Citizens' Oversight Maryland---Maryland Progressives
CINDY WALSH FOR MAYOR OF BALTIMORE----SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
Citizens Oversight Maryland.com
  • Home
  • Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore
    • Mayoral Election violations
    • Questionnaires from Community >
      • Education Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Housing Questionnaire
      • Emerging Youth Questionnaire
      • Health Care policy for Baltimore
      • Environmental Questionnaires
      • Livable Baltimore questionnaire
      • Labor Questionnnaire
      • Ending Food Deserts Questionnaire
      • Maryland Out of School Time Network
      • LBGTQ Questionnaire
      • Citizen Artist Baltimore Mayoral Forum on Arts & Culture Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Transit Choices Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies (BASE)
      • Downtown Partnership Questionnaire
      • The Northeast Baltimore Communities Of BelAir Edison Community Association (BECCA )and Frankford Improvement Association, Inc. (FIA)
      • Streets and Transportation/Neighbood Questionnaire
      • African American Tourism and business questionnaire
      • Baltimore Sun Questionnaire
      • City Paper Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Technology Com Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Biker's Questionnair
      • Homewood Friends Meeting Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Historical Collaboration---Anthem Project
      • Tubman City News Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Maryland Public Policy Institute Questionnaire
      • AFRO questionnaire
      • WBAL Candidate's Survey
  • Blog
  • Trans Pacific Pact (TPP)
  • Progressive vs. Third Way Corporate Democrats
    • Third Way Think Tanks
  • Financial Reform/Wall Street Fraud
    • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau >
      • CFPB Actions
    • Voted to Repeal Glass-Steagall
    • Federal Reserve >
      • Federal Reserve Actions
    • Securities and Exchange Commission >
      • SEC Actions
    • Commodity Futures Trading Commission >
      • CFTC Actions
    • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency >
      • OCC Actions
    • Office of Treasury/ Inspector General for the Treasury
    • FINRA >
      • FINRA ACTIONS
  • Federal Healthcare Reform
    • Health Care Fraud in the US
    • Health and Human Services Actions
  • Social Security and Entitlement Reform
    • Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP Actions
  • Federal Education Reform
    • Education Advocates
  • Government Schedules
    • Baltimore City Council
    • Maryland State Assembly >
      • Budget and Taxation Committee
    • US Congress
  • State and Local Government
    • Baltimore City Government >
      • City Hall Actions
      • Baltimore City Council >
        • Baltimore City Council Actions
      • Baltimore Board of Estimates meeting >
        • Board of Estimates Actions
    • Governor's Office >
      • Telling the World about O'Malley
    • Lt. Governor Brown
    • Maryland General Assembly Committees >
      • Communications with Maryland Assembly
      • Budget and Taxation Committees >
        • Actions
        • Pension news
      • Finance Committees >
        • Schedule
      • Business Licensing and Regulation
      • Judicial, Rules, and Nominations Committee
      • Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee >
        • Committee Actions
    • Maryland State Attorney General >
      • Open Meetings Act
      • Maryland Courts >
        • Maryland Court System
    • States Attorney - Baltimore's Prosecutor
    • State Comptroller's Office >
      • Maryland Business Tax Reform >
        • Business Tax Reform Issues
  • Maryland Committee Actions
    • Board of Public Works >
      • Public Works Actions
    • Maryland Public Service Commission >
      • Public Meetings
    • Maryland Health Care Commission/Maryland Community Health Resources Commission >
      • MHCC/MCHRC Actions
    • Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition
  • Maryland and Baltimore Development Organizations
    • Baltimore/Maryland Development History
    • Committee Actions
    • Maryland Development Organizations
  • Maryland State Department of Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Public Schools
    • Algebra Project Award
  • Baltimore City School Board
    • Charter Schools >
      • Charter Schools---Performance
      • Charter School Issues
    • Public Schools >
      • Public School Issues
  • Progressive Issues
    • Fair and Balanced Elections
    • Labor Issues
    • Rule of Law Issues >
      • Rule of Law
    • Justice issues 2
    • Justice Issues
    • Progressive Tax Reform Issues >
      • Maryland Tax Reform Issues
      • Baltimore Tax Reform Issues
    • Strong Public Education >
      • Corporate education reform organizations
    • Healthcare for All Issues >
      • Universal Care Bill by state
  • Building Strong Media
    • Media with a Progressive Agenda (I'm still checking on that!) >
      • anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com
      • "Talk About It" Radio - WFBR 1590AM Baltimore
      • Promethius Radio Project
      • Clearing the Fog
      • Democracy Now
      • Black Agenda Radio
      • World Truth. TV Your Alternative News Network.
      • Daily Censured
      • Bill Moyers Journal
      • Center for Public Integrity
      • Public Radio International
      • Baltimore Brew
      • Free Press
    • Far Left/Socialist Media
    • Media with a Third Way Agenda >
      • MSNBC
      • Center for Media and Democracy
      • Public Radio and TV >
        • NPR and MPT News
      • TruthOut
  • Progressive Organizations
    • Political Organizations >
      • Progressives United
      • Democracy for America
    • Labor Organizations >
      • United Workers
      • Unite Here Local 7
      • ROC-NY works to build power and win justice
    • Justice Organizations >
      • APC Baltimore
      • Occupy Baltimore
    • Rule of Law Organizations >
      • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
      • National Lawyers Guild
      • National ACLU
    • Tax Reform Organizations
    • Healthcare for All Organizations >
      • Healthcare is a Human Right - Maryland
      • PNHP Physicians for a National Health Program
      • Healthcare NOW- Maryland
    • Public Education Organizations >
      • Parents Across America
      • Philadelphia Public School Notebook thenotebook.org
      • Chicago Teachers Union/Blog
      • Ed Wize Blog
      • Educators for a Democratic Union
      • Big Education Ape
    • Elections Organizations >
      • League of Women Voters
  • Progressive Actions
    • Labor Actions
    • Justice Actions
    • Tax Reform Actions >
      • Baltimore Tax Actions
      • Maryland Tax Reform Actions
    • Healthcare Actions
    • Public Education Actions
    • Rule of Law Actions >
      • Suing Federal and State government
    • Free and Fair Elections Actions
  • Maryland/Baltimore Voting Districts - your politicians and their votes
    • 2014 ELECTION OF STATE OFFICES
    • Maryland Assembly/Baltimore
  • Petitions, Complaints, and Freedom of Information Requests
    • Complaints - Government and Consumer >
      • Sample Complaints
    • Petitions >
      • Sample Petitions
    • Freedom of Information >
      • Sample Letters
  • State of the Democratic Party
  • Misc
    • WBFF TV
    • WBAL TV
    • WJZ TV
    • WMAR TV
    • WOLB Radio---Radio One
    • The Gazette
    • Baltimore Sun Media Group
  • Misc 2
    • Maryland Public Television
    • WYPR
    • WEAA
    • Maryland Reporter
  • Misc 3
    • University of Maryland
    • Morgan State University
  • Misc 4
    • Baltimore Education Coalition
    • BUILD Baltimore
    • Church of the Great Commission
    • Maryland Democratic Party
    • Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church
    • Maryland Municipal League
    • Maryland League of Women Voters
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Standard of Review
  • Untitled
  • WALSH FOR GOVERNOR - CANDIDATE INFORMATION AND PLATFORM
    • Campaign Finance/Campaign donations
    • Speaking Events
    • Why Heather Mizeur is NOT a progressive
    • Campaign responses to Community Organization Questionnaires
    • Cindy Walsh vs Maryland Board of Elections >
      • Leniency from court for self-representing plaintiffs
      • Amended Complaint
      • Plaintiff request for expedited trial date
      • Response to Motion to Dismiss--Brown, Gansler, Mackie, and Lamone
      • Injunction and Mandamus
      • DECISION/APPEAL TO SPECIAL COURT OF APPEALS---Baltimore City Circuit Court response to Cindy Walsh complaint >
        • Brief for Maryland Court of Special Appeals >
          • Cover Page ---yellow
          • Table of Contents
          • Table of Authorities
          • Leniency for Pro Se Representation
          • Statement of Case
          • Questions Presented
          • Statement of Facts
          • Argument
          • Conclusion/Font and Type Size
          • Record Extract
          • Appendix
          • Motion for Reconsideration
          • Response to Defendants Motion to Dismiss
          • Motion to Reconsider Dismissal
      • General Election fraud and recount complaints
    • Cindy Walsh goes to Federal Court for Maryland election violations >
      • Complaints filed with the FCC, the IRS, and the FBI
      • Zapple Doctrine---Media Time for Major Party candidates
      • Complaint filed with the US Justice Department for election fraud and court irregularities.
      • US Attorney General, Maryland Attorney General, and Maryland Board of Elections are charged with enforcing election law
      • Private media has a responsibility to allow access to all candidates in an election race. >
        • Print press accountable to false statement of facts
      • Polling should not determine a candidate's viability especially if the polling is arbitrary
      • Viability of a candidate
      • Public media violates election law regarding do no damage to candidate's campaign
      • 501c3 Organizations violate election law in doing no damage to a candidate in a race >
        • 501c3 violations of election law-----private capital
      • Voter apathy increases when elections are not free and fair
  • Maryland Board of Elections certifies election on July 10, 2014
  • Maryland Elections ---2016

January 14th, 2014

1/14/2014

0 Comments

 
The ancient playwright Sophocles could not have written a political satire more robust than Maryland's current comedy/tragedy politics.  Maryland's 1% say-----this is no failure----we moved hundreds of millions of dollars to the connected people we chose!



