Mindy Meyer is super tired of stupid old boring politics as usual so she is totally, like, going to gamechange the, you know, paradigm or dynamic or whatevs and be NY’s most awesome BFF in the state Senate evah:

Mindy Meyer’s bright pink website for her New York state Senate campaign may have inspired some snark Monday on Twitter, but she says her candidacy is no laughing matter.

“One person’s response was, ‘Is this a joke?’ I’m like, absolutely not. If you see me in the Senate, you’ll know this isn’t a joke. It’s not like when I do my speeches, I’ll wear young, juvenile pink. Everything’s going to be substantive, just like every other candidate for Senate. The only difference is I’m trying to make it an exciting campaign,” Meyer told POLITICO.

Foreclosure fraud settlement doesn't seem to be helping people (photo: downtownpearl / fllickr)

A little over five months after the inking of the foreclosure fraud settlement, and around three months since a federal judge blessed it and allowed it to go forward, people have begun to wonder whether the signature piece, the money pledged toward “credits” for a variety of actions, including principal reduction, has gotten off the ground.

I have heard scattered but haphazard reports of some principal reductions, without much rhyme or reason as to the beneficiary. But for the most part, this Orlando Sentinel article gets the confusion and dismay right:

About 1,000 Floridians have filed complaints in recent months against the top lenders who pledged earlier this year to work with “underwater” homeowners as part of a national legal settlement of unscrupulous lending practices.

A multistate deal hatched by state and federal leaders in February was supposed to force the country’s five largest lenders to lower interest rates, reduce principal or even offer cash to struggling mortgage customers.

But the fine print has left many customers of those lending giants frustrated. The breakdown of the Florida complaints filed against the five lenders who participated in the settlement: Bank of America, 39 percent; Wells Fargo, 28 percent; JPMorgan Chase, 20 percent; Citi, 9 percent; and Ally/GMAC, 4 percent, according to records supplied to the Orlando Sentinel by the Florida Attorney General’s Office.

Remember that this is happening in the first year, when there are incentives for principal reductions in that time period that reduce the banks’ liabilities even more. Yet they’re still dragging their feet.

Simply put, people are wondering who qualifies for the principal reduction and refinancing in the settlement, how to establish those benefits, and even who to contact to get the process started. Some banks, like Bank of America, have delivered their offers to the borrowers, rather than the other way around. There’s an enforcement monitor at the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight, but they cannot intervene in any individual case. They can only monitor and enforce compliance on the five banks in the settlement at a global level. And the monitor starts from periodic reports written by the banks themselves. The monitor can assist a borrower through directing them to the proper organization for help, but can really go no further.

And these are the predictable consequences. In Florida, the Attorney General’s office is simply referring complaints back to the banks who are the source of the complaints in the first place. There’s no actual effort to intervene on behalf of homeowners already ravaged by this crisis, now getting potentially screwed in trying to collect on the penalty for the abuse. And of course, the penalties themselves are part of the problem, as they are weak and easily gamed by the banks.

In a related development, Walnut Place, the investors who held up a separate settlement between Bank of America and mortgage-backed securities purchasers over the inadequacy of the deal, just dropped their objections. So it’s likely we’ll see BofA wrap up their settlement over MBS claims, which will spur copycat settlements throughout the industry. The banks are reducing their obligations, but homeowners continue to get the shaft.

Tonight’s film Tony and Janina’s American Wedding, A Deportation Love Story, directed by our guest Ruth Leitman, explores the deportation issues facing immigrant families in the United States by focusing on Tony and Janina Wasilewski, a Polish American couple whose family is torn apart by post-9/11 immigration red tape. The story is set in Chicago, against Obama’s rise from Senator to President.

Tony came to the United States under a work visa, while Janina applied for political asylum. They met in Chicago, which has the second largest urban population of Poles in the world (the first is Warsaw), fell in love and got married, then started a small cleaning business. Their business flourished, they bought a house and in 2001 had a son, Brian.

Then in 2007 Janina received a deportation order, based on her asylum being revoked once Poland was free from Communist rule. She had been ordered to voluntarily leave in 1995, but there was no translator for her and the judge did not ever address her directly; confused and unclear about her status, she stayed in the US and built a life with Tony. More red tape followed and her later appeals were adjudicated using a 1996 ruling, rather than 1997 NACARA law which applied to Janina.

From Wikipedia:

The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act states that Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, nationals of former Soviet bloc countries, and their dependents are able to become legal permanent residents of the United States provided that they were registered asylums seekers who had stayed in the United States for at least 5 years since December 1, 1995

Janina had 48 hours to leave the country and was banned from returning for ten years. It was decided that Brian, then 6, should go with her. In heartbreaking scenes–including a tearful airport departure– Tony tells his son that it will only be a vacation for a months, but as the “vacation” extends for a year, the family becomes more and more despondent. Once in Poland, Brian starts both withdrawing and acting up, while Tony is unable to sleep in the bedroom he shared with his wife, seeking solace on the couch with Polish-language television and the pillow Brian slept on.