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Thursday, May 17, 2012

States Diverting Foreclosure Relief Money to Pay Down Debt





Protesters staged a rally against home foreclosures in California on Tuesday outside the State Capitol in Sacramento. (photo: Max Whittaker/NYT)
Protesters staged a rally against home foreclosures in California on Tuesday outside the State Capitol in Sacramento. (photo: Max Whittaker/NYT)

States Diverting Foreclosure Relief Money to Pay Down Debt

By Shaila Dewan, The New York Times
17 May 12

undreds of millions of dollars meant to provide a little relief to the nation’s struggling homeowners is being diverted to plug state budget gaps.

In a budget proposed this week, California joined more than a dozen states that want to help close gaping shortfalls using money paid by the nation’s biggest banks and earmarked for foreclosure prevention, investigations of financial fraud and blunting the ill effects of the housing crisis. California was awarded more than $400 million from the banks, and Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed using the bulk of that sum to pay the state’s debts.

The money was part of a national settlement valued at $25 billion and negotiated with five big banks over abuses in their mortgage and foreclosure processes.

The settlement, reached in February after a year of talks and intervention by the Obama administration, was the second-largest in history involving the states, trailing the tobacco industry settlement, and represented the first large-scale commitment by banks to provide direct aid to borrowers.

As part of the settlement, the banks agreed to pay the states $2.5 billion, money intended to help homeowners and mitigate the effects of the foreclosure surge. But critics complained that this was the only cash the banks were required to pay — the rest comes in the form of “credits” for reducing mortgage debt and other activities. Even that relatively small amount has proved too great a temptation for lawmakers.

Only 27 states have devoted all their funds from the banks to housing programs, according to a report by Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing group. So far about 15 states have said they will use all or most of the money for other purposes.

In Texas, $125 million went straight to the general fund. Missouri will use its $40 million to soften cuts to higher education. Indiana is spending more than half its allotment to pay energy bills for low-income families, while Virginia will use most of its $67 million to help revenue-starved local governments.

Like California, some other states with outsize problems from the housing bust are spending the money for something other than homeowner relief. Georgia, where home prices are still falling, will use its $99 million to lure companies to the state.

“The governor has decided to use the discretionary money for economic development,” said a spokesman for Nathan Deal, Georgia’s governor, a Republican. “He believes that the best way to prevent foreclosures amongst honest homeowners who have experienced hard times is to create jobs here in our state.”

Andy Schneggenburger, the executive director of the Atlanta Housing Association of Neighborhood-Based Developers, said the decision showed “a real lack of comprehension of the depths of the foreclosure problem.”
The $2.5 billion was intended to be under the control of the state attorneys general, who negotiated the settlement with the five banks — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally. But there is enough wiggle room in the agreement, as well as in separate terms agreed to by each state, to give legislatures and governors wide latitude. The money can, for example, be counted as a “civil penalty” won by the state, and some leaders have argued that states are entitled to the money because the housing crash decimated tax collections.

Shaun Donovan, the federal housing secretary, has been privately urging state officials to spend the money as intended. “Other uses fail to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the settlement to bring real, concerted relief to homeowners and the communities in which they live,” he said Tuesday.
Some attorneys general have complied quietly with requests to repurpose the money, while others have protested. Lisa Madigan, the Democratic attorney general of Illinois, said she would oppose any effort to divert the funds. Tom Horne, the Republican attorney general of Arizona, said he disagreed with the state’s move to take about half its $97 million, which officials initially said was needed for prisons.

But Mr. Horne said he would not oppose the shift because the governor and the Legislature had authority over budgetary matters. The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest has said it will sue to stop Mr. Horne from transferring the money.

In California, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris had played hardball in the settlement negotiations, holding out until the very end for a deal guaranteeing that a large share of the benefits would go to California, and then trumpeting her success in a news conference and a flurry of interviews with national news outlets. So Mr. Brown’s revised budget put her in an awkward position.

“While the state is undeniably facing a difficult budget gap,” she said in a statement, “these funds should be used to help Californians stay in their homes.” Both officials are Democrats.

When asked if Mr. Brown could legally appropriate the money, which is supposed to be held in a special fund “for the benefit of California homeowners affected by the mortgage/foreclosure crisis,” a spokesman for Ms. Harris declined to comment.