THERE IS GOOD NEWS FROM THE FAILURE OF MARYLAND HEALTH SYSTEM DESIGNED TO END FEDERAL PROGRAMS MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND PUBLIC SECTOR HEALTH PLANS.....PEOPLE HAVE TIME TO SEE THE DAMAGE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT DOES TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THEY ALL NOW WANT EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL!

Do you hear your political pundit, labor and justice organization,or incumbent shouting out all of what I have been  saying about the Affordable CAre Act for 4 years?  Well, they knew what I knew and they were not working for you and me!

As I have said there are well-developed plans already developed for Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.  Any politician could run for Governor of Maryland and simply use existing policy and planning to implement.  Do not allow neo-liberals to tell you it can't be done because simply building oversight into Medicare health system will end 1/2 of expenditures just by ending fraud and profiteering!  This neo-liberals have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars developing this private system simply to make health care a global profit-maximizing industry and WE WILL TAKE IT BACK!!!!


I would like to end this session on health care reform with a reminder of how the State of Maryland moves to Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.


Still think the plan was not to end Medicare and Medicaid as Federal programs by sending them all to state health systems that dismantle all Federal protections for public health?

Private health plans have no intention of coming into these exchanges because they are well on their way to going global with the deregulation of the Affordable Care Act they will be just as unaccountable as Wall Street and just as criminal and corrupt.  What you see are private companies being created under the guise of private non-profits like EVERGREEN owned and run by Johns Hopkins under Beilenson.  So, these private non-profits will end up with all of Medicare, Medicaid, and public sector health plans ending these Federal programs and with deregulations and not public health protections....health care for most will become charity work if these people have their way.


ALL ACROSS THE  COUNTRY THE MOST HEALTH ACCOUNTS BEING CREATED ARE FOR MEDICAID....AS IN MARYLAND.



Tue, Jan 14, 2014, 8:28 AM EST -

63 percent of RI insurance sign-ups for Medicaid 63 percent of insurance sign-ups during first 3 months of HealthSource RI were for Medicaid

By Erika Niedowski, Associated Press 16 hours ago

HealthSource RI said that 11,770 individuals enrolled in commercial plans between Oct. 1, when the marketplace opened, and Jan. 4. The state Health and Human Services office said 19,941 enrolled in Medicaid during the same period.

Of those who enrolled for private coverage, 9,902 have paid and had coverage begin this month, according to HealthSource RI.

The marketplace, sometimes known as an exchange, also released new demographic data that show who is using it and what type of coverage they are choosing.

One-third of individual private-plan enrollees are 55 and older; 23 percent are 18 to 34. The overwhelming majority of those who signed up chose a Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island plan. Fifty-six percent chose a "silver" plan over bronze, gold and platinum.

Eighty-seven percent are receiving some kind of subsidies for the coverage.

It's not clear how many of those who enrolled in private plans were previously uninsured.

Most Americans are now required to have health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, or pay a penalty. There are more than 120,000 uninsured in Rhode Island in a population of just over 1 million.

The state has not publicly released enrollment targets for the first sign-up period, but the U.S. Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services set a goal of 5,640 enrollments in Rhode Island by Dec. 31 and 12,000 by March 31.

HealthSource RI also reported Monday that 75 small businesses have enrolled, representing 530 employees. The state is putting a lot of emphasis on getting small businesses to sign up.

The marketplace is offering 12 individual plans and 16 small-group plans in 2014.

The deadline to pay for coverage beginning Jan. 1 already passed, but open enrollment is continuing through March 31. The next deadline to select and pay for a plan is Jan. 23.

________________________________________

Did you know that HUMANA is a private health plan that seeks to draw seniors out of the public Medicare by front-loading these plans with perks but in the longer term will undermine this strong Federal program and it is deliberate?

If people understand what Maryland's Medicare exemption from Federal oversight means you will see why Hopkins is tied with a private senior health care corporation.  Hopkins' goal in health policy is to maximize health profits and when they requests these exemptions from Medicare they are telling us they are making Medicare more cost effective.  What they are doing is creating the tiered system of payments to Medicare patients and procedures that has systematically made Maryland's hospitals the worst in the nation as far as quality care and performance.  Just finished surgery on you leg under anesthesia and still haven't fully woken from this procedure after a few hours?


TOO BAD BECAUSE YOUR TIME IS UP AND YOU ARE OUT THE DOOR.  WHAT???  NO ONE AT HOME TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NO ILL EFFECTS FROM THE SURGERY?  HIRE A HOME HEALTH PERSON TO COME SIT WITH YOU ---YOUR TIME IS UP HERE IN MEDSTAR!!!!


We had surgery and implanted a steel plate for your broken bone that once simply had a cast placed on it because the bone had a fracture that needed support.  The patient asks to see the X-RAY and straining his eyes looking for a fracture because there is none is told by the doctor-----IT'S THERE!

Need a doctor that handles Medicare?????  There is a compound for senior care on the outskirts of the city with national health chains.....GO THERE! 


This is how Hopkins has made Maryland's health businesses the most profitable in the nation and these new approaches are what the Affordable Care Act is based upon.  It is diabolical!!!!

I DO NOT HAVE TO TELL BALTIMORE CITIZENS THAT PEOPLE ARE FEARFUL OF ENTERING JOHNS HOPKINS AND CALL MEDSTAR A DEATH TRAP BECAUSE OF WHAT THESE LONG-TERM HEALTH POLICIES HAVE DONE TO MARYLAND'S HEALTH SYSTEM....SO, AS HOPKINS TOUTS ITSELF OVER AND AGAIN AS THE BEST IN THE WORLD IN EVERYTHING....KNOW THAT THEY ARE NO DOUBT BUYING THEIR RANKING FROM THE LIKES OF US NEWS AND WOLD REPORT!




HUMANA AND JOHNS HOPKINS TEAM UP WITH MANAGED-CARE NETWORK



BALTIMORE, Dec. 1 /PRNewswire/ --


Humana Inc., one of the nation's largest health maintenance organizations, and Johns Hopkins, one of the premier medical centers in the country, are teaming up to form physician networks throughout the state of Maryland.

Humana members also will be able to use Johns Hopkins hospitals and facilities in the state.

"This strategic affiliation is the first of its kind for Johns Hopkins," Health System President and CEO James A. Block, M.D., said. "We are tremendously pleased to be able to work with Humana, not least because of its experience nationwide in serving a managed-care population covered by Medicare."

The affiliation is between Johns Hopkins HealthCare LLC, led by John D. Stobo, M.D., which represents The Johns Hopkins Health System and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Human Group Health Plan, Inc. of Washington, D.C., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Humana Inc.

Humana will use primary and specialty physician networks being formed by Johns Hopkins, such as the Wilmer Eye Network and networks in cardiology and pediatrics, and work with Johns Hopkins to develop a full complement of other networks in the state.

"This relationship with a medical center that has an international reputation for quality and innovation is terrific news for Humana and its members," said Humana Senior Vice President Phil Garmon, who also noted that Johns Hopkins Hospital has been rated best in the country for five consecutive years by "U.S. News & World Report" and more faculty physicians from its school of medicine than any other have been listed in the book, "Best Doctors in America." "It should be a mutually beneficial relationship for both parties. Humana obtains access to networks of quality physicians and high caliber medical facilities in Maryland and Johns Hopkins can utilize our many years of experience in managed care to develop and expand its networks."

