from an impending collision. It harkens back to 1895-1900 at Grand Central Station in New York City when it took human tragedy to make mass transit safer. Why does it always have to come to the loss of lives to make things change for the better?

Our century old water infrastructure is crumbling under our feet because cities across the state asked it's citizens to cut back on their water usage and only water their landscaping certain days of the week, but the ebb and flow of the pressures have created great strain and we have seen more water main breaks than at any other time in history.

California laid off teachers because property tax revenue dwindled due to the credit crisis and the ensuing mortgage industry downturn. Everything good in a prosperous economy is tied to housing. If you build a house, you just put people that manufactured the products that go into that house to work; you employed construction workers to build that house, you created service jobs to maintain and improve that house and people with jobs will buy that house, people working at a mortgage company will make a loan and now a home owner will pay taxes to benefit the community. A homeowner will want to buy new furniture for their home and get a better job and a new car because of their higher income and on and on it goes. But people are fleeing California because the cost of living here is too high. The cost of establishing and running a business in California is prohibitive when you have to consider taxes and health care insurance. When employers hire unskilled labor pools due to these high costs, people desperate to support their families both here and in foreign countries, it drives down wages and there becomes a bigger disparity between the seemingly middle class and those who struggle constantly with poverty.

...and this is where the discussion turns from economic despair to political opinion.

US Citizens should get a free education. You have to be able to take care of yourself and your own before you can take care of others. That was big screw up #1 that helped to drag down the California economy. Butter it up with NAFTA and you added insult to injury and drove manufacturing jobs away. The auto industry seized up and those good paying jobs that were there for so long, for generations, are now gone and won't ever be coming back.

And this next sections outlines how the medical and insurance industry failed.

The next paragraph was taken from The Centers for Immigration Studies, "Guestworker Programs for the 21st Century": "The United States has had two agricultural guest worker or Bracero programs with Mexico, and one program, H-2 and H-2A, that permits U.S. farmers to recruit foreign farm workers in any country, although most come from the Caribbean and Mexico. None of these programs fulfilled their stated purpose: to add workers temporarily to the U.S. work force without adding permanent residents to the population, and to do so in a manner that does not adversely affect U.S. workers. Instead, the Bracero programs laid the groundwork for one of the world's great mass migrations — that from Mexico to the United States — and the H-2A program has been wracked by costly disputes."

Since our country's borders were not secure enough, now you have a growing population of undocumented workers having babies to create an anchor child. You now have a population of citizens of poor workers with compromised health care. And you wonder why our health care system is failing? Everyone knows that hospitals won't turn away a patient who comes through the emergency room doors regardless of their ability to pay.

I'll go on and write more later, but once I started to touch on the health care crisis, as I was laying down on my stomach on the bed typing on my laptop, in my distress over the subject due to the fact that I have a preexisting health condition and cannot secure health insurance on my own, I had to take a shit.

I'll be writing more later on: Redefine the path to citizenship. Make English our national language. Making college mandatory.

Immigration Reform

Read: Obama wants immigration reform passed by this Congress

I read today that President Obama wants legislation to deal with immigration reform by the end of this year or early next year. I say one thing at a time. I say universal health care comes first. I can't afford it and I need, so something positive has got to be done. I'm a NIMBY when it comes to immigration, but if it can do something to alleviate the parking situation in my neighborhood, I'll be all for it.

Immigration reform can start by defining what an immigrant is. An immigrant is someone who is living and working in a country where they are not a citizen. They have civil rights but most of all, they pay taxes. After a predetermined period of time, you have to become a citizen or you have to be a registered alien worker. Either of these choices will come with the requirement of paying taxes. If you choose neither of these options, you will have to leave. There is no such thing as anchor babies. Only a citizens can bare citizens. One citizen and one illegal cannot bare a citizen. Two illegals cannot bare a citizen. This has got to stop. If I so happen to have a baby in a foreign country, I shouldn't have rights to stay there because of it. Babies have no ability to choose where they are born; they are babies. Adults make these decisions. And adults need to fix the illegal immigration problem.

And that's my 2 cents on the matter.

CA Supreme Courts uphold Prop. 8 Banning Same Sex Marriage

Read: CA Supreme Courts uphold Prop. 8 banning same sex marriage

My feelings stir when I heard about proposition this initially. I am a single mother of a 21 years old son. Even after all this time and the fact that I never married my son's father, it bothers me that same-sex relationships want the same rights as I have. Their situations are not the same and will never be.

