Under water on your mortgage? Just stop paying.

The New York Times showcases an interesting approach to deal with your bloated mortgage.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For Alex Pemberton and Susan Reboyras, foreclosure is becoming a way of life — something they did not want but are in no hurry to get out of.

Foreclosure has allowed them to stabilize the family business. Go to Outback occasionally for a steak. Take their gas-guzzling airboat out for the weekend. Visit the Hard Rock Casino.

“Instead of the house dragging us down, it’s become a life raft,” said Mr. Pemberton, who stopped paying the mortgage on their house here last summer. “It’s really been a blessing...”

The average borrower in foreclosure has been delinquent for 438 days before actually being evicted, up from 251 days in January 2008, according to LPS Applied Analytics...

The couple owe $280,000 on the house, where they live with Ms. Reboyras’s two daughters, their two dogs and a very round pet raccoon named Roxanne. The house is worth less than half that amount — which they say would be their starting point in future negotiations with their lender.

“If they took the house from us, that’s all they would end up getting for it anyway,” said Ms. Reboyras, 46.

I do, of course, understand that ultimately it is good customers who end up paying for all of these bad mortgages. But you have to admit that from a negotiating standpoint, there's a certain intelligence in the logic laid out in the homeowner's strategy.

The homeowners know that the bank will end up eating a huge loss by foreclosing. So why not use that fact to your advantage? If the loan is for $280k but the house is only worth $140k, and presuming the bank has no interest in carrying the property long term while it waits for the investment to recoup value, would the bank be smart to negotiate a loan reduction to $150k or $160k just to avoid the hassle of the foreclosure process? Are we going to enter an era where the homeowner benefits from appreciation in value, but tries to stick the lender with any depreciation in value?

Deepwater follies

As people continue to torpedo BP and President Obama for not having the Deepwater Horizon oil spill fixed yesterday, I would politely suggest those people consider a bit of history.

The last time a spill of this magnitude and type occurred in the Gulf was the Ixtoc I spill in 1979. It was the same type of malfunction - a wellhead blowout. And it took the operator, Pemex, nine-and-a-half months to get the well capped. At a best estimate of 12-19,000 barrels of leakage per day, the Deepwater Horizon spill is still months away from approaching the magnitude of Ixtoc I.

This isn't to suggest that people should respond casually to the issue. There is, however, a terrible lack of reality in this debate at the moment. Yes, safety is important and we should work to find ways to address some of these problems in advance. But we should also remember that for all of the countless hours that all of these deepwater rigs have operated in the Gulf, this is the first major event in thirty years. While perfection - no spills - is an admirable goal, it's also unattainable. So long as we're drilling, accidents will happen. So we should probably be more focused on reasonable expectation and less on fairy-tale idealism.

Also, those who'd like to engage in histrionics - usually politicians - should probably check their political ambitions at the door and concern themselves more with finding a solution than taking advantage of the problem. For Republicans to suggest that Democrats are too cozy with oil money is the classic pot/kettle scenario - it's all coming from a party whose Chairman and Vice Presidential Barbie were all over that "drill baby drill" chant two years ago.

The Gulf has recovered from a disaster far worse than this one. It'll recover from this as well. In the meantime, it'd be great if news outlets spent more time talking to experts and less time talking to politicians. The American people might actually learn something that way.

More crying over spilled (raw) milk

Today it's from Chris Danou, the bill's Assembly sponsor and a man who obviously does not yet understand how politics works.

Raw milk supporters, including one of the bill’s main sponsors, Rep. Chris Danou, contend that the dairy industry has become too powerful if it is able to change the governor’s mind on the bill after it received broad support from the Legislature and the public. At a hearing in March, roughly 650 people registered or spoke in favor of the bill compared to roughly 20 who spoke or registered against it.

Danou, a freshman lawmaker, says he went to the Capitol the day after the governor’s veto, did a little poking around, and didn’t like what he heard. He says powerful industry interests and their lobbyists played too big a role.

“They couldn’t convince the public or the legislators, so they headed to the governor’s office,” says Danou, D-Trempealeau. “I think if the governor was running for office again, things would have been different.”