Michael E. Johns, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine, added that, "As Humana's enrollment grows in central Maryland, this agreement will serve to heighten access to the faculty practice at Hopkins. This is another vote of confidence from a leading managed-care organization for the way in which we are responding to the changing health-care marketplace."

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, Ky., is one of the nation's largest publicly-owned HMO companies with more than 3.8 million members in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Humana offers quality and affordable coordinated care in the form of HMOs, preferred provider organizations, point-of-service organizations, along with administrative-only services. In addition, Humana is one of the nation's largest providers of "HMO-style" health care to seniors through its federally approved Medicare products. -0- 12/1/95

____________________________________________
As I have said there are well-developed plans already developed for Expanded and Improved Medicare for All.  Any politician could run for Governor of Maryland and simply use existing policy and planning to implement.  Do not allow neo-liberals to tell you it can't be done because simply building oversight into Medicare health system will end 1/2 of expenditures just by ending fraud and profiteering!  This neo-liberals have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars developing this private system simply to make health care a global profit-maximizing industry and WE WILL TAKE IT BACK!!!!

National Physicians has a well-researched plan that will reverse this Wall Street takeover.  I want to acknowledge that while I believe these physicians are working for all of us....I do want to make sure that this is universal and equal and addresses massive health industry fraud and profiteering and is not only funded by more taxes on the public!  When I read that Vermont's will include Tort reform as a way to lower cost I know that the reasons Doctor's Malpractice insurance is so high is that the American Medical Association does not police or hold accountable the doctors repeatedly performing badly....it is just like these other white collar crimes that get hidden and moved around. 


TORT REFORM SHOULD NOT HAPPEN UNTIL THE AMA HAS PROVEN THAT IT IS POLICING THE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS AND ARE TRANSPARENT TO THE PUBLIC!!!!!

Please take time to read the entire article below!


A National Health Program for the United States: A Physicians' Proposal
Reprinted from the New England Journal of Medicine 320:102-108 (January 12), 1989

Abstract:

Our health care system is failing. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, costs are skyrocketing, and the bureaucracy is expanding. Patchwork reforms succeed only in exchanging old problems for new ones. It is time for basic change in American medicine. We propose a national health program that would (1) fully cover everyone under a single, comprehensive public insurance program; (2) pay hospitals and nursing homes a total (global) annual amount to cover all operating expenses; (3) fund capital costs through separate appropriations; (4) pay for physicians' services and ambulatory services in any of three ways: through fee-for-service payments with a simplified fee schedule and mandatory acceptance of the national health program payment as the total payment for a service or procedure (assignment), through global budgets for hospitals and clinics employing salaried physicians, or on a per capital basis (capitation); (5) be funded, at least initially, from the same sources as at present, but with payments disbursed from a single pool; and (6) contain costs through savings on billing and bureaucracy, improved health planning, and the ability of the national health program, as the single payer for services to establish overall spending limits. Through this proposal, we hope to provide a pragmatic framework for public debate of fundamental health-policy reform. (N Engl J Med 1989; 320: 102-8.)


_____________________________________________

The problems with MD's health exchange are not isolated,......all of MD public policy is a disaster because none of it is written by public advocates.....it is entirely written by the corporate 1% that make policy simply to move profit to the top....ergo, people are not placed in charge because of talent but because of having the 3 monkey syndrome.....SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NOT EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL....public policy in policing, education, development are all failures and hundreds of billions of the state's revenue have been lost just during O'Malley's tenure as Mayor of Baltimore and now Governor of Maryland.

Remember, the goal with these state health systems is to end Medicare and Medicaid as Federal programs and dismantle them through state policy!  We want to be shouting for Expanded and Improved Medicare for All!!

Also, please know it is not the democratic party bringing these republican policies forward.....it is neo-liberals that have control of the democratic party.  We simply need to rebuild the democratic party by running labor and justice to reverse all of this attack on public health!


Also note that it is Beilenson  leading with a so-called private non-profit EVERGREEN that is designed to catch all of what was public sector Medicare, Medicaid, and public sector health plans.....AND HE IS JOHNS HOPKINS.

Below is what is happening with all of Maryland policy----the connected are throwing together businesses to capture all the wealth from taxpayer money building something we do not even need as Medicare already has a system!


'Both had expanded rapidly to build the Maryland site, expecting it could give them a foothold in the potentially lucrative health-exchange market'.


Maryland officials were warned for a year of problems with online health-insurance site


By Aaron C. Davis and Mary Pat Flaherty, Published: January 11   Washington Post

More than a year before Maryland launched its health insurance exchange, senior state officials failed to heed warnings that no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan for how it would be ready by Oct. 1.

Over the following months, as political leaders continued to proclaim that the state’s exchange would be a national model, the system went through three different project managers, the feuding between contractors hired to build the online exchange devolved into lawsuits, and key people quit, including a top information technology official because, as he would later say, the project “was a disaster waiting to happen.”

Timeline

A timeline of events and related documents tied to the Maryland health care exchange.


The Democratic gubernatorial hopeful is the only female candidate at the top of a ticket.


The repeated warnings culminated days before the launch, with one from contractors testing the Web site that said it was “extremely unstable” and another from an outside consultant that urged state officials not to let residents enroll in health plans because there was “no clear picture” of what would happen when the exchange would turn on.

Within moments of its launch at noon Oct. 1, the Web site crashed in a calamitous debut that was supposed to be a crowning moment for Maryland officials who had embraced President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and pledged to build a state-run exchange that would be unparalleled.

Instead, by the next morning only four people had signed up using the Web site — and amazed that anyone had gotten through the system successfully, state officials contacted each of them to make sure they were real. The site’s problems continue to prevent Marylanders from signing up for health insurance. As of Friday, 20,358 people had selected private plans, and state officials have said they do not expect to come close to their initial goal of 150,000 by the end of March.

This report is based on a Washington Post review of thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents, including e-mails, internal reports, audits and court records, along with interviews with dozens of current and former contractors, state officials and others. The review shows that the creation of the exchange was dysfunctional from the start and that there were repeated missteps at almost every level.

On the morning of Oct. 1, shortly after Obama had proclaimed that Maryland would lead the charge in signing up residents for new health-care plans, the director of the state’s health exchange was repeatedly rejected by the network before she became the first to log on, with the help of her IT staff.

Since then, an unknown number of Marylanders have experienced the same frustration with the Web site and have been prevented from signing up for health insurance.

As the state continues to try to fix the site, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and state lawmakers are working to enact emergency legislation to spend millions to help insure those who could not sign up and had to begin the year with no coverage.

With many Marylanders still facing frozen computer screens and error codes when they attempt to select insurance, O’Malley is expected this coming week to decline an offer by the Obama administration to temporarily take over parts of the troubled site, despite the urging of some state Democrats to embrace the move. This past week, O’Malley acknowledged that the rollout “did not meet our expectations” but said that many things have been fixed and the state’s site is improving.

It’s a situation far different than what O’Malley predicted on a sunny morning in March 2010, less than 24 hours after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. O’Malley called reporters to the entrance of an Anne Arundel County emergency room to announce that Maryland would begin drafting plans to “immediately begin the work to ensure our state leads the nation.”

‘There is a risk . . .’

Of the 14 states that opted to build and run their own health-insurance marketplaces, Maryland was among the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of what became known as “Obamacare.” And it became the second state, trailing California, to enact legislation creating an exchange.

Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D), the highest-ranking elected official charged with implementing the law, was invited to speak across the country about the state’s early success. The Obama administration began depositing tens of millions of dollars in state accounts to pay for development, thinking Maryland’s exchange might be built so early that other states could copy it.

But out of public view, reports of trouble started arriving.

The first came in the fall of 2012, just over a year before the exchange was to launch. Auditors from the Portland, Maine-based firm of BerryDunn found that exchange officials were missing early deadlines to begin building the IT backbone for the public Web site, known as the Maryland Health Connection. The exchange was supposed to have signed agreements with state agencies that would allow them to link data from sources such as Medicaid and the Department of Motor Vehicles to the nascent site. But most agencies had not heard from the exchange or were unaware that the work was even overdue. The findings were summarized in a Nov. 1, 2012, letter to the president of the Maryland Senate and the speaker of the House of Delegates.

