2016 STATE OF THE JUDICIARY ADDRESS THE HONORABLE CHIEF JUSTICE HUGH P. THOMPSON SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA January 27, 2016, 11 a.m. House Chambers, State Capitol

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016 STATE OF THE JUDICIARY ADDRESS
THE HONORABLE CHIEF JUSTICE HUGH P. THOMPSON
SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA
January 27, 2016, 11 a.m.
House Chambers, State Capitol

Lt. Governor Cagle, Speaker Ralston, President Pro Tem Shafer, Speaker Pro Tem Jones, members of the General Assembly, my fellow judges and my fellow Georgians:
Good morning. Thank you for this annual tradition of inviting the Chief Justice to report on the State of Georgia’s Judiciary. Thanks in large part to your support and the support of our governor, as we move into 2016, I am pleased to tell you that your judicial branch of government is not only steady and secure, it is dynamic; it has momentum; and it is moving forward into the 21st century with a vitality and a commitment to meeting the inevitable changes before us.
Our mission remains the same: To protect individual rights and liberties, to uphold and interpret the rule of law, and to provide a forum for the peaceful resolution of disputes that is fair, impartial, and accessible to all.
Our judges are committed to these principles. Each day, throughout this state, they put on their black robes; they take their seat on the courtroom bench; and they work tirelessly to ensure that all citizens who come before them get justice.

Our Judicial Council is the policy-making body of the state’s judicial branch. It is made up of competent, committed leaders elected by their fellow judges and representing all classes of court. They are assisted by an Administrative Office of the Courts, which is under a new director – Cynthia Clanton – and has a renewed focus as an agency that serves judges and courts throughout Georgia.
A number of our judges have made the trip to be here today. Our judges are here today because the relationship we have with you is important. We share with you the same goal of serving the citizens of this great state. We could not do our work without your help and that of our governor.
On behalf of all of the judges, let me say we are extremely grateful to you members of the General Assembly for your judicial compensation appropriation last year.

Today I want to talk to you about Georgia’s 21st century courts – our vision for the future, the road we must travel to get there, and the accomplishments we have already achieved.
It has been said that, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
Since a new state Constitution took effect in 1983, our population has nearly doubled to a little over 10 million, making us the 8th most populous state in the country. We are among the fastest growing states in the nation, and in less than four years, our population is projected to exceed 12 million.
Because it is good for our economy, we welcome that growth. Today, Georgia ranks
among states with the highest number of Fortune 500 companies, 20 of which have their global headquarters here; we have 72 four-year colleges and universities; we have the world’s busiest airport and we have two deep-water ports. Georgia is a gateway to the South, and for a growing number of people and businesses from around the world, it is a gateway to this country.
All of this growth produces litigation – increasingly complex litigation – and just as our state must prepare for this growth by ensuring we have enough roads and modes of transportation, enough doctors and hospitals, and enough power to reach people throughout the state, our courts also must be equipped and modernized for the 21st
century.
While our population has nearly doubled since 1983, the number of Georgia judges has
grown only 16 percent. We must work together to ensure that our judicial system has enough judges, staff and resources in the 21st century to fulfill the mission and constitutional duties our forefathers assigned to us.
A healthy, vibrant judiciary is absolutely critical to the economic development of our state. Thanks to many leaders in the judiciary, as well as to our partnership with the governor and to you in the legislature, we are well on our way to building a court system for the 21st century.

This time next year, with your support, we will have put into place an historic shift in the types of cases handled by the Georgia Supreme Court – the highest court in the state – and by the Court of Appeals – our intermediate appellate court. Thanks to Governor Deal’s Georgia Appellate Jurisdiction Review Commission, this realignment will bring the Supreme Court of Georgia in line with other state Supreme Courts, which handle only the most critical cases that potentially change the law. Serving on the Commission are two of my colleagues – Justice David Nahmias and Justice Keith Blackwell – as well as two judges from the Court of Appeals – Chief
Judge Sara Doyle and Judge Stephen Dillard.
I thank you, Justices and Judges, for your leadership.
Under the Georgia Constitution, Supreme Court justices collectively decide every case that comes before us. Currently the state’s highest court hears divorce and alimony cases; we hear cases involving wills; we hear cases involving titles to land; and we hear disputes over boundary lines.
But the Governor’s Commission, and a number of reports by other commissions and
committees issued since 1983, have recommended that such cases should be heard by our intermediate appeals court, not by our highest court.
Both of our courts are among the busiest in the nation. But unlike the Supreme Court, which sits as a full court with all seven justices participating in, and deciding, every case, the Court of Appeals sits in panels of three. With your approval last year of three new Court of Appeals judges, that court will now have five panels, so it will have the capacity to consider five times as many cases as the Supreme Court.
Modernization of the Supreme Court makes sense. In a 19th century court system, when
most of the wealth was tied up in land, maybe title to land cases were the most important. Maybe they had the greatest implications for the public at large. But as we move into the 21st century, that is no longer true.
In answer to questions such as who owns a strip of land, what does a will mean, and who should prevail in a divorce settlement or an alimony dispute, most judicial systems believe that three judges are enough to provide the parties with a full and fair consideration of their appeal. It no longer makes sense to have seven – or nine – justices collectively review these types of cases.
There is no doubt these cases will be in good hands with the Court of Appeals.
Let me emphasize that all these cases the Commission recommended shifting to the Court of Appeals are critically important to the parties involved.
Let me also emphasize that the purpose of this historic change is not to lessen the burden on the Supreme Court. Rather, the intent is to free up the state’s highest court to devote more time and energy to the most complex and the most difficult cases that have the greatest implications for the law and society at large.
We will therefore retain jurisdiction of constitutional challenges to the laws you enact, questions from the federal courts seeking authoritative rulings on Georgia law, election contests, murder and death penalty cases, and cases in which the Court of Appeals judges are equally divided.
Significantly, we want to be able to accept more of what we call “certiorari” cases
which are appeals of decisions by the Court of Appeals. The number of petitions filed in this category during the first quarter of the new docket year is nearly 14 percent higher this year over last. Yet due to the amount of appeals the law now requires us to take, we have had to reject the majority of the petitions for certiorari that we receive.
These cases are often the most complex – and the most consequential. They involve
issues of great importance to the legal system and the State as a whole. Or they involve an area of law that has become inconsistent and needs clarification.
Businesses and citizens need to know what the law allows them to do and what it does
not allow them to do. It is our job at the highest court to reduce any uncertainty and bring consistency and clarity to the law.
Under the Commission’s recommendations, our 21st century Georgia Supreme Court will
be able to accept more of these important appeals.

As we move into the 21st century, plans are being discussed to build the first state Judicial Building in Georgia’s history that will be dedicated solely to the judiciary. We are grateful for the Governor’s leadership on this. The building that now houses the state’s highest court and the Court of Appeals was built in 1954 when Herman Tallmadge was governor. Back then, it made sense to combine the state judicial branch with part of the executive branch, by locating the Law Department in the same building.
But the world has changed since 1954, and the building we now occupy was not designed with visitors in mind. It was not designed with technology in mind. And it surely was not designed with security in mind. Indeed, it was designed to interconnect with neighboring buildings that housed other branches of government.
A proper Judicial Building is about more than bricks and mortar. Outside, this building will symbolize for generations to come the place where people will go to get final resolution of civil wrongs and injustices; where the government will go to safeguard its prosecution of criminals; and where defendants will go to appeal convictions and sentences to prison for life.
Inside such a building, the courtroom will reinforce the reality that what goes on here is serious and solemn; it is a place of great purpose, in the words of a federal judge. The parties and the lawyers will understand they are all on equal footing, because they are equal under the law.
There is a majesty about the law that gets played out in the courtroom. It is a hallowed place because it is where the truth must be told and where justice is born. The courtroom represents our democracy at its very best.
No, this building is not just about bricks and mortar. Rather it is a place that will house Georgia’s highest court where fairness, impartiality, and justice will reign for future generations.

We are no longer living in a 1950s Georgia. The courts of the 21st century must be
equipped to handle an increasingly diverse population. Living today in metropolitan Atlanta alone are more than 700,000 people who were born outside the United States. According to the Chamber of Commerce, today some 70 countries have a presence in Atlanta, in the form of a consulate or trade office. We must be ready to help resolve the disputes of international businesses that are increasingly locating in our state and capital. Our 21st century courts must be open, transparent and accessible to all. Our citizens’ confidence in their judicial system depends on it. We must be armed with qualified, certified interpreters, promote arbitration as an alternative to costly, courtroom-bound litigation, ensure that all those who cannot afford lawyers have an avenue toward justice, and be constantly updating technology with the aim of improving our courts’ efficiency while saving literally millions of dollars. For all of this, we need your help.

When I first became a judge, we had no email, no cell phones, no Internet. People didn’t Twitter or text, or post things on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. The most modern equipment we had was a mimeograph machine.
This past year, by Supreme Court order, we created for the first time a governance
structure to bring our use of technology into the 21st century. Chaired by my colleague Justice Harold Melton, and co-chaired by Douglas County Superior Court Judge David Emerson, this permanent Judicial Council Standing Committee on Technology will lead the judicial branch by providing guidance and oversight of its technology initiatives.
Our courts on their own are rapidly moving away from paper documents into the digital age. At the Supreme Court, lawyers must now electronically file all cases. This past year, we successfully launched the next phase by working with trial courts to begin transmitting their entire court record to us electronically. The Court of Appeals also now requires the e-filing of applications to appeal, and this year, will join the Supreme Court in accepting electronic trial records.

Our goal is to develop a uniform statewide electronic filing and retrieval system so that lawyers and others throughout the judiciary can file and access data the easiest way possible.
Using a single portal, attorneys will be able to file documents with trial courts and appellate courts – and retrieve them from any court in the state. This is the system advocated by our partner, President Bob Kaufman of the State Bar of Georgia, and by attorneys throughout the state.
Such a system will not only make our courts more efficient at huge savings, but it will make Georgia safer. When our trial judges conduct bond hearings, for example, they often lack critical information about the person before them. They usually have reports about any former convictions, but they may not have information about cases pending against the defendant in other courts. The technology exists now to ensure that they do.
Also on the horizon is the expanded use of videoconferencing – another electronic
improvement that will save money and protect citizens’ lives. After a conviction and sentence to prison, post-trial hearings require courts to send security teams to pick up the prisoner and bring him to court. Without encroaching on the constitutional right of confrontation, we could videoconference the inmate’s testimony from his prison cell. Again, the technology already exists.
Our Committee on Technology will be at the forefront of guiding our courts into the 21st century.

As Georgia grows, it grows more diverse.
Our Georgia courts are required by the federal government to provide language services free of charge to litigants and witnesses, not only in criminal cases but in civil cases as well.
Even for fluent English speakers, the judicial system can be confusing and unwelcoming.
My vision for Georgia’s judiciary in the 21st century is that every court, in every city and every county in Georgia, will have the capacity of serving all litigants, speaking any language, regardless of national origin, from the moment they enter the courthouse until the moment they leave. That means that on court websites, signs and forms will be available in multiple languages, that all court staff will have the tools they need to assist any customers, and that court proceedings will have instant access to the interpreters of the languages they need.
Chief Magistrate Kristina Blum of the Gwinnett County Magistrate Court has been
working hard to ensure access to justice for all those who come to her court, most of whom are representing themselves.
Recently her court created brochures that provide guidance for civil trials, family
violence matters, warrant applications, garnishments, and landlord-tenant disputes. These brochures provide basic information about each proceeding – what to expect and how best to present their case in court.
Judge Blum, who is in line to be president of the Council of Magistrate Judges and is a member of our Judicial Council, has had the brochures translated into Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese. Such non-legalese forms and tutorial videos that our citizens can understand go a long way toward building trust in the judicial system, and in our entire government.
The Supreme Court Commission on Interpreters, chaired by Justice Keith Blackwell, is
making significant strides in ensuring that our courts uphold the standards of due process. With the help of Commission member Jana Edmondson-Cooper, an energetic attorney with the Georgia Legal Services Program, the Commission is working around the state to educate judges,court administrators and lawyers on the judiciary’s responsibilities in providing language assistance.
The essence of due process is the opportunity to be heard. Our justice system is the envy of other countries because it is open and fair to everyone seeking justice. By helping those who have not yet mastered English, we reinforce the message that the doors to the best justice system in the world are open to everyone.
Our law demands it. Our Constitution demands it.

The courts of the 21st century will symbolize a new era. A turning point in our history occurred when we realized there was a smarter way to handle criminals.
Six years ago, my colleague and then Chief Justice Carol Hunstein accompanied
Representative Wendell Willard to Alabama to explore how that state was reforming its criminal justice system. Back in Georgia, Governor Deal seized the reins, brought together the three branches of government, and through extraordinary leadership, has made criminal justice reform a reality. Georgia is now a model for the nation.
Today, following an explosive growth in our prison population that doubled between
1990 and 2011 and caused corrections costs to top one billion dollars a year, last year our prison population was the lowest it has been in 10 years. Our recidivism rate is the lowest it’s been in three decades. And we have turned back the tide of rising costs.
For the last five years, the Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform – created by the governor and your legislation – has been busy transforming our criminal justice system into one that does a better job of protecting public safety while holding non-violent offenders accountable and saving millions in taxpayer dollars. I am extremely grateful to this Council and commend the steady leadership of co-chairs Judge Michael Boggs of the Court of Appeals and Thomas Worthy of the State Bar of Georgia.
Throughout this historic reform, Georgia’s trial court judges have been in the trenches.
Our number one goal in criminal justice reform is to better protect the safety of our citizens.
Central to that goal is the development of our specialty courts – what some call accountability courts.
These courts have a proven track record of reducing recidivism rates and keeping our
citizens safe. Nationwide, 75 percent of drug court graduates remain free of arrest two years after completing the program, and the most conservative analyses show that drug courts reduce crime as much as 45 percent more than other sentencing options. Last year, these courts helped save Georgia more than $51 million in prison costs.
From the beginning, you in the legislature have steadfastly supported the growth in these courts, most recently appropriating more than $19 million for the current fiscal year.
Georgia now has 131 of these courts, which include drug courts, DUI courts, juvenile and adult mental health courts, and veterans courts. Today, only two judicial circuits in the state do not yet have a specialty court, and both are in the early stages of discussing the possibility of starting one. In addition to those already involved, last year alone, we added nearly 3500 new participants to these courts.
Behind that number are individual tales of lives changed and in some cases, lives saved.
Our judges, who see so much failure, take pride in these success stories. And so should you.

Chief Judge Richard Slaby of the Richmond County State Court, speaks with great pride of Judge David Watkins and the specialty courts that have grown under Judge Watkins’ direction. Today the recidivism rate among the Augusta participants is less than 10 percent.
The judges who run these courts are committed and deserve our thanks. We are grateful to leaders like Judge Slaby, who is President-Elect of the Council of State Court Judges and a member of our Judicial Council; to Judge Stephen Goss of the Dougherty Superior Court, whose mental health court has been recognized as one of the best mental health courts in our country; to Chief Judge Brenda Weaver, President of the Council of Superior Court Judges and a member of our Judicial Council. Judge Weaver of the Appalachian Judicial Circuit serves on the Council of
Accountability Court Judges of Georgia, which you created last year by statute. Its purpose is to improve the quality of our specialty courts through proven standards and practices, and it is chaired by Superior Court Judge Jason Deal of Hall County. Judge Deal’s dedication to the specialty court model in his community, and his guidance and encouragement to programs throughout the state, are described as invaluable by those who work with him.

We may not have a unified court system in Georgia. But we have judges unified in their commitment to our courts. Among our one thousand four hundred and fifty judges, Georgia has many fine leaders. I’ve told you about a number of them today. In closing, I want to mention two more.
When the United States Supreme Court issued its historic decision last year on same-sex marriage, our Council of Probate Court Judges led the way toward compliance. Three months before the ruling was issued, the judges met privately at the behest of the Council’s then president, Judge Chase Daughtrey of Cook County, and his successor, Judge Don Wilkes of Emanuel County. Together, they determined that regardless of what the Supreme Court decided, they would follow the law. Both Governor Deal and Attorney General Sam Olens also publicly announced they would respect the court’s decision, despite tremendous pressure to do otherwise.
These men are all great leaders who spared our state the turmoil other states endured. The bottom line is this: In Georgia, we may like the law, we may not like the law, but we follow the law.

The day-to-day business of the Georgia courts rarely makes the news. Rather judges,
their staff and clerks spend their days devoted to understanding the law, tediously pushing cases through to resolution, committed to ferreting out the truth and making the right decision. It is not easy, and they must often stand alone, knowing that when they sentence someone to prison, many lives hang in the balance between justice and mercy.
So I thank all of our leaders, and I thank all of our judges who are leading our courts into the 21st century.
May God bless them. May God bless you. And may God bless all the people of Georgia.
Thank you.