Just last week, Ms. Harris announced plans to give about half the money to groups that provide housing counseling and legal assistance to homeowners — groups whose budgets have shrunk while demand for their services grows. The other half would be used primarily for investigation of mortgage-related crime.
States using some or all of their money for housing have designated it for a wide variety of programs, like a small fund for low-interest loans to build housing in low-income neighborhoods, in Virginia, and Ohio’s sweeping plan to demolish abandoned property.

In New York, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman stepped in with $15 million in settlement money for housing counseling and legal assistance when state support ran out last month, and plans to spend the bulk of its $130 million on similar programs. North Dakota will use its tiny allotment, $1.9 million, to provide housing to police officers and emergency responders in its booming oil-field counties, where shelter is scarce.

Using the money for other purposes is shortsighted, housing advocates warn. “If you leave homeowners hanging out there to dry, then in the short term maybe you help to meet the budget gap this year,” said Maeve Elise Brown, the executive director of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, based in Oakland. “But in the long term the more people we have going through foreclosure, the worse it’s going to be for our economy as a whole.”

In some states, redirecting the money could have a racially discriminatory effect, said Alan Jenkins, the executive director of the Opportunity Agenda, which supports homeownership, because in some cities black homeowners disproportionately lost their homes, Mr. Jenkins said.

“If you dump all of these funds into the general coffers, the African-American homeowners are not going to benefit in any real way because they represent such a small percentage of the larger state,” Mr. Jenkins said.
 

Thursday, May 10, 2012

7 Foreclosure Horror Stories (And One Possible Win)

AlterNet.org

   

Around the country, families are being tossed out of their homes with astonishing regularity, with local law enforcement enlisted to do the bidding of big banks.

 
 
 
This week, Christine Frazer and her family were thrown out of the Atlanta home they'd lived in for 18 years, at gunpoint in the dead of night.

They were not set upon by robbers, but by the Dekalb County Sheriff's department, which evicted the family at the request of Investors One Corporation. As Steven Rosenfeld reported for AlterNet, it was the fourth company to buy the family's mortgage in eight months.

The Frazers' eviction is horrifying, but sadly their story is all too common. Senator Sherrod Brown, who's introduced legislation aiming to curtail the worst practices, called it “a longstanding ugly pattern of homeowner abuse.”
"You can basically throw a dart off a building and hit someone with a foreclosure horror story,” said Matt Browner Hamlin of Occupy Our Homes. “This is the whole point -- that the crisis is being driven by fraud and criminality by the banks. Three million people didn't wake up one morning and decide to just stop paying their mortgages."

Around the country, families are being tossed out of their homes with astonishing regularity, with local law enforcement enlisted to do the bidding of big banks that own and resell the mortgages, utterly detached from the people whose lives are turned upside-down in the process. It's easy to just look at statistics and forget the human stories behind the numbers, so here are six stories of families who've had to fight all sorts of shady tactics to try and stay in their homes—and one family that might just beat the bank and get to keep their home, with the help of local activists.

1. Harried into Health Crisis in Hempstead, New York

Charles Pollydore worked on Wall Street, not as a trader, but in IT. He was laid off when the markets collapsed, but kept paying his $4,200 monthly mortgage to Bank of America. “I used my 401k, I used everything I had, emergency funds, everything to keep the mortgage going under the pretext that I was going to get a job soon,” he told AlterNet. “I had to get on welfare, get on food stamps, to get my light and my gas to stay on. I needed Medicaid because I need medical coverage badly.”

But he didn't find a job, and his diabetes worsened—he's legally blind and is facing the amputation of a second toe after losing one--and he wound up on disability. “My doctors said 'We're not going to allow yourself to jeopardize the health you have right now to keep looking for a job,'” he said. His health has dramatically deteriorated since his fight with the bank began.

Pollydore, a member of the group New York Communities for Change, has been repeatedly applying for a mortgage modification to no avail, sending documentation, bank statements, hardship letters, and more, but over and over the bank claims it hasn't received the information. BofA refused to offer him a principal reduction despite being presented with proof of his disability income. “Their strategy is to break the backs of homeowners so that you give up and you walk away,” he said.