Almost $9 million in federal money was set aside to pay BerryDunn to be the watchdog for the high-profile project, with the expectation that Maryland officials would use the assessments to correct course as needed. The Post obtained copies of the confidential documents.

At the exchange’s temporary offices in north Baltimore during the fall of 2012, no one could produce for BerryDunn standard project plans showing a timeline and checklist for how the main IT contractor, from Fargo, N.D., would get the job done. The exchange’s staff, then just seven full-time state employees and borrowed ones from other agencies, “may not be sufficient to complete the work,” BerryDunn said in a PowerPoint presentation delivered to senior state officials in December. Five of the presentation’s slides began with: “There is a risk . . .”

One proved particularly prescient: Maryland might build all of the components of its health-insurance exchange and then put them together and find out they do not work, the presenters said. It was a serious risk, because the state also did not appear to be leaving itself with enough time to “complete, verify and test all system components before go-live.”

The 10 months that remained before the launch would go by quickly, the consultant warned, but corrective action could get the project back on track.

Two of O’Malley’s Cabinet members, his senior IT advisers and leaders of the exchange received copies of the confidential monthly reports, according to distribution lists. The first was also summarized in the technically worded letter to lawmakers. Aides to the legislative leaders said that the significance of the warning was not clear at the time and that they never knew the outside audits continued.

Late in 2012, the consultant’s reports focused increasingly on warnings that no one seemed to be in charge. Maryland Health Secretary Joshua Sharfstein; Human Resources Secretary Ted Dallas, the Cabinet member in charge of Medicaid; and Rebecca Pearce, the exchange leader, tried to make decisions together. It was a “three-headed-monster. . . . The next meeting could overrule the last. It was classic, you know, nothing was moving,” said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Within the exchange, Pearce, who had been lured away from a top job at Kaiser Permanente to run the system, was jostling with her own project manager for day-to-day control. Sunny Raheja was a state contractor who preceded Pearce on the exchange and would go to Sharfstein for decisions, according to documents as well as exchange officials who witnessed the dysfunction.

Ultimately, Raheja, who declined to comment, was replaced, and Pearce brought in a Medicaid IT specialist to run the technical side.

As Pearce’s new project manager began, the outside auditor said there was still no dis­cern­ible plan for building the exchange, no oversight by the state and poor communication among the contractors hired to build the online site.

“There is also no overall Master Project Plan and schedule that is being utilized to manage the milestones and activities necessary for the entire program effort,” BerryDunn warned in a Feb. 25 report.

The consultant broke the project into 11 categories and began labeling them as red, yellow or green — seven were in red, four were in yellow.

“From our perspective, agreement on a consolidated work plan will need input from all . . . so that there is a common understanding of what needs to occur between now and Oct. 1, 2013.”

In e-mails, Pearce’s new project manager said the situation appeared untenable. He resigned after a month, and the third project manager in three months took over in April — with six months to go before the site would launch.

“I think the wheels came off very early on,” said Amir Segev, who was deputy IT director for the exchange from February to May.

Segev said he left after only a few months “because it was a disaster waiting to happen.”

Contractors at odds

By May, the Obama administration was deciding which states would be allowed to proceed with building their own exchanges and which ones it would force to use the federal exchange. The team gave Maryland a deadline of June 1 to prove a core task: Its rudimentary software would have to communicate with a data hub the federal government was building to let states check whether health-care enrollees were eligible for subsidies.

The month of May became a sprint to make the deadline.

On one of the last days before the deadline, a federal team arrived at the Maryland IT contractor’s office in Linthicum, south of Baltimore, and sat in the front row of the briefing room with computers at each desk and a projection screen on the wall.

One part of the screen showed a fake enrollee’s information being sent from Maryland; the other showed the response from the federal hub. The two connected, and Maryland passed. Despite the internal turmoil and negative audits, the state seemed to finally be on the right path.

Sharfstein, the state health secretary, and Pearce called together the production team. Pearce put her foot on a chair and thanked everyone with a deep sense of relief evident in her voice.

News of the success also passed quickly to Brown and O’Malley, who began touting it in public appearances.

But as they celebrated, feuding between the two contractors in charge of doing much of the technical work to get the Web site running was getting worse.

Shortly after it had won Maryland’s initial $50 million contract, Noridian Healthcare Solutions, a company that grew out of Medicare claims processing, hired a Florida company — run by a former executive of Noridian’s parent firm — that renamed itself EngagePoint.

Noridian and EngagePoint agreed to share profits for development of the exchange, according to court documents filed by the companies — a move that state officials said they were made aware of only much later.

But within months of joining forces, the two were fighting over costs.

By July, according to court documents, infighting had brought work to a near-standstill.

Meanwhile, the software used successfully to pass the June test had to be replaced with newer and untested versions needed to meet federal security requirements.

In an interview, Sharfstein said the dispute had become a major distraction by then.

“For a while, we tried to play marriage counselor, but it was clear these were two companies that couldn’t work together well,” he said.

And another federal test was looming.

On Aug. 26, five weeks before the launch date, Maryland faced its final major test with federal overseers, a more thorough demonstration of how each part of its system would work.

This one did not go as well.

When the test got to the part of having a fictitious person choose a health plan, the Web site crashed. It also could not fully send enrollment data to insurers or e-mail Marylanders when they successfully selected a plan — something it still cannot do.

BerryDunn, the consultant, said the state must “hold Noridian to scheduled” deadlines and make 65 other changes. The state, it warned, also needed to start focusing on contingencies, knowing some parts of the site were bound to fail.

On a weekend in early September, Sharfstein logged on to measure the problems for himself. “You don’t want to know what he thought,” Pearce relayed in a message to her team, according to a testing report.

Pearce would soon send an e-mail titled “12 days out,” pleading with contractors to finish the job after she visited their Linthicum office on the evening of Sept. 18 and found it nearly empty.

“There’s a management methodology that has 4 aspects: pamper/pull/push/pummel. I think I have tried all of them at some point during this process,” she wrote at 11:24 p.m. “Tonight I am begging . . . we have got to make this reality.”

The success of the exchange was also becoming freighted with political implications as Brown launched his campaign for governor. In an early-morning e-mail on Sept. 23, Sharfstein wrote to Pearce, under a subject line “from today’s [Baltimore] Sun.”

He pasted in a line from U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s endorsement of the lieutenant governor the day before: “While we’re fighting to save Obamacare, we know that in Maryland we have a health exchange that’s ready to go because of Anthony Brown,” the Maryland Democrat said.

Pearce forwarded the e-mail to the heads of Noridian and EngagePoint, adding one line: “It’s time to get this right. Now. Period.”

Noridian chief executive Tom McGraw responded with military sparseness: “Understood.”

Testers filed their final report on Sept. 13, calling the last version of the software they could review “extremely unstable.” Internal testing of one aspect of the site found 449 defects, almost half of which would probably trouble the final release.

‘What’s wrong?’

On a conference call at the start of the final week of September, senior aides gave O’Malley a high-level summary of expected troubles with the exchange.

The Web site would not allow some people to check for subsidies or to select plans, but everyone should at least be able to log on, he was told, according to several aides.

The governor ended the call, said John Griffin, his chief of staff, saying the state should “move forward.”

But two days later, Griffin requested that a roomful of aides to the governor and Brown vote on whether to proceed. Most gave the Oct. 1 launch a green light. The next day, O’Malley smiled as Obama visited Prince George’s County and praised state leaders for being ready to roll.

Just after midnight on Oct. 1, programmers in the Linthicum office listened through a speaker phone to the anxiety growing in Pearce’s voice as she tried to log on, according to several people on the call. The site was not yet viewable publicly, but it should have allowed her to sign on. If there was one part of the site everyone agreed would work, it was this.

They waited for a second try and then a third as she reentered her name and address. Everything was correct. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

No one was sure. Someone noticed that Pearce had left blank a box for the four-digit extension of her Zip code. Maybe the computer code required every single data field to be filled in to proceed. Try adding that, one manager said.

Pearce did not know the extension to her Zip code. They listened as she Googled it and attempted a fourth sign-on.

Click. She was in.

At 8 a.m., the exchange was supposed to launch simultaneously with other states, but it froze. The exchange posted a message online asking residents to come back in four hours.

Finally, at noon, officials watched from a command center in Baltimore as about 10,000 people logged on to the site, pinging servers in Fargo.