Bar Groups See Threat from Nonlawyers

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, Courts, Judges, law, Lawyers, Legal, Legal Aid

The American Lawyer
http://www.americanlawyer.com/printerfriendly/id=1202748892813
from: The American Lawyer

At ABA Meeting, Bar Groups See Threat from Nonlawyers

Susan Beck, The Am Law Daily

February 4, 2016


(Stanford Law School Professor Deborah Rhode criticized the opposition to Resolution 105, which some fear could lead to more non-lawyers providing legal services.
Photo: Jason Doiy/The Recorder)

A modest proposal that hints at opening the door to nonlawyers providing simple legal services faces a tough fight at the American Bar Association’s midyear meetings, which are currently underway in San Diego.

The ABA’s Litigation Section, as well as the bar associations of Illinois, Nevada, New York, New Jersey and Texas, are all on record opposing Resolution 105, which was submitted by the Commission on the Future of Legal Services and five other ABA divisions. The commission was formed in August 2014 by then-incoming ABA president William Hubbard, who has been vocal about the need to improve access to justice. Under the leadership of former Northrop Grumman Corporation lawyer Judy Perry Martinez, the commission has explored new ways to improve the delivery of civil legal services to the public, especially to those who can’t afford a lawyer or are confused by the legal system.

While the 30-member commission has considered many possible solutions—from technological innovations to allowing nonlawyers to provide limited legal services—Resolution 105 doesn’t propose any specific changes to the status quo. Instead, it asks the ABA to adopt “Model Regulatory Objectives for the Provision of Legal Services” that are guided by such benign principles as protection of the public and meaningful access to justice. It also urges each state’s highest court to be guided by these objectives if it is considering new rules to allow activity by “nontraditional legal service providers.”

While the resolution doesn’t advocate for such changes, the mere mention of “nontraditional legal service providers” raises hackles for some in the ABA. The Texas state bar board, for example, has asked Texas delegates to withhold their support for Resolution 105. State bar president-elect Frank Stevenson II of Locke Lord said the board opposes the proposal because it seems to presume there’s a place for nonlawyers to provide legal services. He added that Texas’ chief justice has already set up a commission to study how lawyers can reach more of the public, and his group wants to wait for that group to finish its work.

“Our position shouldn’t be interpreted as rigidly opposed to innovation in the provision of legal services,” Stevenson said. But he added, “We feel lawyers are not fungible with nonlawyers.”

The New Jersey State Bar Association’s board of trustees voted unanimously to oppose the resolution, also because it envisions new categories of legal service providers. The ABA’s Litigation Section voted 17-8 against it.

Philadelphia lawyer Lawrence Fox of Drinker Biddle & Reath, who has long crusaded against allowing nonlawyers to provide legal services, sent a Jan. 29 email to all delegates with the subject line “Save Our Profession.” He implored them to reject Resolution 105: “If we are going to show leadership, it ought to be in opposing the unauthorized practice of law, wherever it rears its ugly head,” he wrote.

The resolution does have some organized support, including from the South Carolina Bar Association, the ABA’s Business Law Section, the Bar Association of San Francisco and the Washington State Bar Association. (In Washington state, licensed nonlawyers already provide some legal services.)

ABA President Paulette Brown declined to comment on the resolution or the work of the commission.

The commission will hold a roundtable discussion in San Diego on Saturday and will meet again on Sunday. The ABA’s House of Delegates will consider the resolution on Monday.

A simple majority vote is needed to adopt a resolution. The ABA has 560 delegates, but it’s not clear how many will be present Monday.

Over the past year and a half, the Commission on the Future of Legal Services has sought new ideas to improve the public’s access to legal solutions. In May of last year it held a National Summit on Innovation in Legal Services at Stanford Law School that drew 200 participants, including 12 state court chief justices, the CEO of LegalZoom, a Microsoft Corp. in-house lawyer and numerous academics.

The following month, in a podcast on the Legal Talk Network, commission chairman Martinez sounded optimistic that the profession might change. “There’s room in this space to think differently about how we provide legal services,” she said. “This has the potential for sea change.”

Some of the profession’s rules, she said, serve as barriers that don’t protect the public. “We’re making sure that lawyers understand what services aren’t needed to be delivered by a lawyer and can in fact be delivered by somebody else.”

Martinez also noted that some lawyers might have trouble adjusting to a new model: “[There] will be some pain for those not alert and ready for change.”

Martinez could not be reached for comment.

The United Kingdom has already allowed some of the changes that are being fought over in the United States. In 2007 it passed the Legal Services Act, which permits so-called alternative business structures in the practice of law. The U.K. law breaks down many of the barriers that prevented nonlawyers from providing legal services or supplying capital to legal service providers.

Stanford Law School professor Deborah Rhode, who co-chaired last year’s summit and who directs the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University, called the May gathering an “extraordinary show of support for innovation” by ABA leadership. Four past, current and future ABA presidents attended, she noted.

“The major challenge for the ABA is how to get the rank and file behind some of these innovative initiatives,” she said. “A lot of lawyers feel very threatened.”

Rhode criticized the organized opposition against Resolution 105. “It’s such a mindless reflexive response,” she said. “This [change] is coming whether the bar likes it or not. Sticking their heads in the sand and trying to block even such an unobjectionable compromise position [in Resolution 105] seems a step in the wrong direction.”

She added, “This is why I titled my book ‘The Trouble with Lawyers,’” referring to her 2015 book critiquing the profession.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that everyone who has concerns is sticking their heads in the sand,” said Locke Lord’s Stevenson, the Texas bar president. “A lot of criticism has been very nuanced and raises some issues that need to be addressed.”

Wells Fargo Agrees to pay $1.2 Billion (yes, with a B) to resolve claims by Justice Dept. & other federal agencies for the origination of “shoddy loans” insured by FHA

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, A Billion Dollars, above the law, Banksters, corruption, Court Cases, foreclosure, Fraud Upon the Court, Housing Bubble, law, Lawyers, Legal


Compliance & Regulation
Why Wells Fargo Blinked in Its FHA Fight with the Government
Kate Berry
By Kate Berry
February 3, 2016
http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/compliance-regulation/why-wells-fargo-blinked-in-its-fha-fight-with-the-government-1071213-1.html?utm_medium=email&ET=nationalmortgage:e4010451:a:&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=-feb%205%202016&st=email

The long arm of the government is tough to elude, even if you are the nation’s largest home lender.

Wells Fargo stunned the mortgage industry Wednesday by tentatively agreeing to pay $1.2 billion to resolve civil claims by the Justice Department and other federal agencies that it originated shoddy loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

The proposed settlement could prove a bellwether for other banks that have outstanding investigations of FHA loans including PNC Financial Services Group, Regions Financial and BB&T.

Wells had been the lone big bank holdout willing to go to trial as a potential test of the government’s pursuit of banks for violations of the False Claims Act. That Civil War-era law allows the government to collect triple damages for fraud against the government. The law also has been a lightning rod for banks, causing some to pull out of FHA lending entirely.

Some observers said they were surprised at the size of the deal. Wells had put up a fight, claiming it has always been a prudent and responsible FHA lender. But some observers said the risk to its reputation and the cost of continuing the litigation was just too great.

“Nobody’s put [the government] to the test like Wells,” said Allen Jones, an independent mortgage consultant who managed Bank of America’s FHA business from 2005 to 2009. “They definitely made a run like no one else has. But there comes a point in time where you add it up and have to quantify the downside risk.”

The $1.8 trillion-asset bank reached an “agreement in principle” on Monday to resolve the FHA claims but could not provide any additional details until the deal is finalized, said Catherine Pulley, a Wells spokeswoman.

The agreement is forcing Wells to shave $134 million, or three cents a share, off its previously reported net income for 2015, the bank said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Wells said its revised profit for 2015 is $22.9 billion, or $4.12 a share.

The San Francisco bank had to provide for an additional legal accrual because of the settlement, which increased its operating losses within noninterest expense by $200 million, the filing said.

The deal appears to provide Wells some future protections. It would resolve “other potential civil claims relating to the company’s FHA lending activities for other periods,” the filing said.

Prosecutors had alleged that Wells “engaged in a regular practice of reckless origination and underwriting of its retail FHA loans” from 2001 to 2010.

Theoretically lenders are required to indemnify FHA for loans that contain mistakes or are defective, essentially self-insuring the loan so taxpayers are not on the hook for potential losses. In this case, Wells not only failed to report material violations to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but HUD also paid insurance claims on thousands of defaulted loans that it later found had significant violations, the lawsuit alleged.

Last year the government added a Wells executive in charge of quality control, Kurt Lofrano, as a defendant to the lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2012. Lofrano was responsible for reporting loans with material defects to HUD, which oversees the FHA.

Prosecutors were preparing to use Wells’ own internal quality control reports to prove that executives knew some loans were of poor quality but did nothing about it. Wells failed to report the errors or change its practices because of pressure to fund more loans, the government claimed.

Patricia McCoy, a professor at Boston College Law School who specializes in banking law, said that because details of the settlement have not yet been released, there is no way to gauge the severity of Wells’ lending errors.

“Part of the problem is, there is a continuum of different types of conduct that would have led to a False Claims Act claim, and depending on the lender it could have been really bad, or a mixture with innocuous errors that slipped through,” McCoy said. “We don’t know where Wells Fargo fell along that continuum. At worst, it was a mix, some bad and probably a lot of innocuous errors.”

A bigger problem, McCoy said, is that the Justice Department has used the False Claims Act and its potential for treble damages for each violation as a tool to get banks to settle FHA violations. That threat has caused many to flee the program, she said.

“It’s a very heavy sledgehammer, and that’s not a constructive approach because in the course of underwriting innocent mistakes can happen and often they can be cured or fixed,” she said. “If the FHA is saying as a condition of a lender doing FHA loans, they have to be 100% perfect or else they are automatically going to face this threat of treble damages — that’s not a viable lending program.”

The Bank With the Most Homes in the End Wins!!!!!

fragmented corium could be in the Japan Trench which has a depth of 23,176 ft or 4.3 miles

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, cesium, fallout, fission, food chain, Fukushima

Nexxus Environmental Corporation Reports Corium In Earth
01/06/2016

“The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) has gone critical and requires immediate attention by utilizing a comprehensive set of solutions. The fuel rods in three of the reactors have melted and the fissionable nuclear material has reached staggering temperatures that has led to a China syndrome”. In other words the meltdown has burned through the first containment vessel and the secondary containment which is the facility that houses the reactors. It was found back in October 2013 that the coriums, (Melted Fuel Rods) were missing from Reactors 1, 2 and 3. The most current information shows the corium’s have made their way to the underground water table and have entered the Pacific Ocean Basin. First level analysis shows that part of the fragmented corium could be in the Japan Trench which has a depth of 23,176 ft or 4.3 miles.”

“Four judicial appointments are being denied Gov. Nathan Deal”. “over a period of decades, it has become customary throughout Georgia for a judge to resign mid-way through the final elected term, which allows the governor to install an incumbent of his choice in time for the next nonpartisan election. Which usually discourages all challengers. Bestowing these prizes has become one of the great perks of the governor’s office.”

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, above the law, Courts, Georgia, Governor Deal, Judges, Judicial Corruption


(Judge Irma Glover speaks to the audience during a criminal arraignment at Cobb County State Court in Marietta in 2013. Her retirement was announced on Tuesday. Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com)
Greg Bluestein
@bluestein
Daniel Malloy
@ajconwashington
Jim Galloway
@politicalinsidr
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/01/06/cobb-county-judges-deny-gov-nathan-deal-four-bench-appointments/

Cobb County judges deny Gov. Nathan Deal four bench appointments
January 6, 2016 | Filed in: Cobb County, Elections – President, Georgia Legislature, Jimmy Carter, John Lewis, Nathan Deal.

Judge Irma Glover speaks to the audience during a criminal arraignment at Cobb County State Court in Marietta in 2013. Her retirement was announced on Tuesday. Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

Judge Irma Glover speaks to the audience during a criminal arraignment at Cobb County State Court in Marietta in 2013. Her retirement was announced on Tuesday. Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

We told you earlier this morning that Allison Barnes Salter, daughter of former Gov. Roy Barnes and a managing partner in the Barnes Law Group, will run for an open seat on the Cobb County State Court bench.

But that is only part of the story.

(Allison Salter Barnes, who announced her candidacy for a state court judgeship on Tuesday).

Allison Salter Barnes, who announced her candidacy for a state court judgeship on Tuesday.

A total of four judges in Cobb County – all women, one on the superior court bench and three on the state court bench – have announced that they will not be running for re-election when their terms expire this year.

Which means that four judicial appointments are being denied Gov. Nathan Deal.

This is actually how the system is supposed to work. But over a period of decades, it has become customary throughout Georgia for a judge to resign mid-way through the final elected term, which allows the governor to install an incumbent of his choice in time for the next nonpartisan election. Which usually discourages all challengers. Bestowing these prizes has become one of the great perks of the governor’s office.

One can’t rule out the possibility that these departing judges hold a fervent belief in the power of voters. Superior Court Judge Adele Grubbs, who is retiring at age 72, won her seat on the bench in a 2000 election. State Court Judge Melanie Clayton first won her seat in an open-field election in 1992.

But we also may be seeing something of a Democratic hangover here. Kathryn Tanksley, another departing state court judge, was appointed as one of the last acts of Governor Barnes before he left office in 2002. And State Court Judge Irma Glover, whose retirement was announced Tuesday in the Daily Report, was a 1995 appointee of Gov. Zell Miller.

The Daily Sheeple: “FUKUSHIMA? 10,000 DEAD SQUID WASH UP ON CHILE BEACH”

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, americium, beaches, Chili, contaminated, contamination, cytotoxic agent, Danger, dead, death, deaths, disaster, DNA Damage, dying, fallout, Fish, fishermen, food chain, Fukushima, Health, Idiots, Injustice, inonizing radiation, Iodine 131, Japan, Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences, mass die offs, Mortality Event, Nuclear, nuclear catastrophe, nuked, Pacific Ocean, plutonium, Radiation, radiation poisoning, radioactive, radioactive concentration, radiocesium, RADIONUCLIDES, Raidoanalytical, Strontium, thyroid


FUKUSHIMA? 10,000 DEAD SQUID WASH UP ON CHILE BEACH
JANUARY 18, 2016 | MELISSA DYKES | THE DAILY SHEEPLE | 4,008 VIEWS
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/fukushima-10000-dead-squid-wash-up-on-chile-beach_012016

It is being referred to as Cthulhu-geddon.
Squid have washed up on Santa Maria Island off Chile this week in what some have described as biblical proportions. Thousands of dead and dying squid are piled up on the shore. While some squid normally do wash up this time of year, it’s never been in this large of a quantity.

Exact reason for this die-off is unknown, but some experts claim it might be a sudden drop in oxygen content in the water or an increase in water temperatures. They just really don’t know.

Of course, just like all the other mass die-offs up and down the Pacific coast in recent years, no one in any official capacity is pointing to the Fukushima disaster, still dumping tons of radioactive water into the sea as it has been for the last half a decade now just across the globe from Chile.


Screenshot 2016-01-18 at 8.08.59 AM

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Fukushima fallout: Throwing radioactive caution to the wind – and sea Cynthia McKinney

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, americium, beaches, brains eaten away, California, Caution, Censorship, cesium, climate engineering, Congress, contaminated, contamination, corruption, Danger, dead, death, death dead, deaths, disaster, dying, ENENews, fallout, Fish, fishermen, Fukushima, geoengineered, globalists, hazard, Health, inonizing radiation, Iodine 131, Japan, Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences, mass die offs, Mortality Event, Murder, Nuclear, nuclear catastrophe, nuked, Pacific Ocean, plutonium, propaganda, Public safety, Radiation, radiation poisoning, radioactive, radioactive concentration, radiocesium, RADIONUCLIDES, Raidoanalytical, Strontium, thyroid, too little too late, Toxic, United States, US nuclear plants, US Senate

Fukushima fallout: Throwing radioactive caution to the wind – and sea
Cynthia McKinney
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/319053-fukushima-fallout-radioactive-japan/

After serving in the Georgia Legislature, in 1992, Cynthia McKinney won a seat in the US House of Representatives. She was the first African-American woman from Georgia in the US Congress. In 2005, McKinney was a vocal critic of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and was the first member of Congress to file articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. In 2008, Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party nomination for the US presidency.
Published time: 19 Oct, 2015 11:08


An aerial view shows No. 4 (front L), No. 3 (front R), No. 2 (rear L) and No. 1 reactor buildings at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear power plant in Takahama town, Fukui prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo November 27, 2014. © Kyodo
An aerial view shows No. 4 (front L), No. 3 (front R), No. 2 (rear L) and No. 1 reactor buildings at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear power plant in Takahama town, Fukui prefecture, in this photo taken by Kyodo November 27, 2014. © Kyodo / Reuters
In the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power meltdown following the tsunami of March 11, 2011, the international community has totally failed in keeping the public properly informed and protected from the fallout.

Scientists and environmental officials continue to express concern, even now, at the unusual events and wonder about the causes. At the same time, the media present the facts, but fail to make any connection whatsoever to the ongoing state of affairs stemming from the tragic 2011 events at Fukushima.