First, popular does not equal appropriate. If it did, there are parts of the United States that may still look like Rand Paul's wet dream, with black kids getting to attend their very own extra-special public schools. And having 650 people register or testify in favor does nothing to influence the process and only creates a shit-ton of work for the poor staffer who has to enter all that crap into ComClerk. This is why nobody gives a rat's ass about public hearings - not legislators, not staff, not anyone. Public hearings would be far more effective and efficient if it was run like high school debate - both sides pick their four best advocates and have at it for 45 minutes. But I digress.

Second, the only thing different about this situation if Doyle ran again is that Doyle would've opposed the bill from the beginning. See Chris, lobbyists tend to have more power over politicians running for reelection, not less. You think Doyle would've shat upon some of the biggest lobbyists and trade groups in the state in order to stand up for the goobers who showed up for your hearing? Seriously? That's what you think?

Just for you Chris, here's the Recess Supervisor's Concise Guide to Passing Your Bill.

1. If your bill is even remotely controversial, you better hire good lobbyists. A good lobbyist is worth way more than 75 people wasting everyone's time with their public testimony.

2. Tell your supporters to open their damn checkbooks and start writing - to the sponsors, to the squishy votes in committee, to needed votes on the floor. Have them show up at majority party fundraisers. Write checks there as well. And make sure these guys know why you're writing the check - because you value their hard work and efforts on behalf of the working families of Wisconsin. Wink wink.

3. Do number 2 again, but with the governor this time.

4. Make sure your good lobbyists up there in number 1 can coordinate a halfway decent PR campaign. And no, a bunch of bumbling citizens prattling on to local reporters is not effective.

5. Aggressively smear the other side if you have to. The other side is filled with corporate farming interests who are trying to snuff out competition from the little guy because they're afraid a niche product might be better. It's filled with health groups and hospitals whose members kill nearly 100,000 people a year in this country from their own malpractice. Raw milk will never kill as many Americans as negligent medical professionals. Why should their judgment be trusted over yours?

6. Be sure you're taking names. That way you know who to target if you lose.

Why do conservatives hate local control so much?

I think we need a new term here in the blogosphere, a noun to describe the act of bitching about a non-existent problem and proposing unnecessary and unneeded solutions to said "problem." I would like to suggest the word nassturbation.

In any case, Steve Nass is once again furiously nassturbating, this time over Madison working to improve bike safety.

The European-styled pavement markers the city of Madison installed last week at the intersection of Williamson and Wilson streets has made state Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, see red.

Nass said Friday that he would introduce legislation in January that would ban the bike boxes, which are intended to minimize conflicts between motorists and bicyclists at busy intersections.

“It’s basically about liberal extremists in Madison who hate cars and think everyone should bike to work,” Nass said. “It is basically making it difficult to use an automobile.”

Nah, it's about trying to help cyclists not get killed by legislators like Fred Clark.



Actually, the bike box wouldn't have done anything to help this guy. But who doesn't love an excuse to post the Fred Clark video?

You know what makes it difficult to use a car in Madison, Steve-O? It's not the people on bikes. It's all the other people in cars. What problems Madison has during rush hour aren't because of a bunch of people on their Treks. It's because of the thousands of people who all insist on driving to work. And that's fine - I'm not knocking cars. But more bikes = less traffic = easier to use automobiles.

Leave it to a faux conservative like Steve Nass to hate anything new - especially if the (gasp!) Europeans might do it. Those damn bike boxes are socialist! Nevermind that Nass' brilliant idea is just another Republican bill that s@#%s on local control. The only kind of local control Republicans like these days is the kind that involves their branch of government telling other branches of government what to do. Whether it's some variant of TABOR, or a property tax freeze, or Grothman's stupid bill to regulate snow removal in Madison, or this - it's all about Republicans in Madison telling everyone how much they can spend, how they can raise it, and what they can spend it on.

Maybe while he's at it, Nass can offer a bill that would require communities to rip out their roundabouts and replace them with stop signs or stop lights. Sure, the roundabouts are safer, just like the bike boxes, but Europeans use them and therefore they are evil. Just like modern science, and the Age of Enlightenment, and all those other damn things the Europeans gave the world that conservatives hate.

Here's your big GOP win...

Pardon me if I'm not totally bowled over by this result from HI-1.