Screens showed blank graphs that should fill with enrollees moving through each phase of the system: creating accounts, checking for subsidies, shopping for plans, purchasing.

The stroke of noon came and went. No one logged on. No one bought health care.

The next morning was scarcely better. In the subject line of an e-mail to fellow contractors at 6:53 a.m., Noridian’s McGraw typed “Maryland is Down,” and wrote,“We cannot get through.”

More than 24 hours after the launch, there were just four people who had selected plans and eight more who appeared to have logged on.

An IT contractor wrote to state officials on Oct. 2 wondering if the four were “legitimate,” since contractors could not even access the site. She questioned if they might be fictitious accounts from prior phases of testing.

But later that day, the exchange’s chief information officer responded with good news: “The team has researched the 4 records and have determined these are for real customers. 3 applicants and 1 dependent. Applications have been processed albeit very slowly and sporadically.”

Pearce, who resigned under pressure in December, declined to comment on many aspects of the exchange’s development but said the wholesale failure on Oct. 1 “was a complete surprise to all of us.”

“We didn’t know it would be broken when we turned it on,” she said.

The day after the failed launch, Pearce sent an e-mail to the heads of Noridian and EngagePoint demanding answers.

“Gentlemen,” she wrote. “As the executives in charge of this program I would like to understand from you exactly what is happening with the project, and what you are doing to address our issues.”

But by the end of the first week of October, relations between the two companies were so strained that Pearce and Sharfstein acted as go-betweens. After more weeks of fighting, EngagePoint, the subcontractor, made a bold proposal to state officials, urging them to allow it to take over the project entirely. Days later, Noridian instead fired EngagePoint, whose programmers packed up their laptops and left, leaving some of the software in Ukraine, where EngagePoint had hired programmers.

It was now up to Noridian to fix the site — with few employees certain of where to begin. It began making offers to hire back fired EngagePoint workers it said were key to fixing the site.

EngagePoint chief executive Pradeep Goel was aghast. “We are not going to respond to ridiculous emails from Noridian demanding our team members show up for work after being escorted out of the office,” Goel wrote to McGraw and Noridian’s attorneys on Oct. 26. “Are you people on crack cocaine?”

EngagePoint persuaded a judge to sign a restraining order that blocked Noridian from hiring back workers to fix the site. Noridian countersued, and the state entered the fray, siding with Noridian for the sake of Marylanders who needed a functioning site.

Through its attorney, Daniel Graham, Noridian declined to discuss its work with EngagePoint, citing the ongoing litigation. In a statement, the company said that “the complexity of this project has led to a number of major issues beyond what was anticipated.” But the company believes that recent improvements have made the system easier to use and said it “will continue to work with the State” to improve it further.

Karen See, a spokeswoman for EngagePoint, said the firm would not discuss its work, also citing the lawsuits.

The full effect of the failed project on the two companies remains unclear. Both had expanded rapidly to build the Maryland site, expecting it could give them a foothold in the potentially lucrative health-exchange market.

Before the launch, the state had allocated about $100 million in federal money for the construction of its exchange, and, according to one estimate, it has spent tens of millions more since Oct. 1. It is unclear how much of the added costs federal officials will agree to cover. But the bigger question is how many people the state can sign up. 
IT'S THE MARYLAND APPROACH TO PUBLIC WORKS.....

Maryland’s next deadline is March 31, the date by which it expected 150,000 people to have used the site to select health insurance, excluding Medicaid. Officials have said the state will not meet that goal.

“It’s a problem for the people of Maryland, a problem for the people that Obamacare was supposed to help,” said Peter Beilenson, chief executive of the Evergreen Health Co-Op, a new Maryland insurer that launched its business on a bet that it could compete with the state’s bigger insurers on a smooth-running Maryland exchange.

The company had a waiting list of more than 1,000 people who were expected to sign up with it when the exchange turned on.

For months, however, it could barely sign up one. On its best day in recent weeks, its staff helped 10 people navigate Maryland’s site. Evergreen still has more than 1,000 people waiting to buy insurance.





Jennifer Jenkins, Jenna Johnson and Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.


0 Comments

January 10th, 2014

1/10/2014

0 Comments

 
AS NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMISTS LIKE REICH AND KRUGMAN SHOUT OUT AGAINST THE WEALTH INEQUITY OF TODAY WITHOUT EVER ACKNOWLEDGING THAT IT ISN'T INEQUITY-----IT WAS A VISIGOTH LOOTING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY BY MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD------WE SAY, A GOVERNMENT THAT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW SUSPENDS STATUTES OF LIMITATION!

I see in Baltimore all these middle-class homeowners that were able to keep their homes in hard times and I am shouting----financial analysts are warning to get rid of houses as this coming economic crash will bring a depression so you may be next!  Gentrification will go up the income scale!



I spoke last time about how Obama and neo-liberals played this entire crisis like a playbook written by Wall Street.  We saw how these main street bailouts were deliberately written so that only the affluent homeowners would access help and the FHA, a vital agency with a long service to families was targeted to be shut out.  Neo-liberals are working just as hard as republicans to end all War on Poverty and New Deal programs and fair housing goes!!!!  So, the middle-class  holding on to jobs and their homes now had better buckle-up because financial analysts are calling for people owning homes to get rid of them as the next, more powerful economic collapse comes soon......

THIS IS OBAMA'S LEGACY AND ALL OF MARYLAND'S DEMOCRATS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND ALL EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE. 


SHAME AND DISGRACE FOR MARYLAND NEO-LIBERALS WATCHING SILENTLY AS THIS UNFOLDED.

What could we do, they say?  When 50 states attorney general shout out in 2005 that the mortgage industry is systemically criminal--------

YOU SHOUT OUT TO MARYLAND CITIZENS NOT TO GET INVOLVED IN THESE LOANS.  THEN, YOU SHOUT OUT OVER AND OVER THAT JUSTICE HAS NOT OCCURRED!

That is what a democrat would do!


Below you see the housing program that Obama and neo-liberals pretended was the bailout of main street and help in curbing foreclosures.  It was a ruse of course as they fumbled the roll-out long enough for most people that could have gotten help went under trying to get it!  Mind you....some people were helped.  The percentage I see over and again is 10% of foreclosures were saved.

 I sit and watch the same banks and mortgage corporations that created the massive subprime mortgage fraud now connected with HARP, earning more money from fees attached to yet another mortgage refinance.  From Quickens Loans to  Wells Fargo and Bank of America.....they are earning billions on HARP.

HARP Program Requirements In order to participate in HARP you need to meet the following requirements:

  • Your mortgage must be owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac
  • You must be current on your mortgage, and cannot have made a payment more than 30 days late in the past year.
  • You must have negative home equity (you owe more on your mortgage than your home is worth), but your mortgage cannot exceed 125% of the value of your home.
  • Refinancing must help the affordability or stability of your mortgage.
  • You must have the ability to continue making payments
  • Mortgage owned or guaranteed by the FHA, VA, or USDA are not eligible for HARP.
  • Your property must be 1-4 units.
  • Your property must also be your primary residence. 2nd homes are not eligible for refinancing under HARP.
________________________________________________
As you see, HARP deliberately excludes FHA and the other government mortgages from this 'stimulus' and these loans are for those needing the help the most.  See why tens of millions of people went into foreclosure?  They were the ones most affected by the massive frauds and simple Rule of Law would have kept those homes with those families.

The reason Obama and neo-liberals in Congress chose Freddie and Fannie for this stimulus is that these loans were private mortgages and they wanted bank mortgages to be stabilized with the higher end prices and they are trying to end FHA and low-income homeownership. Neo-liberals work with republicans to end all War on Poverty and New Deal programs!

Obama and neo-liberals called these homeowners 'responsible' because they were able to weather years of recession.


Remember, they wanted everyone out of property ownership and into rentals because Pottersville landlords can keep people poor with high rents and control where they live!  Neo-liberals are socially engineering this return to Medieval society with the serfs outside the castle gates....into what is suburbia.  What about equal housing and access?  THE BILL OF RIGHTS GOES WITH TPP YOU KNOW!  In Maryland, the ACLU is actually helping with this even as it is unconstitutional.


The FHA was a successful program for decades causing very little cost for taxpayers.  So, the only reason to get rid of it is that it took away profit for banks wanting the mortgage business. 





Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages from financial institutions, providing a way for those financial institutions to have more cash to continue to lend money for additional mortgages. Congress enacted a statutory mission for these GSEs to bring "liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets."


FHA mortgages were created by the United States government to give borrowers with low credit scores and down payments who could not qualify for a Freddie Mac mortgage the opportunity to buy a home.


_____________________________________________


When Obama chose to suspend Rule of Law and allow all this mortgage fraud go without justice it was the old, women, and children who were hit the hardest.  Seniors taking home equity loans thinking they would be able to address them over time did not know massive corporate fraud was being allowed to go unabated.  These were the 'irresponsible' homeowners Obama and neo-liberals allowed to be taken under.

Now, Wall Street wanted all real estate back into the hands of the banks so if you watch TV you are familiar with the REVERSE MORTGAGE DEALS THAT HAND HOMES TO THE BANKS AFTER SENIORS DIE.  This is handy for families with seniors struggling to survive, but it was yet another device to move homeownership away from average people as these families who would normally have inherited these homes now had no inheritance.  Meanwhile, the estate taxes are being eliminated slowly but surely for the wealthy.


THE FIRST THING A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY DOES IS PROTECT THE OLD AND YOUNG....NOT NEO-LIBERALS!

THIS WAS MASSIVE FRAUD AND THE ECONOMY WAS DAMAGED BY THIS FRAUD.  ALL OF THE AID BY CONGRESS SHOULD HAVE COME TO MAIN STREET.  RULE OF LAW DEMANDS IT SO------WHEN GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW THEY SUSPEND STATUTES OF LIMITATIONS!

Senior Citizens Worst Hit By Foreclosures in America
Filed Under Repo Homes

It is the senior citizens that have been worst hit by the foreclosure crisis in America. About 28% of those boiling in the foreclosure cauldron are aged above 50. A recent study by AARP has questioned the validity of the hitherto popular surmise that the seniors have escaped the crisis because of they had built up sufficient equity on their houses.

The research done by AARP show that 684,000 persons aged 50 are in foreclosure during the last six months of 2007. Those who were above 50 comprised of 28% of all those who were in the foreclosure soup. Of these 684,000 senior borrowers, 50,000 were in foreclosures and lost their houses.

At the close of 2007 the rate among senior citizens of America who were in foreclosure was 0.24%. This was half of those who were aged less than 50 and have less equity than their elders.

Susan Reinhard of Public Policy Institute said that the seniors of America are dependent on their houses both as a shelter and an asset when retirement knocks. She said, “Losing a home jeopardizes long-term financial security with limited time to recover.”

The report also highlights the effects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on those who were aged 50 and above. This group was 17 times more likely to be caught by foreclosure than those with prime mortgages. The states with high repo home rates among the seniors are California, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan.

Older Americans had made use of the equity on their houses for making repairs to their property and financing the higher education of their children. But seniors with fixed income are facing problems making mortgage payments. The sluggish economy with inflation is making the going even tougher for those with advancing age. Fall in the real estate market has affected all age groups.

Daniel Alpert of Westwood Capital that both young and old who had siphoned off the equity on their houses are now rocking on the same boat of foreclosure Many seniors like the juniors contracted teaser loans thanks to the aggressive peddling of the same by agents. The mortgage forms were also difficult to comprehend. The call of the hour is simplified mortgages. So it was a question of sales talk and trust that were misused for disastrous consequences for all – the lender, the borrower and the community together with the hapless individual whether young or old.




______________________________________________



Below you see an article from Fall 2011 talking about how very few on main street were able to access HARP from the time it rolled out with the bank bailout.  This was supposedly main street's bailout but between the long-term unemployment creating the environment of missed payments and the banks constantly 'losing paperwork' that basically caused most people applying to fail to be considered. 

ALL OF THIS WAS DELIBERATE AS THIS ENTIRE MORTGAGE FRAUD WAS ABOUT GETTING MAIN STREET OUT OF THEIR HOMES SO THE GOAL WAS TO GET AS MANY HOMEOWNERS AS POSSIBLE INTO FORECLOSURE. 

Here in Maryland advocates for people heading to foreclosure shouted even into 2012 that  the money intended to augment people heading to foreclosure from the $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement was not getting to people.  So, just think, people who we all know were struggling from the economic downturn were left from 2009-2012 mostly unable to get the help they needed with this HARP policy. 

Flash forward to 2013 and we see Obama shouting that those funds set aside for HARP be used.  By now, most people of average means have lost their homes to foreclosure.


The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP): What you need to know

By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: October 24, 2011

On Monday, the federal government announced that it would revise the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), implementing changes that The Washington Post’s Zachary A. Goldfarb reported would “allow many more struggling borrowers to refinance their mortgages at today’s ultra-low rates, reducing monthly payments for some homeowners and potentially providing a modest boost to the economy.”

The HARP program, which was rolled out in 2009, is designed to help. Those who are “underwater” on their homes and owe more than the homes are worth. So far, The Post reported, it has reached less than one-tenth of the 5 million borrowers it was designed to help. Here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to know about the changes.

Video

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, talks about the regulator's mortgage relief program that will expand to allow homeowners to refinance regardless of how much their houses have dropped in value.

Gallery

  Flashback: Last year, some mortgage lenders and government officials took action after discovering that many mortgage documents were mishandled.


What was announced? The enhancements will allow some homeowners who are not currently eligible to refinance to do so under HARP. The changes cut fees for borrowers who want to refinance into short-term mortgages and some other borrowers. They also eliminate a cap that prevented “underwater” borrowers who owe more than 125 percent of what their property is worth from accessing the program.

Am I eligible? To be eligible, you must have a mortgage owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, sold to those agencies on or before May 31, 2009. The current loan-to-value ratio on the mortgage must be greater than 80 percent. Having a mortgage that was previously refinanced under the program disqualifies you from the program. Borrowers cannot not have missed any mortgage payments in the past six months and cannot have had more than one missed payment in the past 12 months.

How do I take advantage of HARP? According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the first step borrowers should take is to see whether their mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. If so, borrowers should contact lenders that offer HARP refinances.

When do the changes go into effect? The FHFA is expected to publish final changes in November. According to a fact sheet on the program, the timing will vary by lender.



____________________________________________

I speak quite often about the targeted families in urban centers because of what is happening in Baltimore.  The black middle-class was hit hardest as their wealth was often tied to these urban areas hit with mortgage fraud and as we know the US Justice Department has failed to give any justice to people of color in these urban centers.  City Hall is not only allowing the subprime loan fraud go without justice......I have spoken about how City Hall is actually preying on these citizens with home seizures from faulty utility bills or small amounts of back taxes.

THIS IS NOT A DONE DEAL AS ALL OF THIS HAS YET TO SEE JUSTICE AND RULE OF LAW WILL HAVE LOW-INCOME HOUSING FOR VICTIMS OF FRAUD IN THE CITY CENTER!


The Great Eviction: Black America and the Toll of the Foreclosure Crisis From predatory loans to evictions at gunpoint, neighborhoods are hosting bitter conflicts between activists and market forces—By Laura Gottesdiener

| Thu Aug. 1, 2013 1:04 PM


We cautiously ascend the staircase, the pitch black of the boarded-up house pierced only by my companion's tiny circle of light. At the top of the landing, the flashlight beam dances in a corner as Quafin, who offered only her first name, points out the furnace. She is giddy; this house—unlike most of the other bank-owned buildings on the block—isn't completely uninhabitable.

It had been vacated, sealed, and winterized in June 2010, according to a notice on the wall posted by BAC Field Services Corporation, a division of Bank of America. It warned: "entry by unauthorized persons is strictly prohibited." But Bank of America has clearly forgotten about the house and its requirement to provide the "maintenance and security" that would ensure the property could soon be reoccupied. The basement door is ajar, the plumbing has been torn out of the walls, and the carpet is stained with water. The last family to live here bought the home for $175,000 in 2002; eight years later, the bank claimed an improbable $286,100 in past-due balances and repossessed it.

It's May 2012 and we're in Woodlawn, a largely African American neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. The crew Quafin is a part of dubbed themselves the HIT Squad, short for Housing Identification and Target. Their goal is to map blighted, bank-owned homes with overdue property taxes and neighbors angry enough about the destruction of their neighborhood to consider supporting a plan to repossess on the repossessors.