Here are a few recent examples:

Seabird die-off reported around Kodiak, Alaska: A September 2015 audio report from Robin Corcoran, biologist from the Kodiak Wildlife National Refuge, confirms local reports that “emaciated” bird carcasses are washing up on Kodiak Island shores. Corcoran states that the birds were “showing up in places where people don’t normally see them . . . foraging, trying to find forage fish.”

© Toru Hanai
© Toru Hanai / Reuters

The KMXT narrator quoted Corcoran as saying it was unclear what caused the deaths but “could be related to the birds’ inability to catch forage fish,” while it was evident “the birds have no fat on their bodies and they don’t have any food in their digestive systems which indicates that they starved.”

Corcoran confirms that the last major bird die-off experienced in the region was January through March of 2012. The program concluded by stating that multiple species of birds have declined in number in other Alaska regions, according to surveys taken by the Wildlife Refuge. The next day, KTOO reported that Corcoran speculated on several causes for the die-off: “flight feather molt,”“whale die-offs,” or “harmful algal blooms . . . related to warm ocean temperatures.”

A few days before the Kodiak reports, The Daily Astorian headlined: “Scientists Searching for Answers in Bird Die-Off.” Julia Parish, speaking on behalf of the University of Washington’s Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, states that the spikes in deaths are two to three times higher than normal. Josh Saranpaa of the Wildlife Center of the North Coast was quoted as saying, “Every bird we’re seeing is starving to death. It’s pretty bad.” Saranpaa added, “When you see so many starving, something is not quite right out there.”

The warming ocean and the toxic algae bloom are offered as possible explanations for the die-offs. Warming oceans, it is explained, cause the fish to swim deeper than the birds can dive while the toxic algae bloom runs from California straight up to Alasak. Parish concludes that it has been a really “odd” year with multiple regional scale events. She says that there is not much that researchers can do except wait and watch.

Julia Reis of the Half Moon Bay Review writes with understatement, “There have been noticeable changes in the Pacific Ocean that have caused difficulties for marine life of late.”


© Shizuo Kambayashi
© Shizuo Kambayashi / Reuters

Gerry McChesney of the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge says that the die-off has him all the more “baffled” because of the strip of cold water in his area full of food for these birds. In my mind’s eye, I can see McChesney scratching his head as I read that he considers poisoning, starvation, and El Nino as possible causes for the die-off. The article ends with the following comment by McChesney, “We might have to see some other problem in the ocean before we understand what’s causing the die-off.”

ENENews.com points to the problem of the massive die-off happening from San Diego to Alaska—all along the West Coast of the U.S. It highlights in various reports words like “strange,” “unprecedented,” “crazy,” “worst,” with this iconic quote from The Sacramento Bee: “Our gut tells us there is something going on in the marine environment.”

Behrens [1] published an open access 2012 model simulation of cesium 137 (137Cs) released into the Pacific Ocean as a result of the Fukushima incident and found that after the first two to three years, tracer elements descended to depths of more than 400 meters, reached the Hawaiian Islands after about two years, and North American territorial waters after about five to six years.

Although in decreased rates of concentration from the initial injection, the entire northern Pacific basin becomes saturated with tracer fluids in this simulation. This study finds that the radioactivity remains at about twice pre-Fukushima levels until about Year Nine when radioactivity tapers to pre-Fukushima levels. This research specifically does not investigate the biological effects of increased radioactivity in the Pacific Ocean.

In 2011, Lozano [2] investigated reports of man-made cesium atmospheric detection as far away as the Iberian Peninsula. Mangano and Sherman [3] take their 2015 investigation of Fukushima radiation exactly into a potentially politically uncomfortable, but essential space: biological effects. They look at “congenital anomalies” that occurred in the U.S. western states after the arrival of radioactive Fukushima Fallout. And they found that while in the rest of the U.S., birth defects decreased by almost four percentage points, on the U.S. West Coast, defects increased by thirteen percent.

View Dr. Sherman’s interview by Russia Today’s Thom Hartman where she explains the research.

Even U.S. soldiers are now experiencing Fukushima Fallout with exposure hitting home in health effects and birth defects. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution explains how Fukushima radioactivity reaches ocean life from both air and sea discharges. These air, ground, or sea discharges, by the way, continue twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Arne Gundersen of Fairewinds.org estimates that by 2015 at least 23,000 tanker truckloads of radioactive water have been released into the Pacific Ocean “with no end in sight.”

Please tell me whatever happened to the Precautionary Principle in public policy? [4] Is profit more important than prudence? Finally, a 2015 study by Synolakis and Kanoglu [5] finds that the Fukushima tragedy was preventable. They conclude that due to design flaws, regulatory failures, and “arrogance and ignorance,” and concludes that Fukushima Daiichi was “a sitting duck waiting to be flooded.”

With all of this as background, the media provide coverage of marine anomalies mentioning global warming, even El Nino and toxic algae, while the elephant in the room is Fukushima radiation. It is this silence that is deafening! It makes me wonder who are the beneficiaries of the nuclear power business? Why is the nuclear power lobby so strong when the dangers are clearly so evident? Instead, we are told: “It is fossil fuels that are destroying the planet. Nuclear power is clean and safe.” I’m also told that nuclear power is a sign of modernity; it is the future. But solar, geothermal, and wind are rarely given a mention by these same individuals. I’m also told that by posing these questions, I’m fearmongering.

I do want to know why in the face of what appear to be Pacific Ocean die-offs, El Nino is mentioned and not the Fukushima-related elevated levels of radiation. As long as there is a palpable lack of transparency in the mainstream media’s ordinary coverage of extraordinary environmental events, that includes what one senses as a reticence to discuss the obvious, I predict that there will be a proliferation of citizen journalists and citizen scientists seizing upon each piece of new data trying to make sense out of a government-approved narrative that just doesn’t make sense—again.
US President Obama stated, “We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific.”

We should not rely on government officials to tell us the truth about the full extent of Fukushima’s fallout: Incredibly, Obama advised the people of the U.S. not to take precautionary measures beyond “staying informed.” Canada immediately suspended measurements of radiation around Vancouver. The government of Japan has not been trustworthy from the very beginning about the extent of the tragedy.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

2015 in review

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people 
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
<a href="https://blackrobedmafia.wordpress.com/2015/annual-report/"><img src="//s0.wp.com/wp-content/mu-plugins/annual-reports/img/2014-emailteaser.png" width="100%" alt="" /></a>
Here's an excerpt:

<blockquote>A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people.  This blog was viewed about <strong>1,900</strong> times in 2015.  If it were a cable car, it would take about 32 trips to carry that many people.</blockquote>
<a href="https://blackrobedmafia.wordpress.com/2015/annual-report/">Click here to see the complete report.</a>

Blacklisted News: ENTIRE FLORIDA POLICE DEPT BUSTED!

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, above the law, access to injustice, Attorneys, Banksters, big brother, Big Law, Central America, manifest injustice, Miami,, takeover

ENTIRE FLORIDA POLICE DEPT BUSTED LAUNDERING TENS OF MILLIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL DRUG CARTELS
Published: January 1, 2016
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http://www.blacklistednews.com/Entire_Florida_Police_Dept_Busted_Laundering_Tens_of_Millions_For_International_Drug_Cartels/48092/0/38/38/Y/M.html

SOURCE: JUSTIN GARDNER

The village of Bal Harbour, population 2,513, may have a tiny footprint on the northern tip of Miami Beach, but its police department had grand aspirations of going after international drug traffickers, and making a few million dollars while they were at it.

The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers. Members of the 12-person task force traveled far and wide to carry out their deals, from Los Angeles to New York to Puerto Rico.

Along the way, the small-town cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns. Meanwhile, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.

Besides these “official” uses of the money, confidential records obtained by the Miami-Herald show that officers withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars with no record of where the money went.

“They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”
The operation, which was not fully reported to federal authorities, funneled millions of dollars to overseas criminals and interfered with investigations being carried out on known money launderers.

The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.

They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.

Four other Venezuelan criminals and smugglers were major recipients of the millions being wired from the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriff’s Office, including a figure tied to one of the largest drug cartels in the hemisphere.

These actions violated strict federal bans on sending illegal money overseas, and the Florida cops never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.
“I can’t think of a more podunk town than Bal Harbour — not in a bad way. But in the sense that these cops would have otherwise been stopping traffic or shooting radar,” said Ruben Oliva, who has represented alleged narco-traffickers since the 1980s. “In reality they were being launderers. The minute they started doing busts, it would have been over.

“This is like a movie. You’ve got these guys and they’re flying all over. They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’ I’ve seen every kind of law enforcement money-laundering investigations. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s really one for the ages.”
After the Department of Justice busted the Bal Harbour PD for misspending seized money to pay police salaries, the Miami-Herald began deeper investigations and found a much bigger pool of money that was never noticed by the feds. Soon after that, the ambitious sting operation–which was really just a money-making scheme–began to fall apart.
“The Miami Herald gained unprecedented access to the confidential records of the undercover investigation, reviewing thousands of records including cash pickup reports, emails, DEA reports, bank statements and wire transfers for millions of dollars. The inquiry found:

▪ Police routinely withdrew cash — thousands at a time — totaling $1.3 million from undercover bank accounts, but to this day there are no records to show where the money was spent. “In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Overton said.

▪ Bal Harbour officials say they cannot find receipts for hundreds of thousands in expenses, including five-star hotel bookings, dinners that ran up to $1,000 and scores of purchases like laptops, iPads, electronic money counters, flower deliveries, and even iTunes downloads.

▪ While posing as launderers, police delivered nearly $20 million to storefront businesses in Miami-Dade to launder the money for drug groups — gathering critical evidence against the business owners — yet took no action against them. Years later, the businesses are still open, some still suspected by federal agents of laundering for the cartels.”
Cash deposits to SunTrust Bank totaling $28 million do not appear anywhere in police records. It’s no coincidence that the operation was launched “at a time law enforcement agencies across Florida were looking to boost their budgets during one of the state’s toughest economic periods.”
“We had to find a revenue stream,” said Duane Pottorff, chief of law enforcement for Glades. “It allowed us to have resources we wouldn’t normally have.”
Federal authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have launched probes into the Bal Harbour police, which will surely confirm the rampant abuses of power. However, the fact that these types of shady operations, carried out with the help of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can occur at all is even more troubling.

Government creates a black market of drugs and blood money through prohibition, then under the War on Drugs it grants itself the power to break the law and get involved in money laundering operations. While the professed goal is to “sting” the bad guys, government rakes in millions upon millions of dollars to further bolster its prohibition and war on drugs.

The War on Drugs is the real scheme that should be investigated.

ENENews: Gov’t Report: Plutonium detected in recent California air samples — “Fallout from Fukushima nuclear accident”

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, Alaska, americium, americiun, beaches, big brother, California, Canada, Caution, cell cycle arrest, Censorship, cesium, Climate Corporation, climate engineering, cobalt 60, contaminated, contamination, corruption, cytotoxic agent, Danger, dead, death, death dead, deaths, decommissioning, disaster, Disasters, ENENews, epiphany, fallout, Fish, fishermen, food chain, Fukushima, Hanford, hazard, inonizing radiation, Iodine 131, Japan, Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Mortality Event, Nuclear, nuclear catastrophe, Nuclear Chemistry, nuclear strike threat, nuked, Pacific Ocean, panic, plutonium, Radiation, radiation poisoning, radioactive, radioactive concentration, radiocesium, RADIONUCLIDES, Raidoanalytical, sea lions, Strontium, thyroid, Toxic, US nuclear plants, Warning, water, WIPP

Gov’t Report: Plutonium detected in recent California air samples — “Fallout from Fukushima nuclear accident” may be to blame

Published: December 28th, 2015 at 6:54 pm ET
By ENENews
Email Article Email Article
156 comments

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (pdf), Sept 28, 2015 (emphasis added):

Ambient Air Radioactive Particulates
Composite samples were analyzed by alpha spectroscopy for plutonium-239+240, which was detected in 2 out of 206 samples taken in 2014. Detections at the Livermore Site and Livermore off-site locations [in California] for plutonium-239+240 are attributed to a number of factors including the following: resuspension of plutonium-contaminated soil (see Chapter 6); ambient air from historical operations; resuspended fallout from previous atmospheric testing; or fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident.
The highest values and percentage of the DCS for the plutonium-239+240 detections were as follows: Livermore Site perimeter: 13.4 nBq/m3 (0.36 aCi/m3)… Livermore off-site locations: 10.4 nBq/m3 (0.28 aCi/m3).

See also: Official data shows U.S. hit with huge spike of ‘most dangerous’ radiation from Fukushima — Levels far exceeded federal regulatory limits — Alpha particles nearly 1,000 times normal; Includes plutonium — Gov’t workers in “fear of radiation”

I hope yall aren’t waiting around for the govt. to tell you that all will be ok. There is no health threat. It takes four or more years for cancer to set in. Fukushima has been pouring 400 tons of radioactive waste cocktail into the Pacific every day since 03/2011. Almost five (5) years now. Tell me, what do you think 5 years of waste cocktail did to the Pacific Ocean?

ENENews: Mutations in nearly every fir tree by Fukushima plant — Insects with missing legs or crooked — Abnormalities also found in monkeys, fish and frogs

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, americium, analysis, beaches, brains eaten away, California, Canada, Caution, Censorship, cesium, cobalt 60, contaminated, contamination, corruption, cytotoxic agent, Danger, dead, death, deaths, decommissioning, degenerative brain disorder, disaster, DNA, DNA Damage, fallout, Fish, food chain, Fukushima, Hanford, hazard, Health, inonizing radiation, Iodine 131, Japan, Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Mortality Event, Nuclear, nuclear catastrophe, nuked, Pacific Ocean, plutonium, Radiation, radiation poisoning, radioactive, radioactive concentration, radiocesium, RADIONUCLIDES, Raidoanalytical, Strontium, thyroid, Toxic

http://s25.postimg.org/t8rky7gb3/mousseau_map.jpg
Major Japan Newspaper: Mutations in nearly every fir tree by Fukushima plant — Insects with missing legs or crooked — Abnormalities also found in monkeys, fish and frogs

http://enenews.com/major-japan-newspaper-mutations-every-fir-tree-fukushima-plant-insects-missing-crooked-legs-abnormalities-found-monkeys-carp-frogs

Published: December 23rd, 2015 at 7:09 pm ET
By ENENews

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201512220004
Asahi Shimbun, Dec 22, 2015 (emphasis added): More than 90 percent of the fir trees in forests close to the site of Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster are showing signs of abnormality, and plant lice specimens collected in a town more than 30 kilometers from the crippled facility are missing legs or crooked. But it remains unclear whether the mutations in plants and animals are definitively connected to the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. All that scientists in Japan are prepared to say is they are trying to figure out the effects of radioactive cesium caused by the release of huge amounts of radioactive materials from the triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant… Scientists are seeking… signs of mutation in plants and animals in areas close to the stricken nuclear plant… Scientists have reported on mutations and abnormalities among species varying from fir trees and plant lice to Japanese monkeys, carp and frogs. The National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS), a government-affiliated entity, said in late August that the trunks of fir trees are not growing vertically. Fir trees are among the 44 species that the Environment Ministry asked the NIRS and other research organizations to study in trying to determine the effects of radiation on living creatures. The NIRS reported that the frequency of these mutations corresponds to a rise in natural background radiation. More than 90 percent of fir trees in the town of Okuma, just 3.5 kilometers from the crippled plant, showed signs of abnormal growth… Among other changes reported: the legs of plant lice collected in Kawamata, a town more than 30 km from the plant, were found to be missing or crooked and the white blood cell count of Japanese monkeys was lower in Fukushima, the prefectural capital, which is about 60 km from the plant… There is also a possibility that some animals, even if they exhibited signs of radiation’s effect, may no longer be alive for analysis.

