Federal Judge Jails Renegade Clerk

Kim Davis mugshot

This blog focuses often on exposing hypocrisy.  But it also looks at the manner in which fundamentalist Christian organizations and the professional Christian crowd prey upon the emotionally troubled and those with sordid pasts to expand their cults denominations and ministries.  Sometimes the prey of this parasites are gays who have blamed their sexual orientation for the bad decisions they have made and/or their substance abuse who then find themselves being recruited to be "ex-gays" for pay.  Other times, the prey are serial adulterers and those who have failed in marriage and life who then find a sense of belonging and respectability in their lives by "finding Jesus" and embracing cult religions.  The common thread throughout is the way the "godly folk" take advantage of the emotionally and psychologically weak to grow their cults and live a comfortable life living off the monetary support of their victims.  Rowan County Clerk, Kim Davis fits the pattern.  A post at Civil Commotion describes the phenomenon well:

Kim Davis confirms yesterday’s speculation that her toxic religiosity is a consequence of her checkered marital/parental history. 

So, as I said then, her sense of self-worth comes from the old children’s song: Jesus loves me, this I know …

Her bizarre religiosity, that is, is merely the next step in the progression of the emotional/psychological problems that screwed-up her marriages.

I share the view that she remains responsible for her refusal to obey the law, and if fines or even jail are what it takes to compel her to fulfill her plain responsibilities, then … OK. But let’s not misapprehend what is going on here: She is a severely troubled person, and she is being grievously misused by amoral predators whose marketing shtick is crafted to appeal to damaged people like her. Her troubles have made her the acolyte of a cult.

As I write this post, the National Organization for Marriage, Liberty Counsel and other flim flam groups are making money begs aimed at the ignorant and gullible seeking to rake money into their coffers.  Even backward states have consumer protection laws to protect citizens from con artists and charlatans.  Except in the case of religion.  Sadly, no state has laws to protect against citizens from parasites and con artist who wrap themselves in  the cloak of religion.   The time has come to end the undeserved deference given to religion and parasitic cults.

Mortgage Lenders Request Delay of New Mortgage-Disclosure Rule

Click image to enlarge - from New York Times

Those of us in the real estate industry have known for well over a year and a half that new rules implemented by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to improve residential loan disclosures and force lenders to ceasing handling closing on a last second, chaos basis were coming on August 1, 2015.  My employer, Liberty Title & Escrow has been getting ready for the change, purchasing new software, educating real estate agents and working with lenders to be prepared.  Now, mortgage lenders - who typically do little on a timely basis based on my experience - are asking for delays in the effective date of the new disclosure laws which, among other things would require closing statements to be provided to borrowers not less than three days before closing (currently, we often do not have final figures from lenders until mere hours before closing).  Not surprisingly, some of the biggest lenders are the worse to deal with.  The New York Times looks at efforts by lenders to continue their bad old ways for a while longer.  Here are excerpts:

New rules intended to make mortgage terms more transparent and easier for consumers to understand are scheduled to take effect on Aug. 1. But although the changes have been in the works for almost two years, the lending industry says it is not prepared for the shift.

So with two months to go, banks are asking for a delay in enforcement.

Outwardly, the new requirements seem fairly simple. Instead of the four different mortgage disclosure forms now required under the Truth in Lending and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Acts, borrowers will receive an initial Loan Estimate at the time of application, and a Closing Disclosure shortly before they sign off.

The new forms are just one part of a nearly 1,900-page rule created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to strengthen protections after the mortgage crisis. Known in the industry as TILA-RESPA, for its integration of the two existing acts, the rule was finalized in November 2013, with an implementation date of August 2015.

The American Bankers Association, however, says its members aren’t ready. And it blames the vendors who supply the software and system upgrades needed for regulatory compliance.

In a survey released earlier this month, 79 percent of responding banks said their vendors either had not verified a delivery date for the software updates or had said the systems wouldn’t arrive before June.

The association supports legislation recently filed in the House that would prohibit enforcement of TILA-RESPA until Jan. 1, 2016. The bill would also prohibit anyone from filing a lawsuit against a lender for violating the requirements, provided the lender had made a “good faith effort” to comply.

More than 20 consumer groups have signed a letter opposing the legislation, however, saying that it was borrowers who need protecting, not lenders.

“Doesn’t the homeowner have the right to get a reasonably accurate disclosure in advance of closing?” said Alys Cohen, a staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center.

Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has so far held firm on the Aug. 1 implementation date. At a May 12 speech before the National Association of Realtors, he acknowledged that the coming changes represent “a major undertaking.” 

