Oh, yeah. That’s very true.

In most of those cases, the man has been unmanned by his (perceived) failure to support his family. And it comes across. It may not be his fault (someone got sick, etc.) but he feels unmanned nonetheless.

Short answer: because every individual case is different. Also, because every bankruptcy case depends in large part on state laws, with homestead exemptions being the #1 example, but state laws impact in many places and many ways both obvious and subtle and can and will change the way a case comes out.

They deal with dunning, and lawsuits, and reposessions and all the rest of the crap.

And don’t think that’s a small subset of people. In my years of practicing, I ran into a lot of people who were literally too broke to go bankrupt.

Depends on the retainer agreement and, more particularly, when the creditor files the bogus information. If it’s a Ch.13 and early in the case, i.e., before the payment plan, then the attorney is still on the scene and can challenge the creditor’s bullsh*t (or just reduce the lying creditor’s share to, say, 1% of the claim). If it’s after the payment plan has been approved (assuming the debtor is current), then the debtor is out of line and can/should be sanctioned. But, since most retainer agreements cover from filing and preparation of schedules through to court approval of the plan (13) or discharge (7), the late-coming baloney has to be confronted with more money to the lawyer. To their credit, most consumer bankruptcy lawyers will retake their clients and work with them, and it benefits the client to go back to the same lawyer who represented them earlier because he is already familiar with the case and that saves a lot of time.

In two words: “they’re fucked”.

They wind up lurching from near-catastrophe to near-catastrophe, struggling to make something near to ends meeting and, if they’re lucky, getting something approximating enough to eat and a roof and not much more.

I recall Hynde and the Pretenders making a stink about it – not wanting Limbaugh to use the song – a dozen or so years ago and getting nowhere. I also recall Limbaugh getting a big laugh out of it.

NBC Nightly News had the courage to report that she was a former unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor who had, among other campaign promises, one in which she promised to defund Planned Parenthood.

This should have been no surprise, particularly given the seemingly-anodyne new criterion applied to justify the defunding: “We won’t fund anyone who’s under investigation”. And, lo and behold, some wingnut in Congress saw fit to start an investigation of Planned Parenthood.

I think an alternative explanation for the hysterical grip austerity has upon the Euro Zone, is that we – the US – are forcing them to do it. The story I link to here http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/state-dept-online-piracy-is-very-serious-but-no-stance-on-sopa.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

discusses a leaked letter from the US Ambassador to Spain to the Spanish government, threatening to put Spain on an international diplomatic blacklist if Spain does not pass a law similar to the so-called “Stop Online Piracy Act” (the internet censorship bill). Spain knuckled to that pressure.

As readers here are likely well aware, the SOPA bill is being pushed at the behest of corporate America, particularly the media and entertainment businesses, which stand to profit handsomely from it. D’ya think our financial oligarchs aren’t profiting at least as well from Euro austerity?

What’s to say that our Treasury counterparts have not told the Europeans to suck it up and impose austerity, and the documents just haven’t hit wikileaks yet?

Just to note something which surely will not get reported, in the suit filed on behalf of Occupy Portland, Me., an allegation in the suit (supported by affidavit) is that the police have been funnelling homeless people to the site, telling them to camp there. Especially homeless who have behavior problems. Then they turn around and predicate closing down Occupy on the basis of allegations of violence in the camp.

http://portlanddailysun.me/news/story/claim-made-occupymaine-lawsuit-could-prompt-internal-police-probe

First time I’ve heard of that gambit, though it is wholly unsurprising some police force would try it.

Amusing.

This is another of the self-servatives who hates regulation and believes the Free Market is God.* Until it’s their money getting lifted. Then they go all William-O.-Douglas-at-the-spanking-new-SEC putting brokers in the hoosegow.

It’s a corollary of the old “A conservative is a liberal who was mugged.” and “A liberal is a conservative who was arrested.”

But it’s none the less fun to watch.

* This is also an example of the Free Market Regulating Itself. What the self-servatives who love to repeat that tripe always seem to omit (and forget until it’s their money getting lifted) is that, indeed, it will. That regulation is by laws. And when there is no government regulation, then The Market will obey the Law of the Jungle.

Tough shit, bitch.

The point is, every state’s consumer protection laws are different. But, as a general rule, they tend to have a provision where the AG can sue parens patriae (on behalf of all the people) to stop an abusive or deceptive practice. This usually comes up in the context of stuff like stores having “going out of business” sales that never end and they never go out of business, or selling kid pajamas that burst into flames on a warm day.