See also: Japan Reporter: Mutations increasing in Fukushima — TV: “Strange things are happening to the plants and animals” — Gov’t News Agency: “Long list of mutated life forms reported” (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/reporter-mutations-started-increasing-fukushima-locals-reporting-insect-populations-decline-tv-strange-happening-plants-animals-living-fukushima-video

And: Former Japan TV News Anchor: The mutations have begun in Fukushima; Birds found blind, unable to fly — Magazine: “Birds in tailspin 4 years after Fukushima… the proverbial canary in a coalmine” — Professor: Birds with mutations popping up all over in contaminated areas (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/former-japan-tv-news-anchor-mutations-begun-fukushima-birds-found-fly-magazine-birds-tailspin-4-years-after-fukushima-proverbial-canary-coalmine-professor-partial-albinos-popping-all-place-conta

And: Professor: “It’s really a dead zone” in areas of Fukushima — “Huge impacts… there are no butterflies, no birds… many dramatically fewer species” — “Why does it matter to you (in the U.S.)? The reason is, it’s coming, it is coming” (VIDEO)
http://enenews.com/professor-really-dead-zone-areas-fukushima-huge-impacts-butterflies-birds-many-dramatically-fewer-species-matter-reason-coming-coming-video

Agendas Acc0rding to the Federal Bar Association

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, above the law, access to injustice, Big Law, Congress, contamination, corruption, Court Cases, Courts, criminal injustice, Danger, Disappears you, disarmament, ethics cases, fallout, Fast and Furious, Feds, Fraud Upon the Court, globalists, gun ban treaty, Injustice, invasion, Judicial Corruption, Judicial ethics, judicial watch, Justice Dept., law, Lawyers, Legal, manifest injustice, Public safety, stability issues, studies, The American Lawyer, Toxic, United States, US Senate, US Supreme Court, Warning


I ran across this tonight, looking for something else, but it caught my eye and so I read it.
Knowing what I know about this country and being “awake”, I find the following pretty fucking interesting. What are your thoughts?:

FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION
2015-16 ISSUES AGENDA
http://www.fedbar.org/Advocacy/Issues-Agendas.aspx

Active Issues | Monitored Issues
ACTIVE LEGISLATIVE ISSUES

Independence of the Federal Judiciary

The Federal Bar Association reaffirms the importance of the independence of the judiciary, recognizing that judicial decisions are not immune from scrutiny, but are to be made solely on the basis of the law.

Funding for the Federal Courts

The Federal Bar Association supports adequate funding for the general and continuing operations of the federal courts, including an equitable level of rent and facilities expense consistent with actual costs, budgetary constraints, staffing needs and security considerations, to permit the courts to fulfill their constitutional and statutory responsibilities

Federal Judgeships and Caseloads

The Federal Bar Association supports the authorization and establishment of additional permanent and temporary federal judgeships, including bankruptcy judgeships, along with support personnel, as proposed by the Judicial Conference of the United States, when rising caseloads in the federal courts threaten the prompt delivery of justice. The Federal Bar Association also supports efforts to educate Congress, the legal profession and the general public about how the overwhelming case loads threaten the ability of the Third Branch of the federal government to function.

Federal Judicial Vacancies

The Federal Bar Association calls upon the President and Congress to act promptly and responsibly in nominating and confirming nominees to the federal appellate and district courts. The Federal Bar Association supports the development of strategies to reduce the time required to fill federal judicial vacancies.

Courthouse Security

The Federal Bar Association supports the adoption of adequate security measures to protect the federal judiciary, their families and court personnel in and outside the courthouse, while preserving meaningful public access to judicial proceedings.

Federal Judicial Pay

The Federal Bar Association support equitable compensation and regular periodic adjustments for the federal judiciary, as well as senior officials of the Executive Branch and Members of Congress, to promote the recruitment and retention of the highest quality public servants.

Respect for the Federal Courts

Declining public confidence in our courts undermines public respect for the courts and the legitimacy of their rulings. To counter that influence, the Federal Bar Association supports programming and other efforts to educate the public about the federal courts and the role they serve in assuring a just society.

Professionalism and Stature of Federal Attorneys

The Federal Bar Association supports and promotes efforts to improve the professionalism and stature of attorneys employed by the federal government, including: enhancements to the compensation packages of federal attorneys, including pay and retirement benefits, to assist in recruitment and retention; the expansion, consistent with applicable conflict of interest laws, of policies encouraging full participation of attorneys employed by the federal government in professional organizations and pro bono legal activities, including approval for use of administrative leave; enhanced federal funding for participation in continuing legal education and training programs, including paid tuition and administrative leave; and the establishment of programs for student loan deferral and repayment assistance for all federal attorneys, including federal law clerks, federal defenders and judge advocates of the Armed Forces, in support of recruitment and retention efforts.

Social Security Disability Appeals Backlog

The Federal Bar Association supports adequate funding and resources for the Social Security Administration to remove the significant backlog of disability benefit appeals awaiting adjudication and to assure the fair and timely administration of justice for all appellants.

Authority of Bankruptcy Judges in “Core Proceedings”

The Federal Bar Association supports amendment of bankruptcy law to expressly allow bankruptcy judges to issue proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law in core proceedings in which they are otherwise barred from entering final judgments under Article III of the United States Constitution.

Commission on Nazi-Confiscated Art Claims

The Federal Bar Association supports the Congressional creation of a commission to address identification and ownership issues related to Nazi-confiscated artworks, pursuant to the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, as signed by the United States and the international community.

Article I Immigration Court
The Federal Bar Association supports the transfer of responsibilities for the adjudication of immigration claims from the Executive Office of Immigration Review within the Department of Justice to a specialized Article I court, as established by Congress, for the adjudication of claims under the Immigration and Naturalization Act.

Federal Criminal Sentencing
The Federal Bar Association supports efforts to advance fairness and consistency in federal sentencing, while preserving judicial independence and discretion to deal with the particular circumstances of individual cases.

Military Spouse Attorney Mobility
The Federal Bar Association supports state-level legal licensing accommodations, including bar admission without additional examination, for attorneys who are spouses of service members, i.e., members of the uniformed services of the United States as defined in 10 USC §101(a)(5), when: (1) those “military spouse attorneys” are present in a particular state, commonwealth, or territory of the United States or District of Columbia due to their service members’ military assignment; (2) they are graduates of accredited law schools; and (3) they are licensed attorneys in good standing in the bar of another state, commonwealth, or territory of the United States or District of Columbia.

Patent Litigation Reform
The Federal Bar Association supports legislation that curbs abusive patent litigation practices and other responsible measures to improve the quality and clarity of patents. The FBA opposes legislation that reduces judicial discretion in adjudicating patent actions or circumvents the Rules Enabling Act by mandating changes that depart from the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in patent cases.

MONITORED LEGISLATIVE ISSUES

Courthouse Construction

The Federal Bar Association supports the full funding of courthouse construction proposed by the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Cameras in the Courts

The Federal Bar Association encourages a discussion of the competing considerations vis-a-vis proposed legislation which would authorize federal judges, in their discretion, to permit photographing, electronic recording, broadcasting, and televising of federal court proceedings in appropriate circumstances.

Division of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

The Federal Bar Association opposes the division of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, consistent with its capacity to effectively and efficiently render justice.

Continuing Legal Education Funding for the Federal Judiciary

The Federal Bar Association supports the expansion of and enhancement of federal funding for continuing legal education and training programs for the federal judiciary.

Expansion of Federal Jurisdiction Over State and Local-Prosecuted Crimes

The Federal Bar Association advocates strict scrutiny of legislation proposing to grant original jurisdiction to federal authorities over crimes traditionally reserved to state and local prosecution.

Criminal Justice Act Panel Attorney Compensation

The Federal Bar Association supports Congressional funding to permit an increase in compensation rates for Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys.

National Security and Civil Liberties

The Federal Bar Association encourages the discussion of the competing considerations in the nation’s war against terror between the protection of civil liberties and the interests of national security.

Prevention of Epidemics and Civil Liberties

The Federal Bar Association encourages and contributes to a discussion of the competing considerations between governmental restrictions to guard against epidemics and pandemics and the preservation of individual rights, as well as the use of technology to ensure the continuance of participatory governance.

Safety of Administrative Judges

The Federal Bar Association supports the efforts by the Social Security Administration and the Executive Office of Immigration Review to take appropriate steps to ensure the security of their administrative law judges and immigration judges, and all others who participate in its proceedings.

Veteran Disability Claims Adjudication

The Federal Bar Association supports legislative and administrative improvements to the veterans disability claims process in the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs to assure equitable and expeditious determinations.

Attorney Fee-Based Representation of Veterans

The Federal Bar Association supports proposals to expand the availability of fee-based representation of veterans in the disability claims process and to oppose any efforts to repeal the authority of attorney representation to veterans in the furtherance of such claims.

Frivolous Litigation

The Federal Bar Association opposes legislative proposals to eliminate judicial discretion in the imposition of sanctions for frivolous litigation, including proposals to revise Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by imposing mandatory sanctions and preventing a party from withdrawing challenged pleadings on a voluntary basis within a reasonable time.

Adopted by the Board of Directors
Federal Bar Association
July 10, 2015

The compass of FBA’s government relations program is its Issues Agenda, a roster of policy priorities to which the Association devotes its advocacy resources. The policy priorities embraced by the Issues Agenda are associated with active issues that concern the health and welfare of the federal judicial system and effective federal legal practice. For example, they concern the preservation of judicial independence, adequate funding and facilities for the federal courts, sufficient numbers of federal judgeships, equitable compensation for the federal judiciary, fairness and consistency in federal sentencing and a host of other matters

Daily Report and Andrew Phillips: Analyzing the Suit Over Georgia Voters’ Personal Data Leak

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people, above the law, Attorneys, Big Law, Caution, corruption, Court Cases, Courts, Danger, disaster, ethics cases, fallout, Georgia, hazard, Headlines, Idiots, Lawyers, manifest injustice, Public safety, stability issues, Warning

Analyzing the Suit Over Georgia Voters’ Personal Data Leak
Andrew Phillips, Daily Report
November 20, 2015
http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202743008663/Analyzing-the-Suit-Over-Georgia-Voters-Personal-Data-Leak?mcode=0&curindex=0&curpage=ALL


Andrew Phillips
Andrew Phillips is senior counsel in McGuireWoods’ Atlanta office, where he is editor of the firm’s “Password Protected” blog, in which a version of this article first appeared. His practice focuses on representing and counseling clients in a variety of class action and high stakes civil litigation.

John Disney/Daily Report

Did the Georgia secretary of state release the Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and dates of birth of every registered Georgia voter? Those are the allegations first made by putative class representatives Elise Piper and Yvette Sanders in a recently filed Fulton County Superior Court lawsuit and confirmed by recent statements by the secretary of state.

The office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp attributes the data leak to a “clerical error,” which it alleges involved the dissemination of CD-ROMs containing extraneous data to only 12 recipients and that the disks are in the process of being recovered.

Piper and Sanders also allege that, despite being on notice of the leak, the state failed to notify the affected voters, or credit reporting agencies, in violation of the Georgia Personal Identity Protection Act of 2007 (GPIPA).

As troubling as the release of this information may be to voters—who may be dubious that the leak has been contained and are concerned about the risk of identity theft or fraud—it is unclear what, if any, legal remedy is available to plaintiffs.

The Data Leak
Per the complaint, the Social Security and driver’s license numbers were collected as part of the voter registration process. However, the suit alleges that although the voter registration process only required the last four digits of each voter’s Social Security number, the Secretary of State’s Office nonetheless maintained “each voter’s complete Social Security and driver’s license number.”

Some voter identification information, such as names and addresses—but not Social Security and driver’s license numbers—is regularly maintained in a “voter file” which is routinely provided on CD-ROM to media members and political parties free of charge. The voter file is also available to the general public for a $500 fee. However, plaintiffs allege, when the October 2015 voter file was distributed, it not only contained standard voter identification information but also the Social Security number, driver’s license number, and date of birth for all 6,184,281 registered Georgia voters.

The Georgia Personal Identity Protection Act
Legally, the type of data released is a distinction with a difference. GPIPA—like many similar state data breach notification statutes—defines “personal information,” in relevant part, as “an individual’s first name or first initial and last name in combination with any one or more of the following data elements,” including a Social Security number or driver’s license number. Thus, while the dissemination of the standard voter file containing voters’ names and addresses alone likely did not constitute a release of protected personal information, the alleged release of that information in conjunction with Social Security and driver’s license numbers could be deemed a breach.
Of course, even if the information was—as it appears to be—”personal information,” that is not the end of the inquiry. Other key questions include whether the Georgia Secretary of State is an “information broker or data collector” subject to the act, whether the release of the information was a “breach of the security of the system” within the meaning of the act, and whether the state failed to comply with the notice requirements of GPIPA.

Based on what we know, it would appear the answers to the first two questions are yes. GPIPA defines a data collector to include state agencies and actors as long as they are not maintaining records “primarily for traffic safety, law enforcement or licensing purposes or for purposes of providing public access to court records or to real or personal property information.” Assuming the Office of the Secretary of State cannot meet any of these exceptions—as seems likely—it is a “data collector.”

Likewise, the act defines “breach of the security of the system” to mean “unauthorized acquisition of an individual’s electronic data that compromises the security, confidentiality or integrity of personal information.” Again, based on the available information, this definition would appear to have been met by the dissemination of the personal information to media and political parties.

That said, the secretary of state may argue that the release of the information to a mere dozen people, followed by prompt efforts to recover the disks and contain the leak, did not jeopardize “the security, confidentiality, or integrity of personal information.” Of course, the fact that plaintiffs’ counsel apparently ended up with one of the disks undermines these arguments.

Turning to the next question, if GPIPA applies and the release was a breach, what was the Office of the Secretary of State required to do?
Under GPIPA, any information broker or data collector “shall give notice of any breach of the security of the system following discovery or notification of the breach” to Georgia residents whose unencrypted personal information was “acquired by an unauthorized person.”
With regard to timing, the notice shall be made “in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, consistent with the legitimate needs of law enforcement.” Law enforcement may delay notification if “a law enforcement agency determines that the notification will compromise a criminal investigation.”

Finally, where, as here, a breach requires notification to more than 10,000 residents, the data collector must also inform “all consumer reporting agencies.” Per the complaint, the secretary of state’s office did not provide notice to affected voters or consumer reporting agencies in the approximately one-month since the release, which could constitute a lack of notice.

On the other hand, perhaps the state can argue that the length of time that has passed since the potential breach without notification was not an “unreasonable delay” in light of the facts surrounding the release.

As for the type of notice required, the act typically requires written, telephonic, or, with prior permission, electronic notice. However, where the cost of the notice, as here, would exceed $50,000 or the breach affected more than 100,000 individuals, “substitute notice” may be appropriate. This can include notice by email (when known), conspicuous notice on the entity’s website, and notification via statewide media.
Thus, in this case, the statute could likely be satisfied with a press release and conspicuous notification on the Secretary of State web page—an embarrassment, perhaps, but not a huge logistical hurdle.

Do Plaintiffs Have a Case?
Despite the possibility that the secretary of state’s office may have violated GPIPA, plaintiffs’ remedy, if any, is unclear. Notably, plaintiffs have not sued for damages—likely because GPIPA does not expressly allow damages, and, regardless, seeking damages would likely trigger a sovereign immunity fight. Rather, the suit seeks equitable relief requiring the secretary of state to comply with GPIPA’s notification requirements and “prevent future harm due to the disclosure,” and attorneys’ fees.

While it is difficult to imagine that GPIPA was enacted without any enforcement mechanism or remedy—unlike many other states’ data privacy laws—GPIPA does not expressly create an independent civil cause of action, contain any statutory remedies or provide for an award of attorneys’ fees.

Moreover, while the only two published cases that have examined the act have not foreclosed a private right of action, neither has expressly found one, either. In the first, Willingham v. Global Payments, the Northern District of Georgia held the act inapplicable because the plaintiffs in that case were not residents of Georgia.
More recently, in an opinion arising out of the In re Target data breach litigation, the court allowed plaintiffs’ GPIPA claim to survive a motion to dismiss because “Georgia’s data-breach-notice statute is silent as to enforcement” and “neither party cites any case regarding how a court should interpret silence as to enforcement under Georgia law.”

The plaintiffs’ chance of success is unclear based on the paucity of case law examining GPIPA—and the fact that no court has affirmatively found a private cause of action.

Lessons for Government and Industry
Although the merits of plaintiffs’ suit are an open question—both because the secretary of state may have a viable defense and because GPIPA may be relatively toothless—it still carries important lessons for businesses and others collecting and processing personal information.

First, the Secretary of State Office’s “clerical error” illustrates the risk of collecting more data than needed. If only the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers were necessary, then the retention of complete Social Security and driver’s license numbers appears to have been an unnecessary risk that, in this case, led to a substantial data leak and litigation.

Second, those collecting and processing personal information should know—and comply with—data breach notification laws. For larger companies, this likely means compliance with various states’ disclosure laws—many of which have much clearer penalties and enforcement mechanisms than GPIPA.

Finally—and perhaps most fundamentally—data collectors and custodians should have a robust information management program in place that is commensurate with the volume and sensitivity of the data at issue. Simply put, a data management system with sufficient checks and safeguards should prevent a “clerical error” from potentially putting millions at risk.

Andrew Phillips is senior counsel in McGuireWoods’ Atlanta office, where he is editor of the firm’s “Password Protected” blog, in which a version of this article first appeared. His practice focuses on representing and counseling clients in a variety of class action and high stakes civil litigation.

