Financial and housing industries paid lobbyists more than $42 million to defeat mortgage cram-down legislation.
OPS_admin | May 05, 2009 | Comments 0
Financial and housing industries paid lobbyists more than $42 million to defeat mortgage cram-down legislation.
Last week, the Senate voted 45-51 to defeat a proposal to change bankruptcy law and allow bankruptcy judges to cram-down mortgage payments. As Pat Garofalo has explained, cram-downs help homeowners by enabling these judges “to lower mortgage payments for those who owe more than their home is worth and have exhausted all other options.” Prior to the vote, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) — who sponsored the amendment — took the floor and decried the powerful banking industry that was working to defeat the provision. Indeed, as Jane Hamsher now reports, lobbyists received more than $42 million to defeat such legislation this year:
A review of lobbying reports filed indicates that finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) interests paid over $42 million to lobbyists who worked to defeat mortgage write-down in bankruptcy (cramdown) in the first quarter of 2009, as well as other anti-consumer legislation such as capping credit card interest rates.
Filed Under: Corruption
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If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
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