B.A./B.S. from UPenn, J.D. from USC... too bad we can't swap Charles Djou for one of about 150 GOP House incumbents in safe seats. He's clearly an upgrade when compared to most of his soon-to-be caucus members.

For those playing at home, the Democratic candidates collectively beat the Republican by 19 points. They outperformed John Kerry's 2004 showing in the district by five points, and the Republican couldn't even break 40.

And this is what the GOP is going to be selling you as a big game changer.

Rand Paul is a mess

First, he complains that the federal government is being too tough on BP, even while BP's own negligence and delay is slowly ruining Gulf wetlands. Then, he carps about how private businesses shouldn't really have to serve black people if they don't want to.

And now today, Rand Paul's ducking questions about his personal beliefs in regard to the minimum wage. Oh, and he also canceled his Sunday appearance on Meet The Press, obviously because he's had enough of answering tough questions.

Look, I appreciate the libertarian perspective as a philosophical point of view. I get why someone would argue that the government has no business telling a private company who to sell to. I get the economic logic behind the minimum wage and unemployment. I get all of it. And if that's what Rand Paul believes (and I suspect that it is), then bully for him.

But if Paul is going to spend the next five months dancing around these elephants in the room, he's going to make a colossal mess not only in his own contested race in Kentucky, but for dozens of other GOP candidates who are going to be forced by their opponents to do one of three things: duck an ugly question, defend the guy, or throw him under the bus.

Rand Paul is the guy who on principle defends polluters, believes that the "whites only" sign is okay so long as it's not on a government building, and wants to abolish the minimum wage. He is going to spend five months talking about how these are decisions that are already made and he doesn't want to revisit them and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, he's never going to be able to deny these accusations publicly.

I get that the Tea Party crowd is ticked off at the GOP establishment and they think this is their great answer. And when Jack Conway picks up a Senate seat in Kentucky that the GOP has held for 25 years, the Tea Party is exactly where the Democrats should send the thank you cards.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

But plagiarism, however, is just lazy.

MADISON, Wis. -- The website for a candidate running for Congress in Wisconsin's second district includes passages that were apparently copied from the websites of Rep. Paul Ryan and another candidate.

Republican Chad Lee is running against Rep. Tammy Baldwin. His website included passages that matched word-for-word statements on Ryan's and District 7 candidate Sean Duffy's websites, WISC-TV reported...

Lee's website apparently took text from the immigration issues page of Ryan's campaign website, where Ryan "introduced an enforceable employee verification system that combats identity fraud," WISC-TV reported.

Lee's website said he introduced it as well, only he wasn't in office. The copied text stretches on for paragraphs, WISC-TV reported.

"Let's eat, Grandma" or "Let's eat Grandma"

Commas are important, something the Wisconsin Supreme Court reminded us of this morning in sending the Scott Jensen Road Show to Waukesha County for its final chapter. In writing the court's opinion, Justice Roggensack devoted a whole page to discussing the history and use of the serial comma.

Never question the power of LRB drafters to create meaning in ways that most legislators would never understand. Drafters are truly the linguistic ninjas of the legislative process. That's why smart legislators don't piss them off with unreasonable time demands or requests to draft long, complicated bills that everyone knows don't have a chance in hell of getting debated seriously, let alone passed.

All the right friends in all the right places

For those who ever question why organizations hire lobbyists, one probably need look no further than Jim Doyle's veto of the raw milk bill. Sometimes it's not just what a lobbyist says. Sometimes who's doing the lobbying can be a factor as well.


Making use of the services of one of Jim Doyle's most trusted political confidants from his first term probably didn't hurt the DBA's cause. And to the raw milk people, I suggest that if you're going to take on the dairy farmers, the physicians, the hospitals, and the public health crowd, you might want to consider bringing some bigger guns to the final gunfight next time.

Wise words from Miguel Estrada

Remember prospective GOP judicial superstar Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to the D.C. Court of Appeals was blocked in 2003? Turns out he thinks Elena Kagan is pretty much a spotless candidate for SCOTUS. But just as important is that Estrada fully recognizes what a crock of hooey the Senate has turned the judicial confirmation process into.