Read more: http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202743008663/Analyzing-the-Suit-Over-Georgia-Voters-Personal-Data-Leak#ixzz3sCITf37b

Housing Wire’s Lynn Effinger: The Same Culprits are Re-inflating the Housing Bubble

by nootkabear, posted in Housing Bubble, Housingwire, Lynn Effinger

The same culprits are re-inflating the housing bubble

Here we go again…

October 26, 2015
http://www.housingwire.com/blogs/1-rewired/post/35458-the-same-culprits-are-re-inflating-the-housing-bubble
Lynn Effinger
Lest anyone mistakenly believe that I am a lone voice questioning why the ruling/governing class in America seem to have already forgotten what led to the financial and housing crisis that sparked this nation’s longest recession, Stephen Moore, the Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Project for Economic Growth at the Heritage Foundation, and former writer for the Wall Street Journal, penned a recent article for FoxNews.com, titled, “Why is Washington re-inflating the financial bubble.”

And I quote, “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. That might well be the new theme for the U.S. economy. Washington – the White House, Congress, housing agencies, and the Fed – have learned nothing from the housing bubble of 2007-08.”

Moore adroitly explains (as I have many times on HousingWire), that although there is blame enough to spread across Wall Street, and to many involved in the mortgage and real estate industries, as well as to consumers themselves, the true enabler was our government.

Through easy money, housing policies that pushed people into low down payment loans that many could not or would not ever repay, and a tsunami of debt, the stage was set.

Evidence abounds that the bubble is now being re-inflated by these very same culprits:

  • Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are once again offering 3% down payment loans, albeit with purported underwriting “safeguards.”
  • Janet Yellen has yet to pull the plug on zero-interest rate loans that have only benefitted Wall Street and their congressional “partners,” which means that interest rates will no doubt begin to rise in 2016.
  • Government debt has climbed from just under $10 trillion in 2008 to more than $18 trillion.
  • Federal Housing Administration loans have become the “new sub-prime” loans according to many high-profile members of our industry.
  • There remains significant concern that the recasting HELOC loans will drive delinquencies upward.

If those aren’t troubling signs enough, other reports, including one from RealtyTrac, recently indicated that bank repossessions have spiked 66% year-over-year in Q3 of this year.

This is the greatest annual rise ever recorded by RealtyTrac. The foreclosure sales and real estate analytics company stated that more than 123,000 single-family homes went back to the lenders in just three months.

While it is true that in states such as Florida, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, a virtual flood of deferred foreclosures from the previous housing crisis are finally cascading over legal and legislative dams in these judicial foreclosure states, other states, such as Nevada, are seeing dramatic increases in mortgage delinquencies.

And, a dramatic rise in foreclosure activity will impact values in certain markets. A very large percentage of the homes being foreclosed upon have deferred maintenance, which means they will be sold at discounted prices. The added inventory of homes will in itself drive down or slow rising home prices, but the discounted sales will have an even greater negative impact.

Additionally, in an article in HousingWire authored by Brena Swanson on Oct. 19, “MBA predicts mortgage lending will shrink next year,” there is both negative and positive news for those involved in real estate.

According to Swanson, the Mortgage Bankers Association said at a press conference at its annual meeting being held in San Diego that it expects a decrease in refinance mortgage originations. But, it is also predicting an increase in purchase mortgage originations.

Swanson reported that Michael Fratantoni, chief economist and senior vice president of research and industry technology with the MBA, attributed the predicted increase in purchase mortgage originations to a mixture of factors, including growing demand in households for owning a home rather than renting, and mortgage finance options.

To put an exclamation point on Moore’s observations, consider that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are much more bullish on loan originations for 2016. Why wouldn’t they be, since they are promoting 3% down payment loans? This will no doubt increase loan originations, but just as surely, it will increase delinquency risks.

As a result of all this, there is a looming downward spiral predicted here. That said, savvy real estate professionals, investors and potential home buyers recognize potential opportunity when they see it.
Lynn Effinger
Lynn-effinger
Lynn Effinger is president of Effinger Consulting and senior vice president of Institutional Services at RIO Software Solutions, Inc. He is a veteran of more than three decades in the housing and mortgage servicing industries and is also the author of the inspiring memoir, “Believe to Achieve – The Power of Perseverance.”

Fire At Missouri Nuclear Site!!! Heads Up! Yall Be Safe!!!

by nootkabear, posted in Alert, americium, big brother, Censorship, cesium, cobalt 60, contamination, corruption, Danger, death

CBS: Fire erupts at another U.S. nuclear site near major city — Witness: Flames within feet of radioactive waste — TV: “You can see the smoke for miles… A big-time scare” — EPA emergency response specialists deployed (PHOTO & VIDEOS)

Published: October 28th, 2015 at 11:19 pm ET
By
Email Article

http://enenews.com/fire-another-nuclear-site-major-city-witness-flames-feet-radioactive-waste-tv-smoke-could-be-miles-epa-emergency-response-specialists-deployed-photo-videos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29

KTVI, Oct 24, 2015 (emphasis added): Brush fire at West Lake Landfill sparks concern —Smoke could be seen for miles as fire crews responded to a brush fire at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton Saturday… The fire was started by a faulty switch… inside the landfill’s perimeter. The switch overheated, causing hot metal to drop below and ignite a fire… Arearesidents and elected officials gathered near the scene of the fire Saturday to see if it would move into a restricted area where an underground fire is burning. Residents were concerned that the fire would reach area whereradioactive waste is buried…

KTVI Transcript, Oct 24, 2015: You can see the smoke for miles… A big-time scare for residents out there tonight… Dawn Chapman, resident: “This fire came within feet of it,within feet of radioactive waste“…

CBS News, Oct 27, 2015: No one knows for sure what will happen if the fire comes into contact with it… some low-level radiation has moved into neighborhoods… But it’s not just the underground fire that is a concern – this weekend a grass fire erupted within some 75 yards of the radioactive waste. This region also sits near an earthquake fault line.

AP, Oct 26, 2015: On Saturday, a fire blamed on a faulty utility pole ignited brush on the West Lake Landfill’s grounds… [EPA official Mark] Hague said testing showed no immediateevidence residents were in peril.

St Louis Public Radio, Oct 27, 2015: Stoking many fears was [a] brush fire at the Bridgeton Landfill… which was first called in to the fire department by a resident. Some took that as asign that the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, does not have an adequate handle on the site… [EPA] sent a letter reprimanding Republic Services for the incident.

St. Louis American, Oct 25, 2015: Saturday’s fire supposedly resulted from a malfunctioning electrical switch… EPA emergency response specialists were deployed to the site of the fire, according to the EPA’s statement. “Personnel will be in the field today taking samples from the surrounding area to confirm there is not a release of contaminants,” it stated… “Pattonville Fire District conducted air monitoring during the event.” The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR)… reviewed data from its monitors located near the landfills, “and the readings stayed consistent with background,” according to the EPA.

CBS St Louis, Oct 25, 2015: Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster [said] “the fire at the Bridgeton Landfill is ever changing”… Koster says Saturday’s fire is a reminder flames can surface in unexpected places without warning.

See report from earlier this month here:  AP: Catastrophic event could release radioactive fallout over major U.S. metropolitan area — Gov’t issues emergency plan as fire burns near nuclear site — Senator: “What we have… could end up as Chernobyl” (VIDEO)

See last week’s reports from Las Vegas-area here: EPA data shows radiation spike in major US city soon after explosions at nuclear waste facility — AP: Drums of buried waste were blasted over site’s fence; Large crater reported (VIDEO)

Watch broadcasts: CBS News | KTVI

Threat Journal Email of the Week of Sept 19, 2015

by nootkabear, posted in al Qaeda, Alert, AlertsUSA, email, N Korea, nuclear strike threat
Threat Journal Logo Banner - ALLOW IMAGES
Sept 19, 2015
Threat Journal is a weekly supplement to the AlertsUSA National Threat
and Incident Notification Service for Mobile Devices
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WEEKLY THREAT ROUNDUP
Now Published Each Saturday Afternoon
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Al Qaeda Head Encourages Attacks,
Iran’s Khamenei Warns America,
N. Korea Threatens Nuclear Strike
Sept 19, 2015
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Between Sept 13-15, AlertsUSA issued the following
related Flash SMS message to subscriber mobile devices:

9/13 (SUN) – Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri urges lone wolf attacks in the West, Germany reinstitutes strict border controls due to migrant crisis. 500+ p/h arriving in Austria.

9/13 (SUN)- Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issues direct threat, saying should any war break out, America will emerge humiliated.https://youtu.be/QjmDV8kagV8

9/15 (TUE)- Overnight: N Korea makes new nuclear threat to US as country restarts uranium enrichment efforts and prepares to loft satellites (viewed as ICBM test).
What You Need To Know

On multiple occasions this week AlertsUSA subscribers were notified via text messages to their mobile devices regarding new threats made to the country by a terrorist organization and two foreign nations.

On Sunday, AlertsUSA subscribers were some of the first in the nation to learn of new calls for lone wolf attacks in the West by al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri In an audio recording posted online on Sunday, Zawahiri stated the following:

“I call on all Muslims who can harm the countries of the crusader coalition not to hesitate. We must now focus on moving the war to the heart of the homes and cities of the crusader West and specifically America.”

Zawahiri suggest that Muslim youth in the West take the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings, and the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, as examples to follow. Zawahiri also reiterated his position on the Islamic State, indicating he viewed the group’s claim to be a caliphate as illegitimate, but would join them in fighting Western and secular forces in Iraq and Syria.

IRAN THREATENS ON EVE OF SANCTIONS BEING LIFTED

Also on Sunday, AlertsUSA subscribers were notified of a new propaganda video message issued by the government of Iran within which the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warns that if the US should start a war with Iran, America will be “humiliated.” Khamenei made the threats in a nearly 2-minute video posted to his Twitter account.

Iran Threat Video - ALLOW IMAGES

Khamenei’s video was released just days before Senate Democrats blocked legislation meant to kill the Iran nuclear deal until the release of US prisoners. Just last week Khamenei tweeted an image of someone stepping on an Israeli flag, along with the comment that the Jewish state won’t exist in 25 years.

We caution’s readers that there is severe danger associated with this nuclear deal and the Obama Administration knows it. When you peel back the layers of lies, political BS and circletalk, the facts are these:

Israeli Attack Almost Assured

The deal does little to slow Iran’s weapons program (the Obama Administration knows this) and thus, there is a high probability of Israel proactively targeting key facilities in order to assure the country does not develop deployable nuclear weapons. And lest we forget, Israel has previously shown a willingness to do so, having attacked such facilities in Iraq in 1981 and more recently, in Syria in 2007.

The difficulty this time around is that such an attack would lead to a much wider conflict, including likely retaliation against other Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia, particularly as they have offered use of their airspace in any attack, andBahrain (HQ of the U.S. 5th fleet). Further, Iran has previously threatened on multiple occasions that if they come under attack, U.S. citizens and interests throughout the region, and globally, would be targeted. Iran has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. (Israel has more capable ballistic missiles, but fewer in number and type.).

Don’t Forget Iran’s Motivation

Finally, we would like to point out a fact that never enters into the mainstream media or Obama Administration discourse on this topic, and that is Iran’s motivation. As their formal name states, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a Muslim nation, and like all Muslims, despite the different sects, they are unified on several key issues:

ONE is the destruction of the Jewish state, the killing of Jews, as well as the elimination or subjection of all unbelievers. These are deeply held religious beliefs based on source documents of early Islam, including the Quran and the Hadith (Read the passages yourself with the free reports below).

TWO, is the desire to hasten the arrival of the Mahdi, the Muslim savior, or what ALL Muslims refer to as “The Awaited One”. To think that statesman-like summits in posh Swiss hotels will sway them from their beliefs is about as likely as getting true Christians to accept abortion and the gay agenda. It ain’t gonna happen. And herein lies the danger. Iranian hatred of Israel is not rooted in diplomatic, territorial or trade disputes. It is a hatred based on core religious beliefs.

Along the same lines, these core religious beliefs are what pose such a grave danger to Europe and the U.S. from the mass migration of Muslims into what are traditionally Judeo-Christian nations. See the video below.

Al-Aqsa Mosque Address:
Europe Wants the Muslim Refugees as Labor;
We Shall Conquer Their Countries

Al-Aqsa Mosque Address - ALLOW IMAGES

N. KOREA THREATENS NUCLEAR ATTACK

This week AlertsUSA subscribers were also notified of new nuclear threats by N. Korea as they also announce the restart of nuclear fuel production. According to N. Korea’s Atomic Energy Institute, the country was ready tocounter any U.S. hostility with “nuclear weapons any time,” and said scientists had “made innovations day by day” to “guarantee the reliability of the nuclear deterrent as required by the prevailing situation.”

With the approach of the 70th anniversary of the founding of N. Korea’s ruling party (Oct 10), concern is growing that plans are in the works for either an ICBM launch or another nuclear test. Both the U.S. and China have threatened a firm response to either move, both of which are viewed as highly provocative.

AlertsUSA continues to monitor the overall domestic and international threat environment and will immediately notify service subscribers via SMS messages of new alerts, warnings and advisories or any developments which signal a change the overall threat picture for American citizens as events warrant.

AlertsUSA.com

ALERTS ISSUED THIS WEEK BUT
NOT DETAILED IN THIS NEWSLETTER ISSUE

9/16 (A) – 7.9 Mag EQ near coast of central Chile. AlertsUSA monitoring for U.S. tsunami watches /warnings. Add’l alerts only if warranted.

9/16 (B) – Tsunami watch in effect for Hawaii. Event magnitude adjusted from 7.9 to 8.3. No alerts or warning messages issued for the continental U.S. Monitoring…

9/16 (C) – Tsunami ADVISORY issued for portions of the California coastline. CA coastal residents should be tuned to local media. AlertsUSA continues to monitor…
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====> CLICK TO WATCH VIDEO <====

ARM YOURSELF WITH KNOWLEDGE
USING THESE FREE REFERENCES

In order to help ground readers in the truth on Islam and enable you to crush liberal “Religion of Peace” arguments, AlertsUSA has compiled two free reports filled with passages from Islamic holy books covering some of the most controversial (and often denied) aspects of Islamic teachings, traditions and dogma. Now you can see them for yourself !

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DEADLY VERSES
164 Passages about Jihad from the Koran

SEX, WOMEN AND ISLAM
80 Passages on Rape, Pedophilia, Misogyny, Female Inferiority,
Wife Beating and Related Doctrines from Islamic Holy Texts
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World News Roundup
Sept 19, 2015

Other Developments We Are Following

AMERICAS

Senators: ISIS fighters posing as migrants could slip into US
Fewer recruits citing 9/11 as reason for joining U.S. military
Go ‘nuclear’ to stop Obama’s Iran deal, urge 57 House Republicans in letter
A List Of The Last 115 Detainees Who Are Still At Guantánamo
Bowe Bergdahl’s Commanders Detail Their Frantic, Dangerous Search
US, Cuba to resume regular mail, flights

EUROPE

Merkel’s spokesman: ‘Closing borders to migrants not sustainable’
Countries in southeast Europe try to block refugees from entering
In EU, asylum applicants jump to 213,000 in three months
Croatia says it can take no more migrants
Bulgaria deploying up to 1,000 troops at Turkish border
Finnish PM says refugee inflow through Sweden is growing
Norway says may impose border controls if asylum inflows surge

MIDDLE EAST

Russia fighter jets now seen at Syrian airfield: U.S. officials
Russia Moves Its First Tactical Fighter Jets to Base in Syria
Why Putin Is Backing Assad in Syria
One million Yemeni fighters prepare to invade Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia warns against Haj unrest
John Kerry names lead US coordinator to implement Iran nuclear agreement

ASIA

Japan’s parliament approves controversial security bill
China ‘extremely concerned’ by proposed U.S. challenge to claims
Can American Compete With China’s Great Military Leap Forward?
Obama Blocks Navy from Sailing Near Disputed Chinese Islands
North Korea confirms new and improved nuclear weapons in the works

Travel Security Update

The U.S. Dept. of State is the authoritative federal source for information on the security situation at travel destinations worldwide. With tensions rapidly increasing in most regions, readers planning on international travel, even to such common destinations as Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean Islands, are strongly encouraged to do a little research on the security situation prior to departure.

Latest USGOV Travel Alerts and Warnings

Venezuela 09/18/2015
Sierra Leone 09/17/2015
Libya 09/16/2015
Iraq 08/14/2015
Chad 08/11/2015
07/29/2015

Additional Sources of Travel Guidance
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The United Nations Is positioning for the takeover of the United States (Dave Hodges The Common Sense Show)

by nootkabear, posted in analysis, epiphany, Military, Russians, takeover, United Nations, United States


(The United Nations Is positioning for the takeover of the United States.)
UN Military Forces Invasion of the United States Is Imminent
Sunday, August 30, 2015 6:37
(Before It’s News)
http://beforeitsnews.com/war-and-conflict/2015/08/un-military-forces-invasion-of-the-united-states-is-imminent-2458140.html

Dave Hodges The Common Sense Show
Freeing America, One Enslaved Mind at a Time

Yesterday, and despite being a speed reader, I spent almost three hours reviewing a mountain of material that I have been sent by people from around the country. About half way through my review, I had an epiphany. I began to see the interconnections between events unlike I have ever seen before.