Marriages were registered and regulated by the government for the social welfare of women and their natural born children. Outside of marriage, paternity existed to prove a man's relation to a child and named him at least a financially responsible party, as well as rules were established for inbreeding so that retardation and birth defects would be prevented. Without these, women and children became financial burdens upon society and had the ability to draw welfare payments from the government. And that was me. After being neglected then beat-up, once I was not living under the same roof as my boyfriend... the father of my child, I filed for welfare in order to take care of us. My son was 10 weeks old, paternity was established and I continued to collect a check until I was able to earn enough to support the both of us, which happened as he entered school. In a time when it was expected for women to take care of their family and not work at all, financial responsibility was crucial to the survival of family unit, even if it was a one parent home.

In the state of California, where civil union is recognized, where a third party must be utilized to bare children with at least one parents genes and adoption is carried out in this regard or to adopt a child outside of the relationship all together, why do same-sex relationships demand the equal availability to marriage? It's not about the right to bare legitimate children because that only can occur in a monogamous heterosexual relationship. It's only about the sentimental value of the ceremony itself and you can't go through the ceremony without a marriage license. Merriam-Webster's definition of family is (2a) a group of persons of common ancestry: clan. You marry, you consumate, then procreate. I tend to agree.

Stop the free ride NOW and shut the door.

DID YOU KNOW??
Nearly two-thirds of all immigrants in 2003 settled in six states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois. Immigrants tend to be more geographically concentrated than the rest of the population. In addition, they tend to settle in metropolitan areas. The top destination cities for immigrants in 2003 were the nation’s largest cities, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Houston.

1. Did you know non-citizens of the USA are eligible for Pell Grants?
Your tax dollars hard at work to educate someone who very possibly may take that education you paid for with them and return to their country.

Result: brain drain and less funding available for US citizens.

The Fix: USA citizens are only eligible for government grants and loans.

2. Everyone who comes to an emergency room gets treatment whether they can pay or not - no exceptions.

Result: Equates to free medical and the current healthcare crisis.

The Fix: Everyone pays for health care on a sliding scale based on your income tax returns. Those who don't pay income tax, have the US government pay and the US government gets reimbursed from the home country of the non-US citizen.

3. Non-citizens go to public schools for free.

Result: poor test scores
teachers that can't teach unless they know the language
less funds for schools, teacher lay-offs
over crowded schools

The Fix: Instead, they should pay for the privelege to go to school here since illegals don't pay income tax. They should go to private schools to learn english and stop dragging down the test scores of the kids that already know the language. They should be forced to become citizens as well as their parents 5 years, or be deported to their home country.

4. Current Problem: If a US citizen and a non-US citizen bore a child within the United States, that child becomes a US citizen automatically and is considered an 'anchor child' which ties a non-US citizen to the child and makes them elligible to stay in the country.

Result: People who may not be elligible for citizenship on thier own due to disease or criminal history get a free ride on the road to citizenship.

The Fix: Only, two US citizens as parents only bore US citizens. One US citizen and one non-citizen bore a 'qualified for citizenship' child, but both the non-citizen parent and the 'qualified for citizenship' child must immigrate within 2 years, or be deported to their home country.

5. Current Problem: adopting a child in a foreign country results in instant citizenship for that child upon entering the USA with the US citizen parent.

Same problem as 4 except this is an 'anchor parent' situation.

The Fix: the non-citizen adopted child must immigrate within 2 years, or be deported to their home country.

SECURE OUR BORDERS AND STOP THE FREE RIDE NOW!

They can vote, sort of.

The Democratic Rules committee met on Saturday and decided that all delegates from Florida and Michigan can be seated at the convention, but they will only have the right to count one half vote each as a penalty for not following the rules.

You can read about what the AP reported about it here.

Feds release flood in Grand Canyon - Environment - MSNBC.com

Feds release flood in Grand Canyon - Environment - MSNBC.com

Isn't it ironic that the same river that was dammed up by the federal government for the benefit of humans for power and water now has to be flooded ever-so-often for the benefit of ecology.

You should know about the humpback chub and all the other wildlife that needs to be preserved for that matter in the Upper Colorado River.

Weather troubles voters in Ohio

My friend Rich reports that he is sitting in traffic that is moving at a snails pace because of a driving storm of snow and sleet that has blanketed most of Ohio today. He is in the process of traveling from Cleveland to his home in Cincinnatti. He thinks it will take him upwards of three hours.

I told him that Hillary is counting on his vote today. I hope the weather is better in Texas than it is now in Ohio.

Bad weather is just one of the reasons why I now choose to vote by absentee ballot. I have done so for years. Prior to signing up for it, during the last presidential election, I remember being sick as a dog with the flu lying on the couch and not being able to make it to my poling place. It was the same year that Bush ran against Gore and experienced the recount in Florida and we all learned new vocabulary words- "hanging chad". Never again. I want my vote to be counted. It's something I feel is important because I'm an American and American have the right to vote.