I was dismayed to watch the confirmation hearings for then-Judge Alito, at the time one of our most distinguished appellate judges, and find that they ranged from the anodyne and uninformative to the utterly disgraceful. And once could readily identify members of the current Senate majority, including several who serve on the Judiciary Committee, who, when they previously assessed the judicial nominees of the other party, earnestly articulated many of the same objections that doubtless will be raised against Elena (such as a lack of judicial experience, a perceived absence of a "paper trail," or whether the nominee's views truly are in the legal mainstream). I respectfully submit that it brings no credit to our government, and risks affirmative harm to our courts, when our elected representatives simply swap talking points - emphasizing the same considerations they previously minimized or derided - only to revert to their former arguments as soon as electoral fortunes turn.

Bingo. And it's not so hard to tell when the Senate went batshit crazy in this regard.

Year (SCOTUS Member and Confirmation Vote)

1975: John Paul Stevens (98-0)
1981: Sandra Day O'Connor (99-0)
1986: Antonin Scalia (98-0)
1988: Anthony Kennedy (97-0)
1990: David Souter (90-9)
1991: Clarence Thomas (52-48)
1993: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (96-3)
1994: Stephen Breyer (87-9)
2005: John Roberts (78-22)
2006: Samuel Alito (58-42)
2009: Sonia Sotomayor (68-31)

Take the eight successfully nominated justices from 1975-1994, cast aside two outliers, and we see that the middle six justices were confirmed by an aggregate vote of 566-21. That's an average of 94 votes in support.

Of course, there was the whole Robert Bork nomination in there as well, but I think it's safe to say that the nominations of Roberts, Alito, and Sotomayor were more like their contemporaries on the court and less like that of a guy who aided and abetted Richard Nixon in his attempts to conceal his potentially criminal activity.

Is there something in the D.C. water in this millennium that has caused Senators to lose their minds?

Walker hearts illegals?

There goes the endorsement from Lou Dobbs...

MADISON, Wis. -- A conservative Republican running for governor in Wisconsin is taking a tough public stance against Arizona's sweeping new immigration law.

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said in a statement that he has serious concerns about the Arizona law empowering police to question and arrest anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally.

His stance was the most definitive of any of the three major gubernatorial candidates, all of whom were asked by the Associated Press about the issue this week.

It's nice for Walker to offer specifics on something, instead of droning on in vague platitudes all the time. Maybe it means I'll stop hearing insiders describe his campaign as "wandering" and "directionless." But given the mood of the conservative drones and those who drink whatever Glenn Beck's got in his punch bowl, I'm not sure this is the smartest political move.

And no, the date on this story isn't April 1. I double-checked it already.

Thomas Jefferson on originalism

In the coming weeks, as Elena Kagan's all-but-certain confirmation to SCOTUS moves ahead, we are certain to hear a lot of chatter from so-called conservatives about originalism. They will throw themselves at the feet of our founders, suggest that none of us are even remotely worthy of benefiting from their work, and that no man should dare suggest that what they've done is subject to interpretation.

To those people, I'd offer the words of some guy named Thomas Jefferson, written in 1816 to historian Samuel Kercheval.

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment... laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... as that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times.... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

And also, a bit of an 1824 letter from Jefferson to the English politician John Cartwright.

"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48

As for my thoughts in this matter, I'll be in the corner agreeing with Jefferson instead of worshipping him. Somehow I suspect he'd prefer that.

Gard emerges from slumber, endorses Neumann

So John and Cate are endorsing Mark Neumann. And of course, we must ask the obvious question: is this about Neumann, or is this Gard's revenge for something Scott Walker did once upon a time? Is this the latest episode of "John & Cate Plus Hate"?

Green Bay, Wis. – May 12, 2010 - Former Wisconsin Assembly Speaker John Gard and former Wisconsin State Treasurer Cate Zeuske announced today that they formally endorse Mark Neumann for Governor and will serve as campaign Co-Chairs.

At events today in the Milwaukee area, Madison and Green Bay, Gard and Zeuske are joining Neumann to offer their enthusiastic support.

“As a former State Treasurer and Revenue Secretary, I understand the seriousness of Wisconsin’s budget mess,” Zeuske stated. “I’m
supporting Mark because he is the best candidate to cut wasteful government spending and fix the budget. He has decades of private sector experience and a stellar record in Congress in the 1990s. He successfully fought for balanced budgets and lower taxes that led to job growth. Mark’s conservative credentials are bulletproof.