Previously, some of the material stood out as stand alone information. However, as I moved from one item to another, I began to connect the dots like I have never done before. Please allow me to provide for you the dot connections followed by a comprehensive analysis of what is coming in a more precise manner than I have previously reported.


DOT CONNECTION #1: Secretary of State, John Kerry, Signs the UN Small Arms Treaty In Violation of the US Constitution
Secretary of State, John Kerry, signing away America’s freedom, security and longevity by putting his name on the UN Smalls Arms Treaty in violation of the Constitution which states that any treaty must be approved by the Senate on a two-thirds vote.
Secretary of State, John Kerry, signing away America’s freedom, security and longevity by putting his name on the UN Smalls Arms Treaty in violation of the Constitution which states that any treaty must be approved by the Senate on a two-thirds vote.

The above photo of Kerry signing the UN Small Arms Treaty reminds me of Neville Chamberlain’s infamous quote about having “peace in our time” after he signed the Munich Accords with Hitler just prior to World War II. Inside of these “accords” contained the seeds for World War II. Inside this UN treaty lies the destruction of American culture and society as we have known it.


(Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words.)

Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words as this will be the net effect of the UN Smalls Treaty.

Secretary of State, John Kerry, and President Obama are “yucking it up” after setting up Americans up to be totally defenseless in the face of tyranny by obliterating the Second Amendment.
Secretary of State, John Kerry, and President Obama are “yucking it up” after setting up Americans up to be totally defenseless in the face of tyranny by obliterating the Second Amendment and a citizenry’s right to self-defense.

The clear intent of President Obama’s administration to disarm the American people should be very concerning to all Americans who know and appreciate their knowledge of world history. According to the University of Hawaii’s Democide Project, there were 19 genocides in the 20th Century. Everyone of them was preceded by gun confiscation. President Obama is a Harvard man and, as such, should we not assume that the President has some working knowledge about this aspect of history.

DOT CONNECTION #2: Humvee Vehicles Needed to Fix Walmart Plumbing Issues
UN Vehicles Being Transported to Texas
The following video shows Humvee vehicles in a Texas Walmart. Additionally, UN vehicles have been photographed as they are being shipped into Texas. Texans, prepare to defend yourselves!

The following video presents the aforementioned information beginning 5 minutes into the presentation.

This action commenced in April of 2015 and continues through today. In fact, The Common Sense Show has been reporting on the sightings of UN military vehicles in this country, in significant numbers, for longer than a year.

DOT CONNECTION #3: The American Military Is Being Systematically Being Disarmed
Not only does the Obama administration plan to disarm the people of America, they are systematically disarming the military as well while, at the same time, beefing up the foreign troop presence on United States soil.

As UN vehicles continue to deploy into the United States, we are witnessing the systematic disarming of the American Military. DAHBOO 777 first published the following account of the American military disarming itself by putting what everyone thought was excess military equipment into mothballs at underground munitions storage areas such as the one featured below at the Red River facility. The reason that it is quite clear that this is a disarming is that if a rapid deployment of this equipment were ever needed in time of war, the grid lock that would result at a facility like this or any other storage facility constructed in this manner, would prevent the timely and proper deployment of men and equipment.

DOT CONNECTION #4: We Now Have the Lens of Historical Perspective
DAHBOO 777 first published the above featured video on March 2, 2015. At the time, I wasn’t initially that suspicious of this activity. We were reducing our military operating size in the Middle East and subsequently, at the time, this seemed like an outgrowth of this activity. Please keep in mind this video was published almost a full month before the public revelation of Jade Helm 15.

The first time that most had heard of Jade Helm is when the following photos were released from a March 27, 2015 Ft. Lauderdale Special Operations Forces dissident extraction drill in which the following photos were captured by concerned local citizens.


(Ft. Lauderdale dissident extraction drill executed on March 27, 2015.)

Ft. Lauderdale dissident extraction drill executed on March 27, 2015.

Also on March 27, we witnessed waiting white vans designed to transport these (actors) political dissidents to their new residences at the nearby FEMA camps. These van have also been seen traveling through select neighborhoods through out the country. This political extraction drilll, held in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. exposed to two lies: (1) Jade Helm was not supposed to start until July 15 and (2) Jade Helm was only in 7 states. Florida was not on the original Jade Helm maps and documents.
Also on March 27, we witnessed waiting white vans designed to transport these (actors) political dissidents to their new residences at the nearby FEMA camps. These van have also been seen traveling through select neighborhoods through out the country. This political extraction drilll, held in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. exposed to two lies: (1) Jade Helm was not supposed to start until July 15 and (2) Jade Helm was only in 7 states. Florida was not on the original Jade Helm maps and documents.

The the country was quickly introduced to Jade Helm maps and the infamous and mysterious logo.

Jade Helm 15 Color Coded Legend Red Denotes a “hostile state” Brown is uncertain, leaning towards hostile. Dark Blue is “Permissive” meaning supportive of the government. Light Blue is “Uncertain, leaning friendly”. .


If this won’t wake up the nation, then nothing will.

There is a reason why Obama is downsizing the military at a time when we are facing the strong possibility of going to war with China and Russia. This action by Obama is highly suspicious. Further, the military movement of equipment in this country is unprecedented and has been covered, in detail, on this site for the past six months.

The strategy seems clear: Reduce the size of the military, disarm much of the military as we see with Red River and as you will take note of in the next section, there is a growing foreign troop presence that is very well documented. Further, these events have caused me to view Jade Helm in, yet, another light. What Jade Helm also accomplishes besides dissident extraction and the implementation of martial law, is the mobilization and control of most of our domestically based military under one central authority, Jade Helm. If I wanted to neutralize the American military prior to a take over, this is exactly what I would do.

DOT CONNECTION#5:
THE CONTINUING AND INCREASING FOREIGN TROOP PRESENCE IN AMERICA
On August 29, 2015, I received a very disturbing email from a reader.

Dave,

My son-in-law is a wild land firefighter based in Chelan, WA. As I’m sure you are aware the fires in Washington are some of the worst in the nation right now. I spoke with him last night after he came off of a 20 day shift. He has been battling the Wolverine fire which lies in a very remote part of the county only accessible by Boat or Helicopter. This is the same remote area that the U.S. Army Airborne division has been using to practice helicopter mountain training.(https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2015/jul/06/army-considers-helicopter-training-in-ncw/) While battling the fire and establishing fie lines around Holden Village, he and his crew came upon two Blackhawk helicopters on the ground in a remote part of the forest. He said that soldiers drew their weapons on his US Forest service fire crew and told them they couldn’t be in the area because it was a restricted Military zone. He said all of the soldiers were in US Army uniforms, but two of them appeared to be Russian (wearing US Army uniforms) and in his opinion the Russian soldiers seemed to be in charge. My son-in-law challenged the soldiers stating they were there to save structures threatened by the fire and they would continue to do their job, at which point all the rifles in the company pointed at him. At this point he said he actually felt threatened for his life and he and his crew retreated going around the helicopter crew. This led to a discussion as to whether or not the US Army had been involved in possibly starting the fires which now burn approximately 135,000 acres.

Please withhold my name for obvious reasons.
This is not the only time we have seen, or heard of Russian troops in places where they should not be. As far back as 2011, Sherrie Wilcox sent to me a video of Russian soldiers training inside of DHS vehicles.

To one more of hundreds of documented incidents of this type, here are pictures of Russian commandos at Ft. Carson.

This picture and depicts Russian soldiers at Ft. Carson. The Russians and other foreign troops (e.g. Germans, Canadians, Danes) are part of Jade Helm. They are here to carry out the mission should American troops stand down.
This picture and depicts Russian soldiers at Ft. Carson. The Russians and other foreign troops (e.g. Germans, Canadians, Danes) are part of Jade Helm. They are here to carry out the mission should American troops stand down.


They are not coming, they are here.

They are not coming, they are here.


The Russians have even been depicted the Mural at Denver International Airport near baggage.


Don’t forget about Obama’s 2010 great giveaway of oil-rich Alaskan Islands which could be used as a prelude to invasion.


Soon this will be a familiar sight in our communities only their helmets will be blue.

Please allow me to remind the readers that Steve Quayle, Doug Hagmann and myself have been on the front line warning about these events over the past several years. And through Agenda 21, America will soon lose control over 90% of its land as depicted below in a biodiversity map. Agenda 21 is synonymous with the United Nations.

Put this map into your GPS, it will tell where you soon cannot go. The UN’s manifestation of forcing people into stack and pack cities.

The Impetus for the Take Over of the United States
All of these connected dots will coalesce along the lines of a catastrophe which would legitimize the use of UN aid in the form of blue-helmeted troops and their military equipment which is already being stored on US soil.

Most people would point to a false flag which would be needed to set the take over into motion. However, I do not think that a false flag will be needed. All the globalists have to do is let nature


Who are the massive amounts of DHS acquired bullets for?

take its course and let the economy collapse and the ensuing chaos would provide the backdrop to justify the placement of UN troops on the street. And these UN troops would be a buffer against a military that may not cooperate with the give away of the country by the current President.

The new enemies of the state.

DHS tipped its hand about the direction this was going several years ago when they acquired 2700 armored vehicles and over two billion rounds of ammunition. And let’s not forget that DHS has not only acquired ammunition and armored vehicles, they have been practicing. And who have they been practicing for? You are not going to like the answer to this question as depicted in the above target shooting poster created by DHS.

Bookkeeper sentenced for failing to report $24M mortgage fraud

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people

justiceleague00's avatarJustice League

Yet, no jail time for the banksters….

A bookkeeper who failed to report mortgage fraud was sentenced to two years’ probation, with six months to be served on home confinement, for his conviction for concealing massive financial institution fraud.

Ignacio Huergo was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $736,254.25 to M&T Bank.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Trini Ross, who is handling the case, stated that Huergo worked for the companies of Frank Garcia, Federal Guaranty Mortgage CompanyandGuaranty Realty and Investment as a bookkeeper and tax preparer between 2006 and 2008.

Read on.

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From: The American Lawyer: How Big Law is Failing Legal Aid, By Susan Beck

by nootkabear, posted in Big Law, Lawyers, Legal Aid, Susan Beck, The American Lawyer

The Justice Gap: How Big Law Is Failing Legal Aid
Susan Beck, The American Lawyer
June 29, 2015


(Cleveland legal aid lawyer Maria Smith says her group must turn away more than half of those seeking help. Photo: Michael Mcelroy for The American Lawyer
Read more: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202730102717/The-Justice-Gap-How-Big-Law-Is-Failing-Legal-Aid#ixzz3jtvBp1Kn)

Cleveland legal aid lawyer Maria Smith says her group must turn away more than half of those seeking help.
Cleveland legal aid lawyer Maria Smith says her group must turn away more than half of those seeking help.
Photo: Michael Mcelroy for The American Lawyer
On a morning in late April, a young woman appears in Cleveland housing court without a lawyer. Her mother faces eviction, she tells the judge, but she can’t come to court herself because she’s in the hospital. The judge asks the daughter if she has any documents proving this. She doesn’t. The judge enters a default judgment for the landlord and orders the mother to move out in 11 days.
Magistrate Judge Myra Torain Embry will call more than 30 eviction cases this morning. With one exception, none of the tenants present have a lawyer. Most likely, they can’t afford one. For more than half the cases, the tenant doesn’t even show, and Embry enters a default judgment for the landlord. Most tenants are given seven days to find new homes.
During a break in the proceedings, Embry says this is a typical day in housing court. “It’s rare to have a tenant with a lawyer,” says Embry, a former legal aid lawyer who has been a housing court judge for 14 years. Even if a tenant hasn’t paid her rent, she can benefit from having a lawyer, she explains. Cases usually settle if a tenant has counsel, and a settlement often gives the tenant more time to move. A settlement also won’t leave an eviction judgment on the tenant’s record, which can harm her credit, and prevent her from qualifying for public housing. In the case of this young woman, a lawyer would likely have known to bring the necessary paperwork, and a default judgment might have been avoided.
Maria Smith, a supervising attorney of the housing unit at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, says they just don’t have the resources to represent most people facing eviction, or other crucial legal problems. The nonprofit is still depleted from cuts made during the recession, down to 40 lawyers from 55. Last year it had to turn away 57 percent of the more than 17,000 legal matters of all kinds that people brought to them.
Smith, 57, has worked as a legal aid lawyer in Cleveland for more than 15 years, previously spending time in Central and South America as a missionary. The stakes in these eviction cases can be scary, she says, especially for children. Smith recalls one judge telling her that her clients were facing “just an eviction,” not a death sentence. “But for some people this can be a spiral down from which they never recover,” she says.
Smith carries a caseload of roughly 30 active cases, and makes less than half the pay of many first-year associates at big firms. (Supervising lawyers at her organization earn between about $61,000 and $92,000.) “I have no complaints about the salary,” says Smith. “But the work is suffocating. I could work 24/7 and still not do everything I need to do.”
A juxtaposition
Scenes like the one in Cleveland’s housing court play out every day in every major city in America, in housing courts, family courts and other settings where critical life issues of the poor are decided.
In contrast to the constitutional right to counsel in criminal cases, an individual doesn’t have a federal right to a lawyer in a civil matter, no matter how serious. A few jurisdictions, however, have passed laws requiring lawyers for individuals in certain serious civil matters, such as the loss of parental rights.
A network of legal service providers who represent the poor for free has arisen to address some of this need, but a lack of adequate public funds and private donations means that, as in Cleveland, more than half of those who seek help are turned away. Put another way, there’s just one legal aid lawyer for every 8,893 low-income Americans who qualify for legal aid, according to the Justice Index, a project of the National Center for Access to Justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. That’s how, in a country with one of the highest concentrations of lawyers in the world, poor people often are forced to navigate the potential loss of their home, their children or their benefits on their own.
The crisis in legal aid isn’t new. What is new is that since the recession, profits and revenue at Am Law 200 firms are healthy again—in many cases, surging. Last year, the collective revenue of these firms passed the $100 billion mark for the first time. Many recorded all-time highs in revenues and profits, and profits per partner at a dozen firms exceeded $3 million. Yet in our analysis—the first time we’ve looked deeply at firms’ legal aid giving—it appears that the most generous firms contribute little more than one-tenth of 1 percent of their gross revenue to groups that provide basic legal services for the poor, and many fall far below that amount. This doesn’t include individual donations by firm lawyers, which isn’t feasible to track. While individual donations are important, institutional giving by law firms is crucial for legal aid groups, those organizations say.
We found that the bulk of firms’ charitable donations are directed to other causes, including clients’ pet charities and well-endowed law schools, records show. At the same time, the percentage of law firm pro bono work aimed at helping the poor is declining. Legal aid advocates, however, are largely reluctant to publicly criticize big firms, because they’re so dependent on the funds they do get from them.
Lawyers and firms, especially America’s biggest and most successful ones, have a special responsibility to do more, some observers say. “A big- firm lawyer ought to care that the justice system is working fairly for everyone,” says John Levi of Sidley Austin, chairman of the board of directors for the Legal Services Corporation, a federally funded nonprofit that is the single biggest source of legal aid funding in the United States. He senses that many big firms could dig deeper into their pockets to support legal aid. “I’m not sure they are,” he says.

