25 March 2008
News and Comments - 03/25/08
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: What's News .
7 Comments so far...
Jesse Says:
25 March 2008 at 12:25 am.
Cities grapple with surge in abandoned homes
WORCESTER, Massachusetts (Reuters) - On Lagrange Street in New England’s second-largest city, two brick apartment buildings stand side-by-side in varying stages of decay — boarded up, “No Trespassing” signs affixed, paint peeling.
Across the street, a condominium complex is on the brink. Three of its eight apartments are in foreclosure.
Like many cities in the United States where the home vacancy rate has scaled its highest since records began in 1956, the former textile mill city of Worcester in Massachusetts is turning to the courts to fight back.
Their target: banks who abandon properties and who leave behind a glut of empty, dilapidated houses that draw crime, cut tax revenue and depress nearby property values in a market already in a tailspin.
“This is the trenches here. We’ve got to stabilize our community,” said Worcester city manager Michael O’Brien in a sidewalk interview outside the foreclosed condominiums on the quiet street in a Hispanic neighborhood.
The city of 175,898 people, a munitions depot during the U.S. Revolutionary War, offers a window into how U.S. cities are grappling with a wave of foreclosures that has pushed the U.S. homeowner vacancy rate to a record 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 — or about 1 million homes.
Like many U.S. mayors and city officials, O’Brien blames “predatory” lending practices prevalent in the U.S. property boom for the lion’s share of about 4,220 mortgages in his city that are either in, or at risk of, foreclosure.
In February, he began asking judges to assign property managers to buildings at the expense of the mortgage companies. The idea is to stop tenants from being abruptly tossed out of a foreclosed home and to provide enough basic maintenance to keep it from getting condemned.
Other cities are pursuing even more radical measures.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080325/lf_nm/usa_housing_vacant_dc
Cameron Says:
25 March 2008 at 6:42 am.
What? Hillary being caught exaggerating. Who woulda thunk it!
U.S. news video contradicts Clinton on Bosnia visit
Tue Mar 25, 3:13 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CBS News Video from Hillary Clinton’s 1996 visit to Bosnia as first lady contradicts a more dramatic description the Democratic presidential candidate gave in a recent campaign speech.
In news video shown on CBS on Monday, Clinton is seen casually walking from her plane and greeting a young girl. CBS said the pictures were recorded at a greeting ceremony when the plane landed.
At a recent campaign event, Clinton, who was accompanied by her daughter Chelsea, said she remembered landing under sniper fire.
“There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base,” Clinton said.
At the time of the trip, the Bosnia war was over but hostilities continued.
CBS reported that Clinton aides said the video “was not quite as dramatic as Clinton put it.”
“She meant that there was fire on the hillside around the area when we landed, which was the case,” campaign spokeswoman Lissa Muscatine told CBS.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080325/ts_nm/usa_politics_clinton_video_dc
T. Fan Says:
25 March 2008 at 11:27 am.
This is all pretty funny. Rush just played a clip of Hillary saying that for the first time in 12 years she mis-spoke. Rush then told that she said the same thing last month about dodging fire after arriving in Bosnia. She wrote it in her book and talked a lot about it. So by saying she mis-spoke, she is absolutely saying she lied. She excused it away by saying she is human. Looks like we are having to dive into the dregs for presidential candidates this year.
E.E. Says:
25 March 2008 at 11:48 am.
Rush makes a good point. Hillary knows the MSM has always covered for her before. This time CBS threw her under the bus. They were with her on the Bosnia trip and they knew she had been lying. It’s only now when it looks like she won’t be the nominee that they told about what really happened. Clinton must be so shocked because they have always backed up her lies before. This shows how little we can trust the press. It’s no credit to them to finally tell the truth when it all comes down to their boss’s agenda.
Jesse Says:
25 March 2008 at 3:19 pm.
I have been nervous about how we are being mentally conditioned to begin accepting torture. Our Founding Fathers knew how important it is to not go down that road. It is a slippery slope that we can see spreading even on our soil in some of the law enforcement problems with tazers ets. This is helped by shows like 24 that try to make us believe the end justifies the means.
The Ultimate Casualty
What the interviews make clear is how pervasive and public the abuse of prisoners had been. Physical and mental abuse was conducted in the open. Photos were taken and passed up the chain of command. “Sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sensory disorientation and the imposition of physical and psychological pain,” Gourevitch and Morris write, were all permitted under the makeshift rules of the camp.
“They couldn’t say that we broke the rules because there were no rules,” said an Army reservist named Megan Ambuhl. Others talked of something even more insidious: the growing tolerance for inflicting pain. This is the stuff of famous psychology experiments (Milgram, etc.), but it also reminds me — and I know this is the extreme case — of the willingness of ordinary German soldiers in World War II to spend whole days in the routine murder of civilians.
One of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read is called “Ordinary Men.” It is Christopher Browning’s chronicle of Germany’s Reserve Police Battalion 101, which consisted of civilian cops, firemen and dockworkers who were not Nazi Party members and not particularly anti-Semitic but who nevertheless murdered Jews in occupied Poland because they were ordered to do so. At first a few of them balked, but ultimately they all participated. They were ordinary men.
Abu Ghraib, too, was staffed by ordinary men — and women. Because they were allowed to be cruel, because they were encouraged to be cruel, they became cruel. “So, over time, you become numb to it, and it’s nothing,” said Sgt. Javal Davis. They knew, in Gourevitch and Morris’s words, that “the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was de facto United States policy,” a consequence of the sneering contempt for international law evinced by the president, by his vice president and by his secretary of defense.
Of all the casualties of this sad war, the good name of the United States is certainly one. It evaporated in the desert like a shallow pool of water. I do not mean to belittle the lives lost or soldiers maimed, and I know full well that we are not a country of innocents. We’ve massacred prisoners of war and murdered civilians — at My Lai in Vietnam, for instance — but these were mostly moments of madness or terror, not a policy virtually posted outside the orderly room.
Joy Bischoff Says:
25 March 2008 at 3:22 pm.
Jesse, I agree with every word. It is sad that this is made to seem like a Republican/Democrat disagreement. I don’t like the thought that conservatives are about accepting torture. That isn’t exactly a Christian attitude.
Matt Says:
25 March 2008 at 7:31 pm.
Wall Street May Face $460 Bln in Losses, Goldman Says
March 25 (Bloomberg) — Wall Street banks, brokerages and hedge funds may report $460 billion in credit losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, or almost four times the amount already disclosed, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Profits will continue to wane, other analysts said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aIGeO4anyk.c&refer=worldwide
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