“I urge people across this great state to join me in backing Mark Neumann as Wisconsin’s next Governor,” Zeuske concluded.

Regardless, it's good to see there are at least two Republicans left in Wisconsin who appreciate the value of private sector experience over spending your entire adult life living on government paychecks - even if Gard is way more like Walker than Neumann in that regard.

Funny how Walker professes to know how to create jobs when the only jobs he's ever created are in the public sector. He knows there's a difference, right?

Moneytrain Montgomery leaves the station

Monty's hanging it up... for now.

State Rep. Phil Montgomery said this morning that he is retiring. The Republican lawmaker from Ashwaubenon has served for 12 years, representing the 4th Assembly District. He would have been up for re-election this fall.

One of his proudest moments was pushing for the renovation of Lambeau Field, Montgomery said. State legislators in 2000 passed a law to create a stadium district and funding structure for the project.

In September 2000, Brown County voters approved a half-percent countywide sales tax to help fund the $295-million renovation, which was completed in 2003.

“That will be here forever,” Montgomery said.

He also praised work to create the Fox River Trail.

“Now 300,000 people a year use it,” Montgomery said.

I love that when a conservative like Montgomery hangs it up, the two things he brags about to the press are a tax increase and a pork project. Apparently all those giveaways to the telecom companies who were writing checks to the Moneytrain are just too complicated to explain to the press.

Now, how long until people in the GOP start begging Phil to run for Congress?

More conservative inconsistency on health care

Ugh...

OKLAHOMA CITY - Oklahoma's attorney general agreed Monday to temporarily block enforcement of a controversial new state law that requires pregnant women to get an ultrasound and hear a detailed description of the fetus before they get an abortion...

The New York-based abortion rights group has said the new law is among the strictest in the nation. The law requires doctors to use a vaginal probe, which provides a clearer picture of the fetus than a regular ultrasound, and to describe the fetus in detail, including its dimensions, whether arms, legs and internal organs are visible and whether there is cardiac activity.

So it's supposedly unconstitutional to require someone to buy health insurance, but it's totally okay for the government to mandate that a woman allow a videocamera to be shoved up her cooter before getting an abortion. Thanks for clearing that up, guys.

Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego Scott Suder?

Most people, even in the GOP caucus, don't have a lot of love for current AssGOP Caucus Chair Scott Suder. It probably goes all the way back to Suder's fooling around with Lyndee Wall, which ended badly and may well have instigated the entire caucus debacle. That he's totally self-serving and completely full of himself probably doesn't help either.

Further proof of that arrived via his recent WisPolitics interview regarding the end of session and his return from Iraq. In it, Suder talked about returning in time for the end of session and joked about the reason so many big bills were still waiting on the calendar. Said Suder, "I'm not saying I didn't miss things. But I think a lot of the major bills were kept until the end. I'd like to think they were held off so I could vote on them."

Oh really? Why don't you all take a look at the roll call votes for that final day of session. Clicky clicky. Notice anything interesting about all the votes from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning?

Scott Suder was not present. For any of them. By my count, he missed 30 consecutive roll call votes.

Suder was present early in the day. He was recorded as present in the morning roll call, and the Assembly Journal indicates he had requested leaves of absence for other colleagues before members went to caucus. He then appears to have gone AWOL sometime between breaking for caucus and when the Assembly reconvened later in the afternoon.

And the widely rumored reason that he wasn't present? Because he had a little vacay to Vegas planned and he wasn't willing to move his departure back to do the people's business. In other words, he pulled a page clear out of Pedro Colón's playbook from the 2005 session, when Colón ditched the final vote on photo ID to go to San Diego for some R&R with the wife.

Less reliable sources have indicated that Suder was in Vegas for the annual Willy Wonka Convention, where he received the Oompa-Loompa of the Year award.

So yes, bully to Suder for serving our country. But then to joke about how everyone held the big bills off for him to get back and vote, when the reality is Suder totally ditched his caucus and his leadership responsibilities to go on vacation?

Suder likes to bitch about early release. Perhaps he should concern himself a bit more with his own habit of early release.