David Stern, executive director of Equal Justice Works, a nonprofit that solicits firms to underwrite fellowships for young lawyers to work at nonprofit legal aid groups, says he appreciates the support he gets from big firms, but believes most firms should do more. “When you look at how little they give, it’s pitiful,” he says about law firm giving as a whole. “I have been doing this work for more than 20 years, and I am always astounded by law firms talking about charitable giving from a position of scarcity while their partners are bringing home more than $1 million in profits per partner.”
Beyond pro bono
Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit tells lawyers that bono work is critical to addressing the civil legal aid crisis, but will never solve the problem. Rather, he urges law firms to donate more money to legal aid.
“What we need most of all is dramatically increased lawyer and law firm funding for state and local legal aid programs,” he said in a speech at a fundraising dinner for local D.C. legal aid groups two years ago. Given the earnings of the biggest and wealthiest law firms, he said, “no one in this country should be denied access to the courts simply because he or she cannot afford a lawyer.” Tatel pointed out that if the 12 biggest firms in D.C. donated one-quarter of 1 percent of their revenues to legal aid, this would more than double the number of poor clients that legal aid groups could serve. “The District’s legal community can and must do more,” admonished Tatel, previously a partner at Hogan & Hartson who led its pro bono program.
During a recent interview, Tatel underscored that the wealthiest firms have a special responsibility to address this crisis. “Lawyers for whom this profession is extraordinarily profitable must fulfill their responsibility,” he says. When asked about the response from the law firm community after his 2013 speech, Tatel said: “I have not heard any response.”
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett partner Mark Cunha agrees that the law firm community needs to shift its focus to better help the poor. “An awful lot of discussion you hear about providing legal services revolves around pro bono,” says Cunha, who serves on the board of Legal Services NYC, the largest provider of civil legal services for the poor in the country. “There should be as much emphasis on financial contributions by lawyers or firms and government. There’s no question that legal services lawyers are more efficient in providing the kinds of services needed by low-income people.”
The need is evident in courthouses everywhere. Take Philadelphia family court, where one day in June a 35-year-old woman sits with her 7-year old son. She grips a folder with evidence she wants to show the judge, including police reports about her ex-boyfriend. She looks anxious.
“I’ve never been to court before,” she says. “I didn’t even know where it was. I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“Me, too,” her son says.
“You, too? I’m sorry, baby,” she says, holding her son. She begins to cry.
The woman is here because her ex-boyfriend has filed for a protective order against her. The woman claims that the boyfriend has been abusive to her and her son, but she was scared to take legal action for fear of retaliation.
She seems unaware that she might need a lawyer. “The cops that served me [with the documents for this case] told me I didn’t need an attorney,” she says. Did she know that free legal help might be available? “No, I didn’t know I could get free legal aid,” she says. “I was scared for my life. I’m still scared for my life.”
When her case is called, she stands before the judge along with her ex-boyfriend. Her hand shakes as she takes the oath. She agrees to let the case go to trial, but she seems confused about the implications. “What does this mean for me?” she asks as she walks out of the courtroom. She begins to cry again. “I don’t have money for a lawyer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can’t even afford my rent. The judge wouldn’t let me say anything or show my evidence. Why?”
Even if this woman tried to get a legal aid lawyer, she’d likely be out of luck. Roughly 11,000 requests for protective orders are filed each year in Philadelphia County. Susan Pearlstein, supervising attorney for the family law unit at Philadelphia Legal Assistance, says they have to turn away 95 percent of the people who request their help. “We don’t have the resources,” she says. Overall, Philadelphia Legal Assistance has only 20 lawyers, and has lost 10 staff members over the last several years. Kathleen O’Malley, managing attorney of Philadelphia-based Women Against Abuse, says her group has three lawyers who work on protective order cases, but they can barely put a dent in the demand. What does her group need most? “Money. More grants and more funding, so we can hire more attorneys.”
What law firms give
Voluntary contributions by individual lawyers and law firms of all sizes account for 7 percent of total legal aid funding: They gave $95.8 million in 2013, according to the American Bar Association, out of $1.385 billion in funding from all sources. It’s not clear how much of that $95.8 million was contributed by Am Law 200 firms. Even if the entire amount came from those firms, which it didn’t, this funding would represent less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the firms’ collective revenue of $96.3 billion that year.
The Pro Bono Institute, which is best known for encouraging pro bono work, also collects data about law firm financial contributions to legal aid groups. Each year it asks firms to answer an optional question about those contributions. The PBI’s data shows that the median law firm contribution in 2014 was $155,000 based on responses supplied by 63 firms. Only five firms gave more than $1 million. The average contribution was $356,503.


(Maria Smith and a client in Smith’s office. “I could work 24/7” and not finish the work, she says.
Read more: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202730102717/The-Justice-Gap-How-Big-Law-Is-Failing-Legal-Aid#ixzz3jtwGTfaA).

When we asked the largest and most profitable firms how much they gave last year to legal services groups helping the poor, the response was mixed. Most firm leaders didn’t want to discuss the topic on the rec­ord, let alone disclose data. Others made it clear they didn’t welcome these questions. Maria Smith and a client in Smith’s office. “I could work 24/7” and not finish the work, she says.
One of the few leaders who discussed this topic publicly was William Voge, the chairman of Latham & Watkins, the top-grossing firm in The Am Law 100. “I think Big Law should do more. Whatever we’re doing can’t be enough, given the demand for legal services out there,” he says. Last year Latham’s revenue jumped 14 percent, to $2.6 billion, and profits per partner grew 16.5 percent, to $2.9 million. Voge did not disclose Latham’s legal aid contributions, saying that it would be difficult to collect that information and would be misleading without counting individual contributions from partners, which would be even harder to determine. “You could not look at the firm’s contribution alone and have it be representative of what the firm does,” he says.
(Some firms underwrite legal aid fellowships for young lawyers. Click here for stand-out firms.)
Four firms did agree to disclose their level of giving to legal aid: Kirkland & Ellis ($2.6 million); Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison ($1.5 million); Reed Smith ($300,000); and Sidley Austin ($2.1 million). The highest level of giving as a percentage of revenue was at Paul Weiss: its $1.5 million donation represents 0.14 percent of its revenue; Kirkland and Sidley were close behind at 0.12 percent.
“Our giving to legal aid has increased dramatically in recent years,” says Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss. “While we and our peer firms can always do more, I’m proud of the work that we and others in our community do to try to make legal services available to those members of our community who desperately need them.”
Uncertain public support
Private contributions to legal aid have become increasingly important, given the precarious nature of public support. The federally funded Legal Services Corporation is the largest single source of legal aid funding, but represents less than one-fourth of total support. The balance comes from a patchwork of sources, including state and local appropriations, interest on client funds, and private fundraising from lawyers and law firms. Adjusted for inflation, LSC’s funding has shrunk 40 percent in 10 years, and it’s not clear how it will fare in the current federal budget process. President Barack Obama has asked that its funding be increased from $375 million to $452 million for the new fiscal year, which begins October 1. The House Appropriations Committee has adopted a bill that would cut LSC’s budget by $75 million, down to $300 million, while the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $385 million. At press time, it wasn’t clear how this would be resolved.
Another dire funding problem for legal services is the dwindling money from IOLTA—interest on lawyer trust accounts—which have long been a significant source of legal aid support. When lawyers hold money in trust for clients, the interest earned must by law be turned over for legal aid funding. The negligible interest rates that have persisted since the financial crisis have decimated this funding source. In 2008 IOLTA produced $240 million for legal aid; by 2013 the amount was down to $74.5 million—the lowest figure since the ABA started tracking legal aid funding in 2002.
The ABA’s Model Rules, which aren’t binding on lawyers, say that a lawyer should voluntarily give financial support to organizations that provide legal services to people of limited means. But it doesn’t suggest a level of support.
LSC president James Sandman is reluctant to suggest how much law firms should give to legal aid, but wishes they would make legal services groups a priority in their giving. The former managing partner of Arnold & Porter notes with dismay that legal aid groups are increasingly competing for charitable funds with firms’ corporate clients, who pressure firms to donate to their favored causes. “While these nonprofits are doing good and valuable work,” he says, “these expenditures are more in the nature of marketing or client relationships.”

What they gave: Click on the thumbnails for charts detailing legal aid giving by the most profitable and largest U.S. firms.

Big Law’s beloved charities
Many firms direct the bulk of their charitable contributions to a range of groups other than legal aid, according to public filings made by foundations that some firms have set up for charitable giving. Kirkland & Ellis, for example, has one of the most generous law firm foundations. According to the foundation’s most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the firm donated $8.2 million to 304 charitable groups in 2013. Of those donations, 21 percent, or $1.7 million, went to groups that provide legal services to the poor.
The firm’s largest contribution, $591,500, went to Northwestern University, where firm chairman Jeffrey Hammes earned his law degree. The Legal Aid Society of New York received the next-largest contribution ($448,117), and Kirkland’s third-largest gift went to the Bain Capital Children’s Charity ($298,200). Bain Capital is a major Kirkland client. Other recipients include Stanford University ($277,000), the Navy Seal Foundation ($50,000) and the American Football Coaches Foundation ($6,667).
The Jones Day Foundation, which distributed $3.5 million in 2013, gave $750,000 to Johns Hopkins University and $350,000 to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Legal aid groups received $270,000. The firm says it gives money to legal aid outside of its foundation, but wouldn’t say how much.
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, which has the highest profits per partner of any firm in The Am Law 200, at $5.5 million, also has a charitable foundation, which distributed $1.85 million in 2013. It gave $1.05 million to New York University, where firm co-founder Martin Lipton is chairman of the board of trustees, $200,000 to NYU Langone Medical Center and $300,000 for Prep for Prep, which helps students of color attend private schools. Wachtell’s foundation didn’t contribute to legal aid groups. Daniel Neff, co-chairman of Wachtell, says the firm makes most of its charitable contributions outside the foundation, and declined to say how much Wachtell donated to legal aid.
Wachtell, like most major New York firms, participates in a pledge program to raise money for The Legal Aid Society of New York, the city’s second-largest civil legal aid provider, according to the society’s website. Fifty-two law firm “sustaining members” promised to donate $600 for each lawyer they have in New York, and these pledges raised $8.4 million last fiscal year. An annual gala raises millions more. In all, law firms contributed $12.4 million to the group last fiscal year.
Seymour James Jr., who heads The Legal Aid Society as its attorney-in-chief, praises the legal community for its financial contributions and pro bono work. “They have been tremendously supportive,” he says. Still, the organization is woefully underfunded. “There are hundreds of people we are unable to serve every week,” he says. About 2 million New Yorkers are living in poverty, he says, and The Legal Aid Society’s roughly 280 civil lawyers aren’t enough. He estimates it would take well over 1,000 lawyers to meet needs.
One factor in this funding crisis is that The Legal Aid Society’s $600 per lawyer law firm pledge level hasn’t changed in 19 years, since it was set in 1996. Chairman Richard Davis acknowledges that the board, which consists mostly of partners from Am Law 100 firms, has been reluctant to raise this amount. “People say, ‘Why don’t you increase it?'” says Davis, a former Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner who now has a solo practice. “But we don’t want to compromise our relationship [with these firms] by increasing it to more.” Vice-chairman Blaine “Fin” Fogg of Skadden says he’s discussed raising this amount with a few board members, but hasn’t brought the issue to the whole board. “Would I be happy if the sustaining law firms gave us more? Sure,” he says. “But there has been some reluctance to ask for an increase lest some firms say, ‘Enough already.'”
Six hundred dollars represents four one-hundredths of 1 percent of the $1.3 million average revenue generated by a lawyer at 18 of the biggest New York firms. This $600 is also less than the target amount for law firm giving set by legal aid providers in Chicago ($1,000 per lawyer) and Boston ($800), and the same as the main legal service provider in Atlanta ($600), where lawyers on average make much less.
Fogg and others stress that most big New York firms contribute to many legal aid groups, not just to The Legal Aid Society, so their total legal aid support isn’t reflected by these numbers. But no one, it appears, tracks collective giving.
Outside New York, two legal communities have found that a coordinated approach has spurred giving to legal aid. The Chicago Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the Chicago Bar Association headed by Robert Glaves, said that last year at least 11 firms met the challenge of paying $1,000 per local lawyer for collective contributions to local legal services groups. More than $5 million was raised from all firms, a 43 percent increase since the program was started in 2008.
In Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Law Center professor Peter Edelman devised a novel program to track law firm giving to local legal aid groups. In 2011 the D.C. Access to Justice Commission, which Edelman chairs, started its Raising the Bar in D.C. program, which asks firms to donate amounts ranging from 0.075 percent to 0.11 percent of their local D.C. revenues to legal aid groups. (The firms report their donations to Ernst & Young.) The commission set the top percentage after finding that the two or three most generous firms gave 0.11 percent of local revenue.
Last year the Raising the Bar program raised $5 million for local legal services groups, a 66 percent increase since the program’s first year. Jessica Rosenbaum, the commission’s executive director, says that gathering the information to set those benchmarks was crucial. “Firms were in the dark about what was a generous giving level,” she says. After the information was out, she says, “it created a healthy competition among firms.”
Timothy Hester, the chairman of Covington & Burling, is a strong advocate for pro bono work, but he says he’s not convinced that law firms have a special obligation to support legal aid, especially given their status as partnerships owned by individual partners. He sees legal aid funding as a societal problem. “We’re making the decision [to contribute] on behalf of every partner,” he says. “It’s important for law firms to contribute, but I like to encourage partners individually to contribute. Not everyone will have the same view.” He notes that Covington participates at the highest level in D.C.’s Raising the Bar program, giving 0.11 percent of its local revenue, but suggests that is the limit. “You can’t expect a lot more than what we’re already doing,” he says. “You can’t expect giving to be unduly high.”
‘The crisis is so bad’
Although pro bono hours by the Am Law 200 firms have been generally robust from 2008 to 2013, it appears that a shrinking percentage of that time was spent helping the poor with basic legal needs. In 2013 only 46 percent of the hours reported by 80 firms to the Pro Bono Institute were aimed at helping the poor—the lowest percentage since the PBI started tracking this metric in 1995, when it was 71 percent. In 2014 the percentage jumped to 70 percent; PBI officials say they have been educating firms on the importance of keeping tract of that type of work.
Data gathered by The American Lawyer for its annual pro bono survey supports the PBI’s findings. When asked to list their biggest pro bono project of 2014, the majority of firms cited a project that focused on something other than helping the poor with everyday legal needs. More than 20 listed a death penalty case. (While that is valuable work, it’s not in the nature of legal aid work.) Other examples of top projects include voting rights disputes, environmental litigation, marriage equality cases, a Holocaust reparations project, and a transgender name change project.
Several firms, however, listed projects aimed at addressing the access-to-justice crisis of the poor. Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyers logged more than 2,000 hours last year helping more than 100 low-income homeowners victimized by fraudulent mortgage modification practices. Hunton & Williams runs two clinics for low-income individuals in Virginia; other firms periodically offer clinics, too.
Getting big firms to handle evictions, custody and child support issues, and consumer debt cases can be a hard sell to lawyers who would rather work on sexy headline-making cases. “It can seem too unfamiliar, even for an experienced litigator, says LSC’s Sandman. “People don’t want to embarrass themselves.” Sandman says he’s made it his mission to urge firms to devote more pro bono time to helping the poor with their basic legal needs, and accepts every opportunity he’s offered to speak at law firms about this.
Covington & Burling chairman Hester says he was inspired by Sandman’s talk at his firm to represent a tenant in housing court. It was satisfying, he says, but admits it wasn’t as stimulating as death penalty defense work, which he’s done for more than 30 years. “It doesn’t grab your intellectual attention in the same way as a thorny death penalty appeal,” he says. Still, he and others at Covington have been discussing ways to get the firm’s lawyers to do more work like this. “The question is, how do we encourage people to see this work for the poor in our local community as sufficiently engaging?”
Lisa Dewey, the pro bono partner at DLA Piper, says she’s been increasingly thinking about ways the firm can address the basic legal needs of the poor. “People shouldn’t avoid this work because it’s not sexy enough,” she says. “This is really important stuff.” The firm has helped create and run legal clinics in Baltimore and Chicago and at Veterans Administration hospitals. In March, DLA Piper and Arent Fox announced a novel collaboration with Georgetown University Law Center to open a “low bono” law firm that to serve low-income people who make too much to qualify for free legal aid, but who still can’t afford a lawyer at market rates. The D.C. Affordable Law Firm is slated to start taking clients in the fall.
DLA Piper’s Dewey says the firm is also thinking beyond traditional models of legal help. “The crisis is so bad,” says Dewey. “There’s no way everybody who needs a lawyer will get one. We’ll have to come up with new solutions, whether we’re using nonlawyers or self-help resource centers.”
Collen Cotter, executive director of the Cleveland Legal Aid Society, says some simple changes wouldn’t cost much but could make a huge difference. Court forms, for example, should be written in plain En­glish. “The terms ‘petitioner’ and ‘respondent’­—it’s not clear to most people what that means,” she says. LSC’s Sandman agrees. “We have a system that is largely built by lawyers for lawyers.” he says.
Hoping and praying
On a Saturday morning in late May, dozens of people sit quietly in a waiting room at the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Health Center on the east side of Cleveland, where the Cleveland Legal Aid Society is holding a clinic. It’s staffed mostly with young lawyers doing pro bono work from Squire Patton Boggs, in-house lawyers from the Cleveland Clinic and local law school students.
One young woman has a dispute with her former employer, who runs a beauty salon where she apprenticed. “He made me work without pay, and I didn’t get my final paycheck,” she says. Although she was working for minimum wage, she says she was forced to sign a noncompete agreement preventing her from working at other salons. “I’m very nervous right now,” she says. “I feel like he’s trying to intimidate me.”
Another woman clutches a stack of papers. “I’ve got all this paperwork, and I don’t know how to fill it out,” she says. The 38-year-old mother of two says her husband died in March and didn’t leave a will. His bank won’t release his money until she goes through probate, and the forms confuse her. She lives in a nearby county, and was sent here by her county’s legal service provider because it didn’t have the resources to help her. She shuffles the papers. “They make it very difficult for common people to go through this.”
Maria Smith of Cleveland Legal Aid says she’s discouraged that society doesn’t see more value in providing legal services for such people. But she says she tries to stay optimistic. “The young lawyers coming through [legal aid] now are just incredible,” she says. How does she keep from becoming overwhelmed? “I pray a lot,” she says. “Most frustrating is that it would not take much away [from others] to change this.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the largest civil legal aid provider in New York City. It is Legal Services NYC. An earlier version also incorrectly stated the number of lawyers on staff at Philadelphia Legal Assistance.
(For additional coverage, including our editorial on Big Law and legal aid, click here.)

Reporter Anita Abedian contributed to this article.