"Anything I can do," one woman tells the group after being briefed on its plan to rehab bank-owned homes and move in families without houses. She points across the street to a sagging, boarded-up place adorned with a worn banner—"Grandma's House Child Care: Register Now!"—and a disconnected number. There are 20 banked-owned homes like it in a five-block radius. Records showed that at least five of them were years past due on their property taxes.

Where exterior walls once were, some houses sport charred holes from fires lit by people trying to stay warm. In 2011, two Chicago firefighters died trying to extinguish such a fire at a vacant foreclosed building. Now, houses across the South Side are pockmarked with red Xs, indicating places the fire department believes to be structurally unsound. In other states--Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York, to name recent examples—foreclosed houses have taken to exploding after bank contractors forgot to turn off the gas.

Most of the occupied homes in the neighborhood we're visiting display small signs: "Don't shoot," they read in lettering superimposed on a child's face, "I want to grow up." On the bank-owned houses, such signs have been replaced by heavy-duty steel window guards. ("We work with all types of servicers, receivers, property management, and bank asset managers, enabling you to quickly and easily secure your building so you can move on," boasts Door and Window Guard Systems, a leading company in the burgeoning "building security industry.")

The dangerous houses are the ones left unsecured, littered with trash and empty Cobra vodka bottles. We approach one that reeks of rancid tuna fish and attempt to push open the basement door, held closed only by a flimsy wire. The next-door neighbor, returning home, asks: "Did you know they killed someone in that backyard just this morning?"

The Equivalent of the Population of Michigan Foreclosed
Since 2007, the foreclosure crisis has displaced at least 10 million people from more than four million homes across the country. Families have been evicted from colonials and bungalows, A-frames and two-family brownstones, trailers and ranches, apartment buildings and the prefabricated cookie-cutters that sprang up after World War II. The displaced are young and old, rich and poor, and of every race, ethnicity, and religion. They add up to approximately the entire population of Michigan.

However, African American neighborhoods were targeted more aggressively than others for the sort of predatory loans that led to mass evictions after the economic meltdown of 2007-2008. At the height of the rapacious lending boom, nearly 50% of all loans given to African American families were deemed "subprime." The New York Times described these contracts as "a financial time-bomb."

Over the last year and a half, I traveled through many of these neighborhoods, reporting on the grassroots movements of resistance to foreclosure and displacement that have been springing up in the wake of the explosion. These community efforts have proven creative, inspiring, and often effective—but in too many cities and towns, the landscape that forms the backdrop to such a movement of hope is one of almost overwhelming destruction. Lots filled with "Cheap Bank-Owned!" trailers line highways. Cities hire contractors dubbed "Blackwater Bailiffs" to keep pace with the dizzying eviction rate.

In recent years, the foreclosure crisis has been turning many African American communities into conflict zones, torn between a market hell-bent on commodifying life itself and communities organizing to protect their neighborhoods. The more I ventured into such areas, the more I came to realize that the clash of values going on isn't just theoretical or metaphorical.

"Internal displacement causes conflict," explained J.R. Fleming, the chairman of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. "And there's no other country in the world that would force so much internal displacement and pretend that it's something else."

Evictions at Gunpoint
It was three in the morning when at least a dozen police cruisers pulled up to the single-story, green-shuttered house in the African American Atlanta suburb where Christine Frazer and her family lived. The precise number of sheriffs and deputies who arrived is disputed; the local radio station reported 25, while Frazer recalled seeing between 40 and 50.

A locksmith drilled off the home's locks and dozens of officers burst into the house with flashlights and handguns.

"Who's in the house?" they shouted. Aside from Frazer, a widow with a vocal devotion to the Man Above, there were three other residents: her 85-year-old mother, her adult daughter, and her four-year-old grandson. Things began to happen fast. Animal control rounded up the pets. Officers told the women to get dressed. Could she take a shower? Frazer asked. Imagine there's a fire in your house, the officer replied.

"They came to my home like I was a drug dealer," she told reporters later. Over the next seven hours, the officers hauled out the entire contents of her home and cordoned off the street to prevent friends from helping her retrieve her things.

"I have no idea where some of my jewelry is, stuff I bought when I was 30 years old," said Frazer. "I am sixty-three. They just threw everything everywhere, helter-skelter on the front lawn in the dark."

The eviction-turned-raid sparked controversy across Atlanta when it occurred in the spring of 2012, in part because Frazer had a motion pending in federal court that should have stayed the eviction, and in part because she was an active participant of Occupy Homes Atlanta. But this type of militarized reaction is often the outcome when communities—especially those of color—organize to resist eviction.

When Nicole Shelton attempted to move back into her repossessed home in a picket-fence subdivision in North Carolina, the Raleigh police department sent in more than a dozen police officers and an eight-person SWAT team. Officers were equipped with M5 submachine guns. A helicopter roared overhead. In Boston, one organizer with the community group City Life/Vida Urbana remembers the police acting so aggressively at an eviction blockade in a Haitian neighborhood that the grandmother of the family had a heart attack right in the driveway.

And sometimes it doesn't require resistance at all. On the South Side of Chicago, explained Toussaint Losier, a community organizer completing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, "They bust in the door, and it's at the point of a gun that you get evicted."

Exiles in America
There have been widespread foreclosures—and some organized resistance—in predominately white communities, too. Kevin Kirkman, captain of the civil division of the Lee County sheriff's office, explained, "I get so many [eviction] papers in here, it's unbelievable."

Advertise on MotherJones.com

More than 75% of the residents in North Carolina's Lee County are whites. But Kirkman still sees the ripple effects of mass foreclosure here. "You're talking about a mudslide where a lot of things are affected. You're talking about taxes, about retail sales if people move, about food services, about gasoline. You see what I'm talking about? When you lose a family in the community? Some people leave the community. I have seen people leave the state of North Carolina."

He added, "I'm going be honest with you, my feeling is that I would not do these evictions."


______________________________________________
I wanted to end with this main stream shout out that the subprime mortgage loan fraud is recognized by all and the amount of these frauds are in the trillions of dollars and as of now we have gotten maybe a trillion in subprime loan settlement and most of that has been sent right back to banks as developers......WE ALL KNOW THIS!

Op-Ed Columnist The Mortgage Fraud Fraud

By JOE NOCERA Published: June 1, 2012 

I got an e-mail the other day from Richard Engle telling me that his son Charlie would be getting out of prison this month. I was happy to hear it.

Charlie’s ordeal isn’t over yet, of course. When he leaves prison on June 20, Charlie, 49, will move temporarily to a halfway house, after which he will be on probation for another five years. And unless he can get the verdict overturned, he will have to spend the rest of his life with a felony on his record.

Perhaps you remember Charlie Engle. I wrote about him not long after he entered a minimum-security facility in Beaver, W.Va., 16 months ago. He’s the poor guy who went to jail for lying on a liar loan during the housing bubble.

There were two things about Charlie’s prosecution that really bothered me. First, he’d clearly been targeted by an agent of the Internal Revenue Service who seemed offended that Charlie was an ultramarathoner without a steady day job. The I.R.S. conducted “Dumpster dives” into his garbage and put a wire on a female undercover agent hoping to find some dirt on him. Unable to unearth any wrongdoing on his tax returns, the I.R.S. discovered he had taken out several subprime mortgages that didn’t require income verification. His income on one of them was wildly inflated. They don’t call them liar loans for nothing.

Charlie has always insisted that he never filled out the loan document — his mortgage broker did it, and he was actually a victim of mortgage fraud. (The broker later pleaded guilty to another mortgage fraud.) Indeed, according to a recent court filing by Charlie’s lawyer, the government failed to turn over exculpatory evidence that could have helped Charlie prove his innocence. For whatever inexplicable reason, prosecutors really wanted to nail Charlie Engle. And they did.

Second, though, it seemed incredible to me that with all the fraud that took place during the housing bubble, the Justice Department was focusing not on the banks that had issued the fraudulent loans, but rather on those who had taken out the loans, which invariably went sour when housing prices fell.

As I would later learn, Charlie Engle was no aberration. The current meme — argued most recently by Charles Ferguson, in his new book “Predator Nation” — is that not a single top executive at any of the firms that nearly brought down the financial system has spent so much as a day in jail. And that is true enough.

But what is also true, and which is every bit as corrosive to our belief in the rule of law, is that the Justice Department has instead taken after the smallest of small fry — and then trumpeted those prosecutions as proof of how tough it is on mortgage fraud. It is a shameful way for the government to act.