Personally, I hope the CFPB refuses to extend the implementation date.  Lenders have known this was coming and need to be held strictly liable.  I've seen lender "good faith efforts" and if they are given any leeway, they will continue to abuse the system, consumers and others involved in the closing process.  The irony is that years ago, we used to have settlement statements prepared well in advance of closing, but then many lenders got greedy, cut staff and/or hired incompetent processors.  The good, competent lenders should not be penalized by the unpreparedness of the bad ones who created the problem the CFPB rules seek to fix.

Will Elizabeth Warren Transform the Democrat Party?

In most instances Democrats ran from Barack Obama and the liberal policies of the Democrat Party in the campaign leading up to the disastrous 2014 midterm elections.  Far too little was said about the progress made under Obama - improved economy, dropping unemployment, dropping gas prices, and so forth.  Playing moderate, in short, did nothing to stop losses.  Some are suggesting that had these failed candidates done more to talk up successes and embrace popular liberal policies, the results might have been different - and might have motivated more of the base which stayed home. A piece in Salon raises the question of whether Elizabeth Warren can lead the Democrats back to liberal issues that find wide popular support out side of Christofascist circles.  Here are excerpts:

Twenty years from now, assuming climate change has not yet ended the world as we know it, most American liberals won’t think of this fall as the time when Republicans finally retook control of the U.S. Senate. And they won’t think of it as the brief pause that separated the era of Barack Obama from that of Hillary Clinton. Instead, when the liberals of our near future look back on the current moment, they’ll remember it as the hour when the Democratic Party began to move decisively to the left, thanks in no small part to the continued ascendance of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

At this point, it’s not entirely clear what the folks nominally in charge of this infamously disorganized party are trying to do by elevating Warren. Because the former Harvard Law professor has been prominent in liberal circles since the launch of her brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it can be easy to forget that she’s only been in Congress for a couple of years. And coming as it does after a truly disastrous midterm showing, this seeming vote of confidence from Democratic bigwigs has the risk of being a “glass cliff” situation. My former colleague Brian Beutler, for example, has guessed that Senate Dem leadership may have opted to bring Warren into the fold because they’ll need a popular spokeswoman to deliver the next two years’ worth of bad news to the “professional left.”

After many years of kvetching about their paltry influence — and following decade after decade of enviously watching the conservative movement refashion the GOP in its own image — lefty ideologues and organizers now have the chance to turn Warren into a kind of trojan horse for a resurgent politics of economic populism (or, as it used to be called, liberalism). And if they adapt and adhere to the script used many years ago by visionary right-wingers, who famously responded to an electoral drubbing in 1964 by staying the course and propelling a true believer to the White House less than 20 years later, it just might work.

I still think the conservative example offers activist liberals unhappy with the Obama record –which is most of them — some valuable lessons.For one, if left-wing troublemakers want to make Sen. Warren a Goldwater of their own, they’ll have to ignore the 2016 presidential race as much as possible. That doesn’t simply mean giving up on the lost cause of forcing Wall Street favorite Hillary Clinton to reinvent herself as a true progressive. And it certainly doesn’t mean wasting resources on a quixotic primary challenge, which in the present circumstances will do little more than help Clinton get back in the swing of triangulation. Instead, it means building institutional support from the bottom up by creating funding networks and community spaces outside of the Democratic Party’s reach, so lefties can feel personally invested in their cause without having D.C. grandees step in and tell them to be “serious.” 

[T]he success of right-wing activists from the past and present indicates that there can be long-term benefits in a short-term stint as the minority. To be clear, it’d be taking things too far to say that it’s a good thing Democrats now only control the White House. As the last four years have taught us, the powers of the imperial presidency don’t seem to extend very far into the realm of the domestic (at least not yet). So having a majority in Congress is vital, still. At the same time, there’s value, to a degree, in having a party with ideological coherence — increasingly so, I’d argue, in an era of institutional failure and partisan polarization. Most of the Democrats dissolved in the red tides of ’10 and ’14 were “blue dog” conservatives,

[W]hat lefty activists should learn from their right-wing counterparts is this: In a dysfunctional two-party system such as ours, in which voters are perpetually unhappy and ready for any excuse to throw the bums out and start all over, it’s only a matter of time until the losers of yesterday are once again ascendant. And as the GOP has shown in the years since its back-to-back wipeouts in ’06 and ’08, responding to electoral defeat by moderating is no longer necessary, while moving further away from the center is no longer a death sentence. Now that they have a political superstar and ideological true believer as their behind-the-scenes agent, lefty activists with an eye on the long term have a chance to, in the words of Warren, “frame the issues for the next few elections” and ultimately make the Democratic Party truly progressive.