What’s being said

nootkabear
Aug 24, 2015
covnbaeyer and Prof. Mai Linh Spencer, Academic Director, Lawyers for Americahave made very good points. I cannot help but wonder while reading this very informative and well written article, how lawyers and lawfirms can treat pro se litigants with such contempt, when they are really doing nothing to see that Legal Aid helps those in need.When people are forced into a corner, many of them will learn as much as they can, and go into he court pro se. The way these pro se litigants are treated is dispicable. I understand all of the many arguments about why pro se litigants should not be allowed into the courtroom, but at the same time, attorney‘s fees have become totally outrageous for common people. To deny them any form of justice should be viewed as criminal. That is not what our country was founded on.Statistics have shown that the American justice system is worse than most third world country when it comes to justice for the poor. That leaves these people even more vulerable to injustice.Thanks for such a great article!

covnbaeyer
Jun 30, 2015
What percentage of the IOLTA donations are big firm? My guess is that they carry the bulk of that number. I would also be curious to know whether legal services orgs find in kind/pro bono hours or $ donations more valuable.

Prof. Mai Linh Spencer, Academic Director, Lawyers for America
Jun 29, 2015
Thank you for this well-researched article, which I hope will serve as a call to action. One simple and cost-effective method to provide significant legal services to the poor is for a firm to sponsor a Lawyers for America fellow. For less than $57,000 total, a firm can fund a 3L to extern for 8 months at a partnering legal services org, then return to that same org after graduation and bar exam to work for an entire calendar year. That‘s 20 months of work directed at closing the justice gap. For more information, see com/lawyersforamericaThe program currently operates out of UC Hastings, where I am its Academic Director. We hope to see it spread to other schools and areas, so that we can eventually close the justice gap. It would be wonderful to have private firms join our effort in this relatively modest, but very meaningful, way.

Read more: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202730102717/The-Justice-Gap-How-Big-Law-Is-Failing-Legal-Aid#ixzz3jtuWWAjF

Mike Adams, The Health Ranger: Nearly every mass shooting in the last 20 years shares one surprising thing… and it’s not guns

by nootkabear, posted in Health Ranger, mass shootings, Mike Adams, psych drugs
age

Nearly every mass shooting in the last 20 years shares one surprising thing… and it’s not guns

Sunday, June 21, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: mass shooting, guns, psych drugs
 http://www.naturalnews.com/050149_mass_shooting_guns_psych_drugs.html
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(NaturalNews) The following is a republishing of an important article written by Dan Roberts from AmmoLand.com. It reveals the real truth about mass shootings that bureaucrats and lawmakers are choosing to sweep under the rug:psychiatric drugs. If you want to know the real reason why mass shootings are taking place, this is the “inconvenient truth” the media won’t cover.

As part of a collective grassroots effort to defend the Bill of Rights against usurpers and tyrants, Natural News is republishing this article without asking for permission first. When it comes to fighting tyrants and defending liberty, the unstated agreement across the entire liberty-loving grassroots community is, “Use our articles; help spread the word!” Every article I write here on Natural News, for example, may be reprinted with credit and a link back to the original source article on NaturalNews.com.

Here’s the full article by Dan Roberts:

(Ammoland.com) Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and it’s not the weapons used.

The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.

Multiple credible scientific studies going back more than a decade, as well as internal documents from certain pharmaceutical companies that suppressed the information show that SSRI drugs ( Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors ) have well known, but unreported side effects, including but not limited to suicide and other violent behavior. One need only Google relevant key words or phrases to see for themselves.www.ssristories.org is one popular site that has documented over 4500 ” Mainstream Media ” reported cases from around the World of aberrant or violent behavior by those taking these powerful drugs.

The following list of mass shooting perpetrators and the drugs they were taking or had been taking shortly before their horrific actions was compiled and published to Facebook by John Noveske, founder and owner of Noveske Rifleworks just days before he was mysteriously killed in a single car accident. Is there a link between Noveske’s death and his “outting” of information numerous disparate parties would prefer to suppress, for a variety of reasons?

I leave that to the individual readers to decide. But there is most certainly a documented history of people who “knew too much” or were considered a “threat” dying under extraordinarily suspicious circumstances.

From Katherine Smith, a Tennessee DMV worker who was somehow involved with several 9/11 hijackers obtaining Tennessee Drivers Licenses, and was later found burned to death in her car, to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb, who exposed a CIA Operation in the 80’s that resulted in the flooding of LA Streets with crack cocaine and was later found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head, but was officially ruled as a “suicide”, to Frank Olson, a senior research micro biologist who was working on the CIA’s mind control research program MKULTRA.

After Olson expressed his desire to leave the program, he was with a CIA agent in a New York hotel room, and is alleged to have committed “suicide” by throwing himself off the tenth floor balcony. In 1994, Olson’s sons were successful in their efforts to have their fathers body exhumed and re examined in a second autopsy by James Starrs, Professor of Law and Forensic science at the National Law Center at George Washington University. Starr’s team concluded that the blunt force trauma to the head and injury to the chest had not occurred during the fall but most likely in the room before the fall. The evidence was called “rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide.” Based on his findings, in 1996 the Manhattan District Attorney opened a homicide investigation into Olson’s death, but was unable to find enough evidence to bring charges.

As I said, I leave it to the individual readers to make up their own minds if Noveske suffered a similar fate. On to the list of mass shooters and the stark link to psychotropic drugs.

• Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

• Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

• Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

• Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

• Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

• Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

• Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

• Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

• A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

• Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

• A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

• Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

• TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

• Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

• James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

• Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

• Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

• Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

• Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

• Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

• Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

• Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

• Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

• Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

• Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

• Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)

• Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)

• Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.

• Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

• Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

• Woody __, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

• A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

• Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”

• Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

• Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

• Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

• Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

• Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

Missing from list… 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds….

• What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21…… killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az?

• What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24….. killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado?

• What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or?

• What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct?

Those focusing on further firearms bans or magazine restrictions are clearly focusing on the wrong issue and asking the wrong questions, either as a deliberate attempt to hide these links, or out of complete and utter ignorance.

Don’t let them! Force our elected “representatives” and the media to cast a harsh spotlight on this issue. Don’t stop hounding them until they do.

About Dan Roberts
Dan Roberts is a grassroots supporter of gun rights that has chosen AmmoLand Shooting Sports News as the perfect outlet for his frank, ‘Jersey Attitude’ filled articles on Guns and Gun Owner Rights. As a resident of the oppressive state of New Jersey he is well placed to be able to discuss the abuses of government against our inalienable rights to keep and bear arms as he writes from deep behind NJ’s Anti-Gun iron curtain. Read more from Dan Roberts or email him at DRoberts@ammoland.com You can also find him on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/dan.roberts.18

Original article at:
http://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-s…

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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the “Health Ranger“) is the founding editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet’s No. 1 natural health news website, now reaching 7 million unique readers a month.

In late 2013, Adams launched the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, where he conducts atomic spectroscopy research into food contaminants usinghigh-end ICP-MS instrumentation. With this research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products to low levels by July 1, 2015.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource now featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed “strange fibers” found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health “gurus,” dangerous “detox” products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released ten popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

ENENews: Scientists: Mass die-offs of mammals, birds, fish… “No one’s sure what happened” — Gov’t wants Unusual Mortality Event declared — Samples “being tested for radionuclides from Fukushima”

by nootkabear, posted in Alaska, deaths, mass die offs, Mortality Event


AP: Unprecedented deaths along U.S. Pacific coast — Scientists: Mass die-offs of mammals, birds, fish… “No one’s sure what happened” — Gov’t wants Unusual Mortality Event declared — Samples “being tested for radionuclides from Fukushima” (PHOTOS & AUDIO)
Published: July 28th, 2015 at 10:23 am ET
By ENENews
http://enenews.com/ap-unprecedented-deaths-along-pacific-coast-scientists-reporting-mass-die-offs-mammals-birds-fish-govt-declared-unusual-mortality-event-being-tested-radionuclides-fukushima-one-sure-whats


AP, Jul 27, 2015 (emphasis added): Scientist says unexplained mass whale deaths off Alaska island may remain a mystery — Researchers may never solve the recent deaths of 18 endangered whales… 10 fin whales [and] eight humpback whales… scientists speculate the animals might have eaten something toxic… One test came back negative for one toxin that would be present in harmful algal blooms [Kate Wynne, a marine mammal specialist for the University of Alaska Sea Grant Program] said. “That’s my leading hypothesis,” Wynne said of an environmental toxin as a cause… “we never will find out what killed those whales, in my mind.” Other test results also are pending, however. A muscle-tissue sample is being tested for the possibility of radionuclides from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster… The deaths are an unusual occurrence, Wynne said. She said she’s never heard of anything similar occurring among large baleen whales in the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also is looking into the deaths of a slightly larger number of whales over a larger area. NOAA is requesting the deaths to be designated nationally as an unusual mortality event… NOAA spokeswoman Julie Speegle said. Along with the dead whales, dead birds including murres and shearwaters were reported… Tests showed the shearwaters had a high parasite count and were starving, Wynne said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/scientist-whale-deaths-off-alaska-island-remains-mystery-32718241

KUCB, Jul 27, 2015: Dead Fish, Wildlife In Aleutians… Scientists have been receiving reports of dead and dying mammals, birds and small fish in the Aleutian Islands. They think the killer might be toxic algae… “They’re a suspected cause for some of the mass deaths we’ve been seeing–the 10 fin whales that were spotted dead off of Kodiak Island; I know Adak has seen a lot of dead birds, King Cove, I believe (birds in) False Pass have been washing up. We don’t know the cause of that yet either,” [Melissa Good with University of Alaska Fairbanks] said… “No one that I know of is sure what happened.” This week, Good has been taking water samples around Unalaska and shipping them off to labs for full analysis… She’s also sampled the stomach and flesh of a Steller’s sea lion that washed up dead… Good said people in the Aleutians should be wary of eating clams or mussels… “We just don’t know if they’re going to be toxic or not,” she said.

Dead Fish, Wildlife In Aleutians May Be Victims Of Toxic Algae Outbreak

Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, July 2015: Pursuing Cause of Death in Gulf of Alaska Whales… Over the next six weeks more large whale mortalities were reported by mariners and pilots. Kate Wynne and Bree Witteveen began gathering NOAA Stranding Network data… a total of 10 fin whale and 8 humpback mortalities have been documented… Both whale species feed in groups on small fish and invertebrates, filtering them with their baleen… Wynne, Witteveen, and other biologists have pursued many possible human-influenced and natural causes, but as of mid-July the cause of death remains unknown… Biotoxins caused by warm water–induced harmful algal blooms are a possibility, although tissue from the sampled fin whale tested for domoic acid came back negative… Scientists have followed up on other possible causes… even radionuclides from the Fukushima reactor…. To pursue the radionuclide possibility Wynne submitted a muscle tissue sample from a dead fin whale for Cesium 137 analysis, with results pending… Wynne and Witteveen complimented the professional network of bird, fish, and mammal biologists in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bristol Bay–Bering Sea area, who have reported unusual events since the mortalities.
http://seagrant.uaf.edu/news/fishlines/2015/july.php

Georgia to Write Its History Out Through Passing a Bill? What the Hell About Our Heritage?

by nootkabear, posted in Confederate Memorial Holiday, Georgia, heritage, Nathan Deal, sux


(Confederate Memorial Day photo CHRIS HUNT)
Confederate holidays booted from state calendar
Posted: 5:29 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015
By Greg Bluestein and Shannon McCaffrey – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/confederate-holidays-booted-from-state-calendar/nnFFF/

Confederate Memorial Day has been struck from Georgia’s official 2016 state holiday calendar. So has Robert E. Lee’s birthday.

Both have quietly been replaced with the more neutral term “state holiday.”

The last Monday in April is designated Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia, which is an official state holiday and state offices … Read More
The change was reflected in emails from Gov. Nathan Deal that landed in state employees’ inboxes this week.

The 2015 state calendar clearly listed April 27 as the Confederate holiday and Nov. 27 as Lee’s birthday (he was actually born in January).

Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said the state still intends to celebrate the days even if it doesn’t “spell it out by name.”

“There will be a state holiday on that day,” he said. “Those so inclined can observe Confederate Memorial Day and remember those who died in that conflict.”

But some took a deeper meaning from the notable omission.

Tim Pilgrim, a leader of the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said he was concerned about the shift.

“We don’t want Georgia to turn its back on history,” he said. “They can’t erase and remove our history. That’s unacceptable for us.”

State Sen. Vincent Fort, who is drafting a bill that would remove Confederate Memorial Day from the list of sanctioned state holidays, said the governor’s “inartful dodge” won’t change his plans.

“With a wink and nod they are saying ‘we are removing the name but you know it’s a day that we celebrate people who supported treason and slavery,’ ” the Democrat from Atlanta said. “I’m not mollified.”

Throughout the South, the use of Confederate symbols and holidays has come under increased scrutiny since the massacre in June of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, S.C., church. Charged in the killings was a man suspected to be a white supremacist. South Carolina legislators swiftly voted to remove the Confederate battle emblem from state Capitol grounds after the shooting.

The Confederate battle emblem is already gone from Georgia’s own flag, but there has been some controversy over whether the state should continue to produce a vanity license plate that displays the symbol. In a sign of the popularity the symbol still enjoys, hundreds of Confederate battle flag supporters descended on Stone Mountain on Saturday to celebrate what they say is an important symbol of their heritage.

Deal has remained mostly silent on the controversies, and the change on Thursday was made without any announcement or fanfare.

It echoed the way the Republican governor had the statue of Tom Watson booted from the state Capitol’s grounds in 2013. Critics had long called for the removal of the bronze likeness of the one-time populist turned white supremacist who vilified blacks, Catholics and Jews. Deal said it was being removed for safety reasons because the steps near the statue were in disrepair. Watson was removed unceremoniously during a state holiday when few were around to see.

Georgia NAACP President Richard Rose called Thursday’s calendar change “grudging progress.”

“There is absolutely no reason we should be celebrating Confederate Memorial Day,” Rose said. “There is is no Confederate States of America, and there hasn’t been for 150 years.”

Email query to WHO asking about its Ebola vaccine trial which is giving people Ebola, according to a Lancet study

by nootkabear, posted in 10-15 million people

The motto of the story is. Kill all that you can, we need to depopulate as quickly as possible. They don’t have to worry, no one will hold them accountable.

Obama’s Nine Magic Words: “I actually think I’m a pretty good president. I believe if I ran again, I could win.”

by nootkabear, posted in Africa, Ethiopia, Obama, president, tour, Trump

Obama Just Made Many American Hearts Stop With 9 Unimaginable Words
Tuesday, July 28, 2015 11:03
(Before It’s News)
http://beforeitsnews.com/blogging-citizen-journalism/2015/07/obama-just-made-many-american-hearts-stop-with-9-unimaginable-words-2516804.html

Barack Obama certainly seems to delight in traveling abroad and taking potshots at his country and his political rivals — making the kind of remarks many would no doubt consider unpresidential in a foreign setting. Obama also seems to demonstrate an acute lack of awareness that, in leveling these kinds of critiques and letting loose with off-the-cuff comments while visiting other countries and mingling with other leaders, he does the very thing he claims to find objectionable in others.

While on his African tour, the president left his Ethiopian counterpart standing awkwardly and uncomfortably silent in front of the international press corps while Obama launched into a blistering critique of Republican White House hopefuls. As the Associated Press reported in an article carried on Yahoo! News, Obama took an abrupt detour from the reason for the joint appearance with Ethiopia’s leader and went hyper-political as he slammed Republicans Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

“Obama’s comments marked his most direct engagement in the race to succeed him,” according to the AP account of the president’s near-meltdown while on foreign soil. “Until now, he’s largely limited his commentary to policy differences with Republicans, often sidestepping the names of specific candidates.”

The president was particularly angry at his opponents’ attempts to derail the Iran nuclear agreement he has fought so long to negotiate and now finds himself having to defend against powerful pushback.

But the Obama overseas comment that would likely get the most attention and raise the most eyebrows among conservatives who can’t wait for the president to leave office was what he said about running again. Fox News notes that Obama went “off-script” on Tuesday as he addressed the African Union — it was a spontaneous, self-serving boast that apparently included a rather odd reference to his own wealth.

“I actually think I’m a pretty good president. I believe if I ran again, I could win.”

“But I can’t,” he added.

Obama later said, “I don’t understand why people want to stay so long, especially when they’ve got a lot of money.”

Now why, one might wonder, would President Obama find it useful or productive to his overseas mission to say those nine words — “I believe if I ran again, I could win.” — as they served no apparent purpose except to let him inflate and polish his own ego?

During the same presentation to the African audience in Ethiopia, Obama said something else that many of his critics and opponents will likely jump on as self-incriminating evidence of his own executive overreach. The Fox News report on the president’s address quotes him as saying, without the slightest hint of irony or tinge of self-awareness about his behavior:

“There’s still so much I want to get done to keep America moving forward. But the law is the law and no one is above it, not even presidents.”

This post originally appeared on Western Journalism – Equipping You With The Truth