He's reached out to his congresswoman, Carolyn McCarthy, and to the attorney general's office, but was told he had to work with Bank of America. “What protection is there for people like myself?” he asked.

“I told one of the [bank] executives, 'You guys are going to have to board the house up with me inside and let me rot and die.'”

2. Fabricated Documents in Rochester, New York

Leonard Spears is 5-feet, 6 inches tall, balding and African American, but Wells Fargo, when serving a summons to foreclose on the Rochester home he'd been fixing up, apparently served a 6-foot man with blond hair. Spears, of course, says he was never served, and Wells Fargo has a history not only of predatory lending (it paid an $85 million fine for pushing borrowers who were qualified for better loans into more risky subprime loans) but of foreclosure fraud as well.

“It took me three years to convert it into the way it looks now, I did a lot of wiring, tore down all the walls, gave up my social life completely because I was dedicated to do this, because this is like the American Dream, to own property, so it was very exciting,” Spears said.

To make matters worse, it turns out that Wells Fargo wasn't even the owner of the note, but merely the servicer. And then, when the foreclosure did go through, the home was sold to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (commonly known as Freddie Mac) for all of $500. Yet Spears wasn't able to modify his mortgage to stay in his home. “I was willing to pay way more than $500,” Spears said. “What kind of justice is that?”

Take Back the Land Rochester, Occupy Rochester and others are fighting to get Spears back in his home—there's a petition you can sign.

3. Threatening Phone Calls in Waterford, Michigan

After a car accident Kathryn Nava wound up on disability and had trouble making her mortgage payments. She had a friend who was willing to help her make her back payments, but that friend wanted to see a payment history before giving her the money. Nava called her mortgage lender to request that history—and was told it would cost her $50 per hour, and take 90 days to receive it.

So she tried again, calling the president of the company. She got a voicemail response that shocked her so much she recorded it and saved it.

“Let me enlighten you, Kathy. First of all, there's nothing in your contract with us says we owe you any history, now, next year, five years from now or the next time...I've begun foreclosure today. I bet you're sorry now that you made that phone call. I don't need to put up with your crap, OK?...Bottom line, I'm doing nothing for you now.”
Indeed, she did end up losing her home.

4. Illegal Eviction in Los Angeles

Eduardo Acosta and his family had won their case—a judge ruled that Green Century Investment Group/IndyMac had no right to foreclose on the family, that they'd filed fraudulent paperwork.

A month later, the local sheriff posted an eviction notice to the family anyway.
This came on the heels of an audit of California foreclosures by the San Francisco County Recorder, which found that 99 percent of the foreclosures examined had “irregularities,” and there were clear violations of state law in 84 percent of them.

Acosta had applied for a mortgage modification after his payment shot up to $2,000 a month, his wife fell ill, and his monthly income plummeted. But while the bank reviewed his modification request, it also began foreclosure proceedings—a common enough process that it has a name, “dual tracking.” There's a bill in the Senate that aims to ban the practice and only allow lenders to proceed with foreclosure after working with borrowers. This process all-too-often allows for “accidental” foreclosures, where one side of the company forecloses on a home that another department is ostensibly working to help the family keep.

Occupy LA posted a call for help for the Acosta family after their eviction notice. “I’m sure there are a lot of people going through this,” Acosta said. “Let’s step up and help each other out.”

The Acostas are still in their home as of the latest report, but keeping them there has required a constant fight.

5. Sent to the Psychiatric Ward in Lodi, Wisconsin

An Associated Bank representative helped send Bill Schroeder to a psychiatric ward for 72 hours after a telephone argument over Schroeder's missed mortgage payments.

Schroeder told the Wisconsin State Journal that during their conversation the bank rep called him “worthless” and said the bank didn't care what happened to him as long as it got its money.
"I made an offhand response," Schroeder said. "I said, ‘Maybe I'll just go get my gun and shoot myself and you can have my life insurance.'"
They hung up and Schroeder made a trip to the grocery store. When he got back, a police car was in his driveway to take him to the hospital.
The bank rep was apparently slightly more concerned about Schroeder's health than he let on and had called the police. Yet it didn't seem to occur to the bank that perhaps the way to show real concern for homeowners' mental health would be to not make threats in the first place.