“These people thought they were pursuing the American dream,” says Mark Pennington, a lawyer in Des Moines who regularly defends home buyers being prosecuted by the local United States attorney. “Right here in Des Moines,” he said, “there was a big subprime outfit, Wells Fargo Financial. No one there has been prosecuted. They are only going after people who lost their homes after the bubble burst. It’s a scandal.”

The Justice Department has had a tough run recently. Last week, Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general — who was recently given a role by President Obama to investigate the mortgage-backed securities issued during the bubble — complained publicly that he wasn’t getting the resources he needed from the Justice Department. And, of course, on Thursday, a federal judge declared a mistrial on five charges of campaign finance fraud and conspiracy in the trial of the former presidential candidate John Edwards.

In the Edwards case, the Justice Department spent tens of millions of dollars, and trotted out novel legal theories, to prosecute a man who was essentially trying to keep people from discovering that he had had a mistress and an out-of-wedlock child. Salacious though it was, the case has zero public import. Yet this same Justice Department isn’t willing to use similar resources — and perhaps even trot out some novel legal theories — to go after the pervasive corporate wrongdoing that gave us the financial crisis and the Great Recession. (I should note that the Justice Department claims that it “will not hesitate” to prosecute any “institution where there is evidence of a crime.”)

Think back to the last time the federal government went after corporate crooks. It was after the Internet bubble. Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay of Enron were prosecuted and found guilty. Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, went to jail. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco was prosecuted and given a lengthy prison sentence. Now recall which Justice Department prosecuted those men.

Amazing, isn’t it? George W. Bush has turned out to be tougher on corporate crooks than Barack Obama.






0 Comments

    Author

    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All
    2014 Economic Crash
    21st Century Economy
    Affordable Care Act
    Affordable Care Act
    Alec
    Americorp/VISTA
    Anthony Brown
    Anthony Brown
    Anti Incumbant
    Anti-incumbant
    Anti Incumbent
    Anti Incumbent
    Attacking The Post Office Union
    Baltimore And Cronyism
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Recall/Retroactive Term Limits
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Of America
    Bank Settlement
    Bank-settlement
    B Corporations
    Bgeexelon Mergerf59060c411
    Brookings Institution
    Business Tax Credits
    California Charter Expansion
    Cardin
    Career Colleges
    Career Colleges Replacing Union Apprenticeships
    Charters
    Charter School
    Collection Agencies
    Common Core
    Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
    Consumer-financial-protection-bureau
    Corporate Media
    Corporate-media
    Corporate Oversight
    Corporate-oversight
    Corporate Politicians
    Corporate-politicians
    Corporate Rule
    Corporate-rule
    Corporate Taxes
    Corporate-taxes
    Corporate Tax Reform
    Corporatizing Us Universities
    Cost-benefit-analysis
    Credit Crisis
    Credit-crisis
    Cummings
    Department Of Education
    Department Of Justice
    Department-of-justice
    Derivatives Reform
    Development
    Dismantling Public Justice
    Dodd Frank
    Doddfrankbba4ff090a
    Doug Gansler
    Doug-gansler
    Ebdi
    Education Funding
    Education Reform
    Edwards
    Election Reform
    Election-reform
    Elections
    Emigration
    Energy-sector-consolidation-in-maryland
    Enterprise Zones
    Equal Access
    Estate Taxes
    European Crisis
    Expanded And Improved Medicare For All
    Expanded-and-improved-medicare-for-all
    Failure To Prosecute
    Failure-to-prosecute
    Fair
    Fair And Balanced Elections
    Fair-and-balanced-elections
    Farm Bill
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmaryland
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmarylandd20a348918
    Federal-emergency-management-agency-fema
    Federal Reserve
    Financial Reform Bill
    Food Safety Not In Tpp
    For Profit Education
    Forprofit-education
    Fracking
    Fraud
    Freedom Of Press And Speech
    Frosh
    Gambling In Marylandbaltimore8dbce1f7d2
    Granting Agencies
    Greening Fraud
    Gun Control Policy
    Healthcare For All
    Healthcare-for-all
    Health Enterprise Zones
    High Speed Rail
    Hoyer
    Imf
    Immigration
    Incarceration Bubble
    Incumbent
    Incumbents
    Innovation Centers
    Insurance Industry Leverage And Fraud
    International Criminal Court
    International Trade Deals
    International-trade-deals
    Jack Young
    Jack-young
    Johns Hopkins
    Johns-hopkins
    Johns Hopkins Medical Systems
    Johns-hopkins-medical-systems
    Kaliope Parthemos
    Labor And Justice Law Under Attack
    Labor And Wages
    Lehmann Brothers
    Living Wageunionspolitical Action0e39f5c885
    Maggie McIntosh
    Maggie-mcintosh
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin-omalley
    Martin-omalley8ecd6b6eb0
    Maryland Health Co Ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops1f77692967
    Maryland Health Coopsccd73554da
    Maryland Judiciary
    Marylandnonprofits
    Maryland Non Profits
    Maryland Nonprofits2509c2ca2c
    Maryland Public Service Commission
    Maryland State Bar Association
    Md Credit Bondleverage Debt441d7f3605
    Media
    Media Bias
    Media-bias
    Medicaremedicaid
    Medicaremedicaid8416fd8754
    Mental Health Issues
    Mental-health-issues
    Mers Fraud
    Mikulski
    Military Privatization
    Minority Unemploymentunion And Labor Wagebaltimore Board Of Estimates4acb15e7fa
    Municipal Debt Fraud
    Ndaa-indefinite-detention
    Ndaaindefinite Detentiond65cc4283d
    Net Neutrality
    New Economy
    New-economy
    Ngo
    Non Profit To Profit
    Nonprofit To Profitb2d6cb4b41
    Nsa
    O'Malley
    Odette Ramos
    Omalley
    O'Malley
    Open Meetings
    Osha
    Patronage
    Pension-benefit-guaranty-corp
    Pension Funds
    Pension-funds
    Police Abuse
    Private-and-public-pension-fraud
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People6541f468ae
    Private Non Profits
    Private-non-profits
    Private Nonprofits50b33fd8c2
    Privatizing Education
    Privatizing Government Assets
    Privatizing-the-veterans-admin-va
    Privitizing Public Education
    Progressive Policy
    Progressive Taxes Replace Regressive Policy
    Protections Of The People
    Protections-of-the-people
    Public Education
    Public Funding Of Private Universities
    Public Housing Privatization
    Public-libraries-privatized-or-closed
    Public Private Partnerships
    Public-private-partnerships
    Public Transportation Privatization
    Public Utilities
    Rapid Bus Network
    Rawlings Blake
    Rawlings-blake
    Rawlingsblake1640055471
    Real Progressives
    Reit-real-estate-investment-trusts
    Reitreal Estate Investment Trustsa1a18ad402
    Repatriation Taxes
    Rule Of Law
    Rule-of-law
    Ruppersberger
    SAIC AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
    Sarbanes
    S Corp Taxes
    Selling Public Datapersonal Privacy
    Smart Meters
    Snowden
    Social Security
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement0d62c56e69
    Statistics As Spin
    Statistics-as-spin
    Student-corps
    Subprime Mortgage Fraud
    Subprime-mortgage-fraud
    Surveillance And Security
    Sustainability
    Teachers
    Teachers Unions2bc448afc8
    Teach For America
    Teach For America
    Technology Parks
    Third Way Democrats/new Economy/public Union Employees/public Private Patnerships/government Fraud And Corruption
    Third Way Democratsnew Economypublic Union Employeespublic Private Patnershipsgovernment Fraud And Corruption
    Third-way-democratsnew-economypublic-union-employeespublic-private-patnershipsgovernment-fraud-and-corruptionc10a007aee
    Third Way/neo Liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals5e1e6d4716
    Third Wayneoliberals7286dda6aa
    Tifcorporate Tax Breaks2d87bba974
    Tpp
    Transportation Inequity In Maryland
    Union Busting
    Unionbusting0858fddb8b
    Unions
    Unionsthird Waypost Officealec3c887e7815
    Universities
    Unreliable Polling
    Unreliable-polling
    Van Hollen
    Van-hollen
    VEOLA Environment -privatization Of Public Water
    Veterans
    War Against Women And Children
    War-against-women-and-children
    Youth Works

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.