Monday, May 21, 2012

Tuesday May 22 Housing and Economic stories



TOP STORIES:

Elegy For Gary, Indiana - (www.kunstler.com)  A few weeks ago I flew to Chicago, hopped into a rent-a-car, and navigated my way on the tangle of interstate highways to the now mostly former industrial region in the northwest corner of Indiana just off lowest Lake Michigan between the towns of Whiting and Gary. The desolation of human endeavor lay across the land like nausea made visible, but more impressive was how rapid the rise and fall of it all had been.  Not much more than 150 years ago this was a region of marshes, dunes, swales, laurel slicks, and little backwater ponds of the huge lake. The forbidding flat emptiness of the terrain made it perfect for running railroad track, and before long much of the heavy industry that epitomized the modern interval opened for business there, downwind from the pulsating new organism called Chicago. The storied steel mills of Gary are gone, and the numberless small shops and sheds that turned out useful widgets exist now, if at all, as ghostly brick and concrete shells along the stupendous grid of highways. 

Police use tear gas and batons against protesters in Oakland, CA - (www.rt.com) Deservedly so!!! Now they need to start using baseball bats and bullets.
Around 400 protesters have been confronted by police who used tear gas, causing hundreds to scatter on May 1. Some activists blocked streets throughout the day and vandalized two banks, a news van and police vehicle. Nine people were taken into custody in Oakland, California, after hundreds of people took to the streets. Police reportedly used Taser against at least one of them. Officers ordered protesters out of the street after firing the tear gas and “flash-bang” grenades. Some demonstrators tried to force businesses to shut down for not observing calls for a “general strike.” Earlier, protesters planned to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, but the plan was abandoned. San Francisco Gate news outlet quotes police spokeswoman Johanna Watson as saying, “When our patrol wagon came to make arrests, they were surrounded.”

How U.S. Students Can Work Off Their Trillion-Dollar Debt - (www.bloomberg.com)  If your child is one of the 1.5 million high school students eagerly awaiting acceptance letters from colleges this month, he or she is probably entertaining dreams of high scholarship, intellectual ferment, new friends, raging keggers. You probably have a few other things on your mind. For starters, you may be thinking that the average annual cost of a four-year institution now exceeds $20,000. Or that outstanding student-loan debt surpasses $1 trillion. Or that defaults are rising, economic growth is sluggish, and unemployment for those ages 20 to 24 is about 13 percent. And your little one, bless her heart, wants to major in peace-and-justice studies.

Real Estate Investor to Plead Guilty to Bid Rigging at Foreclosure Auctions - (www.loansafe.org)  An Alabama real estate investor has agreed to plead guilty and to serve one year in prison for his role in conspiracies to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions in southern Alabama, the Department of Justice announced today. To date, as a result of the ongoing investigation, four individuals and one company have pleaded guilty. Charges were filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama in Mobile, Alabama against Steven J. Cox of Mobile. Cox was charged with one count of bid rigging and one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. According to the plea agreement, which is subject to court approval, Cox has agreed to serve one year in prison, to pay a $10,000 criminal fine, and to cooperate with the department’s ongoing investigation.

Scott Brown Is Destroying Elizabeth Warren, And She's Getting Blasted For Claiming Native American Blood – (www.businessinsider.com)  It has been a pretty bad week for Elizabeth Warren, the feisty class warrior and conservative bogeywoman who is locked in a tight race to replace Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate seat once held by the late Ted Kennedy.  Warren's troubles have centered around a Boston Herald report that revealed that now-famous Harvard law professor used to identify herself as a "minority" in law school directories, based on a far-back (and unconfirmed) Native American ancestry.






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