The Schroeder family wound up selling their home in a short sale, which left them still owing the bank $31,256 to make up the difference between their mortgage and the sale price of the home, which was down $66,000 after the bursting of the housing bubble. They estimated to the State Journal that they'll be making payments on a house they don't have anymore for the next seven years.

6. Disappearing Documents in Ohio

Gina Brooks and her husband applied for their first mortgage modification with Wells Fargo's ASC Mortgage servicer when they were only a couple of months behind on their payments. They were denied the first time and chose to go through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy—which would allow them to keep their home and keep paying their mortgage. “I had lived in this house for 14 years,” she said. “I didn't want to lose my home.”

In July 2010, after the bankruptcy, she submitted another modification request and was again denied. The money she and her husband were paying on their mortgage alone was leaving them little to live on, and they finally decided to switch to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which would leave them without their home. In a last-ditch effort, she wrote to her mortgage company, and then called in when she didn't hear back.

“I was told at that time they had no record whatsoever of anything I had ever sent in since I started in 2009,” Brooks said. No record of her repeated denials, her requests, her bankruptcies. Nothing. No one was familiar with her case.
Brooks had already started packing her home when a friend suggested she contact her senator. Through an intervention by Sherrod Brown (D-OH)'s office, she was offered a full refinance on her home by Wells Fargo—but after two years of fighting with the lender, her refinance added $31,000 to her mortgage. Brooks said she's grateful to have her home, but frustrated to be paying interest on interest. “Why did it take me two years, two bankruptcies and all of this headache when they could've done it in one month?”

7. Possible Victory in Minneapolis

Monique White's home was the site of one of the first Occupy-related foreclosure defenses last November, when she refused to be bought off by Freddie Mac's “cash for keys” offer. That would've given her a small reimbursement for voluntarily giving up her home after it had been repossessed by U.S. Bank and sold to Freddie Mac—without her knowledge.

Neighborhoods Organizing for Change had already been working with White, but they reached out to Occupy and the group responded, sending occupiers to camp out on White's property to prevent eviction.
Now, thanks to tireless action by a team of lawyers, activists, and White herself—who traveled to U.S. Bank's shareholder meeting to personally ask the bank's CEO, Richard Davis, for help—she's got a tentative deal to modify her mortgage to allow her to stay in her home.
The Huffington Post reported:
It took US Bank a matter of days to come up with a principal reduction that allowed White to pay $686.36 a month to stay in her home. White, who works two part-time jobs and is in training for a full-time union position, said it was a little steep, but she could make it work.
Occupy Homes Minnesota activist Nick Espinosa told the Huffington Post, "It does show that when we shine a light on these cases and bring them to the public eye, that the bank is more than capable of negotiating -- even though they've said all along that that is not their responsibility. It's a huge victory, and it represents exactly the kind of deal that every homeowner in America should be getting from the banks."

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @sarahljaffe.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Dozens of Police Evict Georgia Family at Gunpoint at 3am

AlterNet.org


The eviction might have been another anonymous descent into poverty were it not for Occupy Atlanta activists who tried to help the family stay.

 
 
 
Four generations of a Georgia family were evicted at gunpoint by dozens of sheriffs and deputies at 3am last week in an Atlanta suburb. The eyebrow-raising eviction, a foreclosure action, might have been another anonymous descent into poverty were it not for Occupy Atlanta activists who tried to help the family stay in Christine Frazer’s home of 18 years.  
 
The eviction came as Frazer, 63, who lost her husband and then job in 2009, had been challenging the foreclosure in county and federal courts by seeking to restructure the terms of a delinquent mortgage. However, the latest holder of her loan, Investors One Corporation—the fourth company that bought her mortgage in an eight-month period—allowed the eviction to proceed even thought it was "negotiating" new loan terms with her attorney one day before the police raid.
 
DeKalb County Sheriff Thomas Brown told an Atlanta talk radio show a day after the raid that a dozen squad cars and dozens of deputies were needed for the dead-of-night raid because Occupy Atlanta had set up tents on Frazer's property, and his perception of the Occupy activists in other cities led him to believe they could be armed. He also said he timed the eviction to avoid media coverage.
 
