Sunday, February 1, 2009

Do 'The Squat'

Nope, it's not a new dance craze. It's what congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) is recommending to constituents facing foreclosure.

The Raw Story:
"So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes," said Congresswoman Kaptur before the House of Representatives. "Don't you leave."

She's called on all of her foreclosed-upon constituents to stay in their homes and refuse to leave without "an attorney and a fight," said CNN.

"If they've had no legal representation of a high quality, I tell them stay in their homes," Kaptur told Griffin.

Kaptur is a high-profile advocate of an increasingly popular mode of fighting foreclosures best known for it's key phrase: "Produce the note."

By telling a bank to "produce the note," a homeowner can delay foreclosure by forcing the lender to prove the suing institution is actually the same which owns the debt.

"During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street," explains the Consumer Warning Network. "In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note strategy."
Rep. Kaptur is not urging homeowners to break the law, but to avail themselves of the proper legal assistance, figure out what's going on with their debt, and in the meantime, to remain in their homes. I'm down with that.

[h/t Ned Sublette]

Pro-Death

South Carolina Republicans want to impose the death penalty on South Carolinian women who seek abortions in another state. You know, because...