When it comes to land records, it’s a similarly fragmented picture. Each state, by virtue of the way its constitution structures its government, has a different allocation of power and responsibility for all sorts of different things. In the main, though, most states’ structures have the land records responsibility, power to enforce the rules, and money-handling done at the county, not state, level. So, just saying that the AG should step in and sue MERS to stop the scam it’s perpetrated on the recording system of Banjo County and collect the money that should have been paid, isn’t going to work. The responsibility likely lies at the county level.

Delaware, though, has only three counties. Compare that to Pennsylvania with 67, or New York with 62 (including the 5 boroughs of NYC; of the other counties, I especially like the name Cattaraugus, which means “bad smell”). As far as I understand it, Delaware’s counties don’t really have that much power independent of the state. Other states’ counties have varying amounts of power.

But, systemic frauds on land records are often the kind of thing which can only be properly addressed at the state level. Sometimes, that’s a function of a powerful local pol having too much power in a county, messing with the land records and being able to stop the local people from enforcing the law. Such was the case in an old New Jersey case, Hyland v. Kirkman, in which AG Hyland sued to enjoin a prominent local rich guy and pol, Kirkman (think a latter-day Nucky from Boardwalk Empire), from making up and recording “wild deeds” (deeds without any preceding chain of title) to vacant land in the Jersey Pinelands, and to nullify the wild deeds. Sometimes it’s a matter where the scam is going on in more than one county.

We cannot leave out of the discussion the impact of politics – I cannot see a Republican AG suing any bank or MERS to stop MERS’ chicanery.

And Beau is probably doing this with his dad’s approbation, because Joe will be too old to do anything other than retire come 2013 (an Obama loss) or 2017 (a win) and for his future success Beau will have to teach the banks he’s dangerous if not well-bought-off.

All anyone has to do to see how centrally located this domestic terror attack was (and how easy to solve it should be), is look at a good map.

Another example of how they hate us for our freedoms….

For those who haven’t had the time to check out the old-city geography of downtown Portland, a brief primer. The site of Occupy Maine getting chemical-bombed (i.e., attacked by domestic terrorists) is at the corner of Congress and Pearl streets in Portland, which is:
(A) across the street from Merrill Auditorium, which is a part of the City Hall complex
(B) less than a block from the main entrance to City Hall
(C) about a block from the main entrance to the Portland Press-Herald’s editorial and business offices
(D) across the street from the main fire station
(E) about a block and a half from the US District Court (and the US Marshal’s Service)
(F) about 3 blocks (old-fashioned horse-and-buggy-era city blocks) up the hill from the Maine state headquarters of US Homeland Security, ICE, and who knows what else federal, in the Old Customhouse at the foot of Pearl Street, at its corner with Commercial street, opposite the wharves
(G) about 3 blocks from police headquarters
(H) within a quarter mile of the studios of the NBC and Fox affiliates, and a large number of radio stations.

I don’t think anyone knows just how many video cameras have the area in their scope, but, still, nobody saw nuttin’. Unlike that time in the middle of a night a few years back when some disturbed high-schooler threw an m80 at a bank branch in NYC’s upper east side, when a zillion cops went searching for him and spared no effort parsing videotape and grilling potential witnesses.

This morning, I received a blast email from a store where I shop, containing a trenchant message which I think ought to be shared widely. The email was simply this statement:

“If you really want to Occupy Wall Street, do your holiday shopping at a small independent merchant.”

I think it’s worth passing on.

Just keep this striaght: They want riots in the streets. More than anything else, they want riots in the streets. Nothing gets a cop hard like the idea of being able to whack civilians with impunity. Nothing gets a Republican hard, like the idea of killing liberals and ruling the rest.

The only way to rule, is to have to be putting down rioters.

No riots. No violence.

German radio reports S&P just announced it is downgrading Greek government debt to “Highly Speculative”, explaining it believes there may be selective repayment of that debt and is not ruling out or predicting further downgrades of that debt in the future.

That “silence from the Left” people have been noting?

It’s the sound of backs turning and the Left going back to their homes. The Left does have somewhere to go, and they are leaving for it.

To put this in perspective:

David Axelrod simply cannot dig up enough “independents” or “centrists” that will be reward Obama for being “the adult in the room” to compensate for a 69% disapproval in the Democratic base. And a 50% approval among African Americans? Staggering.

On election day 2008, I worked as an election observer in a working-class black neighborhood of a large eastern city. When I arrived, a half-hour before the polls opened, a line was starting for form outside the polling place and, by a half-hour after they opened, the line was well over a block long. There were 800 voters registered to vote in that polling place. Of that number, 640 actually appeared and voted. There was one Asian-American woman who voted; all the others were African-American. Little kids were coming up to cadge our Obama credential tags and buttons.

The results of the election (I checked later):
Obama 633
McCain 7.

Going down to 50 percent A-A approval, you’ve lost a lot of votes, Barry. And you have no one to blame for it but yourself.