“I made the decision that we were going to do this at 3am for a couple of reasons,” he told WAOK’s Derrick Boazman. “Number one, I have seen the various Occupy groups in various cities operate before. It was an ugly scene in Oakland. I have seen them firsthand in Washington. I’ve seen them on Wall Street. I’ve seen them in Atlanta.”
 
“I will not participate in a mass demonstration arrest with television cameras when I am not sure I can trust the people who say they will offer passive resistance,” Brown said. “Our intelligence told us that there were at least 10 Occupy Atlanta folks there on the property; that turned out not to be the case. Our intelligence told us that the family had vacated the house; that turned out not to be the case… We made the decision to have enough resources there to make sure it would not get out of hand.” 
 
But out-of-hand does not even approach how Christine Frazer described the raid, saying in the days since the eviction she and her family, including her 85-year-old mother, daughter and 3-year-old grandson, have been split up and forced to rely on charity. Frazer also described how she had been exploring every legal avenue to refinance her debt, but the lenders had no intention of doing anything but evict her, presumably to sell the home. 
 
“It has been really unsettling,” Frazer said. “When something like this happens, it breaks up the family. Me and my mom are staying one place. My grandson is someplace. My daughter is staying someplace else. It just feels really strange. I have lived in that home for 18 years. That is where I am used to waking up every morning. It’s just… I am grateful that I am not under a bridge, but I miss home.”
 
Frazer said that she did not expect the sudden eviction, because she had been challenging the foreclosure in federal court and her attorney had been negotiating with the lenders.
 
“No, I didn’t, because I currently have a case in federal court for a wrongful foreclosure,” she said. “And also the opposing or foreclosing attorney was in a negotiation process with my attorney. As a matter of fact, that Monday, I talked with them and they had talked about possibly reinstating the loan. But, of course, I was concerned about the principle [amount]. And they previously said they were looking for the eviction. It happened the next morning at 3am.”
 
Frazer’s descent in home loan hell had been going on for months, she said, but nothing in that arduous effort prepared her for being awakened and evicted at gunpoint. 
 
“They came to my home like I was a drug dealer,” she said. “At 3am in the morning, they knocked on my door. The Dekalb Sheriff’s Department knocked on my door. They opened my door. I knew my rights that I didn’t have to open the door. They came with a locksmith, drilled off the locks, came into my house, with a flashlight in one hand and pistol in the other, [shouting] ‘Who’s in the house? Who’s in the house?’”
 
Frazer said the sheriff’s department knew exactly who was there—three generations of women in one family and a toddler grandson. 
 
“Who do you think was in the house?” she asked. “My picture and my story have been in the local DeKalb paper. They knew exactly who. Yes, they knew Occupy was there. But Occupy is a nonviolent movement. Nonviolent. These people came at me like I’m a drug dealer and I am doing something wrong. I am just a homeowner.” 
 
Frazer said she was ordered by sheriffs to dress and then vacate the building.
 
“They told me to pack up as if I just had a fire at my home and take my immediate possessions. And I had to leave immediately. I said, ‘Can I take a shower?’ ‘No, just throw on some clothes.’ It took them seven hours to get that stuff out of my house. They were going to be there anyway. Why couldn’t I take a shower?”
 
Frazer said the sheriff brought men to empty the house of its possessions. 
 
“They hired some off-the-wall great big jerks to come into my home,” she said. “My daughter had a little piggy bank. She was saving those gold dollar coins. They broke it on the floor and took that. I have no idea where some of my jewelry is—stuff I bought when I was 30 years old. I am 63. They just threw everything everywhere, helter-skelter on the front lawn in the dark. I have to tell you, I worked hard all my life. At one point, I had a moving company. I know it is against the law in Georgia to move anyone at night.”
 
The sheriffs closed off the street and had at least a dozen police cars present. There was one Occupy Atlanta member in a tent on the property at the time, said Tim Franzen, an Occupy member active in housing issues. 
 
“Chris does have a place to stay,” Franzen said, when asked where she and her family are now. “We have moved all of her stuff, 18 years worth of stuff, into storage. And Chris still has plenty of fight in her and we are going to fight alongside of her.”   
 
Invisible, Unaccountable Moneymen
 
Frazer’s foreclosure woes are hardly unique. It is typical for single women to earn less money than men. It is very difficult for women over age 60 to find gainful employment. Meanwhile, her mortgage has been sold and resold in a financial industry game of pass the hot potato, where buyers and sellers pay a fraction of its face value but either cash out by finding a new buyer or evicting the borrower and selling the house.  
 
“My loans were securitized, there is no doubt in my mind about that,” Frazer said, explaining that every time she sought to identify who was the actual holder of her mortgage she ran into brick walls and opaque companies where it was all but impossible to even speak to someone with authority to negotiate on the phone.
 
Frazer said one firm she contacted, claiming to be in the business of helping distressed borrowers, came back with an offer—pay $20,000 in cash and then the loan would be reinstated. That option, of course, was impossible, because if she had that kind of cash, she said she would have been making her mortgage payments. Frazer also had hopes that President Obama’s program to help distressed borrowers would offer a way to keep the home. But that also fell through because only borrowers who are caught up with all their payments are eligible for restructuring their loans. 
 
“You are not a distressed homeowner if you are current on your mortgage,” she said. 
 
Frazer said she has tried to negotiate a new loan—starting with her balance, not including nearly $30,000 in penalty and legal fees tacked onto the principle. 
 
“I sat down one day as I was going through this, and looked at what we have paid,” she said. “I have already have paid over $240,000 for the house… The banks have gotten the money. The banks got a [government] bailout. That document that the bank sent me that said my house is now worth $40,000. That is called depreciation. That is a tax write-off for them. Their bread got buttered on both sides. But me and my family; what kind of justice is that?”
 
Dekalb Sheriff Brown told the talk radio listeners there was nothing unusual about Frazer’s foreclosure and eviction—apart from bringing in 10 times the number of law enforcement officers typically involved because of the presence of Occupy Atlanta.
 
“Mrs. Frazer lost her home evidently because she could not make payments,” he said. “As I understand it, she tried to get a loan modification, but she did not qualify for a loan modification because she did not have a source of income.”
 
“Mrs. Frazier and her attorneys exhausted every legal means to save her home,” Brown said. “They took it all the way to the DeKalb Superior Court… The judge sitting on the bench ruled that she could still not keep her home and issued an order to the sheriff to execute the warrant….” 
 
Frazer’s attorney, Joshua Davis, said the sheriff’s descriptions and knowledge of the case was not accurate. Davis said Frazer was scheduled to go before a county court to seek a temporary restraining order preventing the foreclosure while the case was in litigation. However, lawyers for the lender took the case to federal court, because of the loan amounts involved, where the TRO proceeding became voided and the case had to commence again. That was a tactic, Davis said to strip away the legal obstacles and proceed with a foreclosure eviction, which under Georgia law is a 30-day process.
 
“We were about to have a hearing on the temporary restraining order,” Davis said. “Right before we were about to have a hearing but the opposing counsel moved it to federal court. What that does is it basically nullifies the hearing that we hope to take place in [county] Superior Court. And then everything is supposed to be sent to federal court and then the judges from there will move on it. But everything in federal court moves a lot slower.” 
 
There is one legal scenario under which Frazer might regain her home and get a modified mortgage she could afford.
 
Davis said the lender that pursued the eviction, Investors One Corp., was not the holder of her latest mortgage in the DeKalb County assessor’s office. Apparently, an Indiana bank that sold the loan to Investors One is still listed as the last lender of record on the property. That discrepancy in property records might prove to be enough legal grounds to reverse the foreclosure and entitle Frazer to punitive damages—because Investors One executed the eviction without legal standing as the recorded loan holder. If a federal judge accepts that argument or allows a trial to proceed based on it, then a settlement might be possible in which Frazer could obtain a new affordable 30-year mortgage. 
 
When asked if that was what she was seeking, she replied, “Exactly. Work with me.”
 
In the meantime, DeKalb Sheriff Brown is unrepentant about Occupy Atlanta, saying he does not trust their claims of being nonviolent.
 
“What I didn’t want to do was to put a whole lot of people in my jail who wanted to be in my jail, at $53.50 a day, which is a burden to the taxpayers,” he said, “because somebody wants to make a statement that in their minds that corporate America controls 90 percent of the wealth in these United States of America. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know and I don’t care. I have a constitutional responsibility to uphold the peace.”

Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).