The Breaking Time

No Direction Home

(photo by Kevin Bauman)

The financial and property systems continue to break, to the extent that many banks aren't even going through with foreclosure:

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.

Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.

So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name.

“I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it — another bill for which she will be liable.

City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.

The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a property thought to be in foreclosure.

In Ms. James’s case, the company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it.

Meanwhile, many county sheriffs are simply refusing to evict homeowners. These aren't just small town sheriffs either, they include, for example, Cook County (that's Chicago) Sheriff Thomas Dart.

The question becomes: if Sheriffs won't evict people and, even if they do, if banks won't foreclose on property, what happens?

You have a dead law and a collapse in a very fundamental part of society (at least as we know it).

Laws after all, are simply declared memes/taboos with a measure of majority agreement and physical force backing them up. That's it. Every society on earth has them, in some form or fashion. However, we usually take them for granted, so much so  that it's easy to forget how quickly they can die when anyone stops giving a damn about them.

A little while ago, I speculated that given cities with swelling tent slums and large amounts of abandoned housing, the U.S. could easily see a powerful squatter movement emerge. 

This, however, takes it a step further: squatters don't even need to fight landlords, property owners and the authorities if a) the authorities aren't going to evict and b) the banks aren't going to re-sell the property. I'm still analyzing this, because if this process continues, it's like they held the final, all-out class war -- and nobody showed up. 

Zero

Let's take, at this time, a brief respite from sifting through the wreckage -- past, present and future -- and enjoy some fucking music. 

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero (Official Video) HQ
by wonderful-life1989

This is also a good time to mention that I really, really like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and any song with the words "So get your leather on" as the refrain has The Breaking Time's official seal of approval.

Poems for Friday: "One thing is certain; and the Rest is Lies."

The following is excerpted from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a beautiful and haunting work that's stayed with me since I read it as a child.

XXII. 

And we, that now make merry in the Room 

They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom, 

Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth 

Descend, ourselves to make a Couch — for whom? 

XXIII. 

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend. 

Before we too into the Dust descend; 

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie. 

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End! 

XXIV. 

Alike for those Avho for To-day prepare, 

Aud those that after a To-morrow stare, 

A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries 

"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!” 

XXV. 

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd 

Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust 

Like foolish Prophets forth ; their Words to Scoru 

Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. 

XXVI. 

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise 

To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies; 

One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies; 

The Flower that once has blown for ever dies. 

And for an extra treat, you lucky people, here's the late, great Dorothy Ashby doing this very passage.

A bold new form of government

Um, a haruspex-ocracy?

Fiddling to the flames

Mugabe hosts lavish party despite national crisis

CHINHOYI, Zimbabwe (CNN) -- Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was celebrating his 85th birthday with a lavish all-day party Saturday despite the fact that the country is gripped by an economic and health crisis.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF party said it raised at least $250,000 to hold the party in Mugabe's hometown of Chinhoyi, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside of the capital, Harare.

Critics of the president say the country is desperate for that amount of money to be spent instead on its citizens, who are suffering from a cholera outbreak, food shortages, and spiraling hyperinflation. On Friday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai visited a hospital's closed intensive care unit that he said needed $30,000 to resume operating.

During the celebrations, Mugabe announced that his controversial land reform would not be reversed.

---

"I think it is going to be a great day for the legend and icon whose birthday we are celebrating today here," said Mugabe's nephew Patrick Zhuwawo, one of the fund-raisers for the birthday. "The country might be having problems, but we need to have a day to honor the sacrifices the president has made for this country." What do you think about the celebrations?

Zhuwawo said about 100 beasts would be slaughtered for the birthday bash.

Iran, 1971

Gone postal

Joy. The U.S. Postal Service is on the brink of collapse:

With predictions that mail volume will plunge this year, U.S. Postmaster General John Potter is asking Congress for help in finding ways to survive.

During testimony Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia, Potter urged lawmakers to allow for greater flexibility with regard to mandated retiree health benefits.

He pointed out that, based on current law, the Postal Service will pay almost $70 billion from now through 2016 for retiree health benefits.

“We simply cannot afford the current method of funding these benefits,” Potter told lawmakers. “Without a change, we will exhaust our cash resources.”

He also outlined several strategies that the Postal Service has come up with to help close the budget gap – a "chasm, widening each day," created by the agency's revenue shortfall.

While one might assume that e-mail has eliminated a lot of the need for a postal service, you'd only be half right. Online business desperately needs a functioning shipping network, as do a whole host of other cutting edge businesses. While much of the personal communication aspect has been taken over by the 'net, the postal system still serves one of those underestimated but utterly essential roles in connecting society beyond a local level. 

It would, then, be really, really bad if it breaks. Unless someone develops a better alternative or has a "silver bullet" solution for this mess.

(By the same token, in these deficit days, a shortage of $2.8 billion doesn't seem as massive as it once did.)

So, about hunting down those executives...

In a recent post, I mentioned that I was surprised that there hadn't been more anti-executive/investment banker threats and violence. Via John Robb's Global Guerillas blog, word comes that it's begun:

The A.I.G. executive who was nicknamed “Jackpot Jimmy” by a New York tabloid walked up the driveway toward his bay-windowed house in Fairfield, Conn., on Thursday afternoon. "How do I feel?” said the executive, James Haas, repeating the question he had just been asked. “I feel horrible. This has been a complete invasion of privacy."

Mr. Haas walked on, his pink shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came haltingly. "You have to understand,” he said, “there are kids involved, there have been death threats. ..." His voice trailed off. It looked as if he was fighting back tears.

"I didn’t have anything to do with those credit problems,” said Mr. Haas, 47. “I told Mr. Liddy” — Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., the insurance giant — “I would rescind my retention contract.”

He ended the conversation with a request: “Leave my neighbors alone.”

Too late. Jean Wieson, who has lived down the block for 24 years, had stopped her car in front of Mr. Haas’s house before he arrived home. She was angry about the millions of dollars in bonuses paid to its executives, the credit-default swaps that brought American International Group to its knees, the $170 billion the federal government has spent to prop it up. "It makes me absolutely sick," she said. "It’s despicable. It’s disgusting what these people have done. They should be forced to give every cent back."

Those bonuses in years past helped make A.I.G. executives into prominent local citizens. They own big houses like Mr. Haas’s, with its three chimneys and its views of Southport Harbor and Long Island Sound in the distance. Some are well-known contributors to arts groups and private schools in Connecticut communities not far from the office park in Wilton that is the workplace of many of the employees in A.I.G.’s Financial Products division, which is at the center of the storm over bonus payments.

Now these executives are toxic, and those communities are rattled and divided. Private security guards have been stationed outside their houses, and sometimes the local police drive by. A.I.G. employees at the company’s office tower in Lower Manhattan were told to avoid leaving the building while a demonstration was going on outside. The memo also advised them to avoid displaying company-issued ID cards when they left the office and to abandon tote bags or other items with the A.I.G. logo.

Robb's prediction is that this is going to get a lot worse, with more actual rather than threatened violence (he has an in-depth analysis of coming anti-corporate violence). Where I differ is that I don't think it will be quite as tied to nationalism. The heart of the grievance -- as the most brutal are -- will be individual. As the middle and working classes absorb the brunt of the economic situation, and as the utter decadence of the upper-upper-upper class becomes apparent, the very primal instinct that they "ruined our lives," rather than a "they destroyed America" meme will take over. 

There's plenty of precedent for this. In the New York draft riots of the Civil War, the well-dressed were often hunted down as "$300 men" (those who could afford to avoid the draft) and, after the Ludlow Massacre, people began taking potshots at John D. Rockefeller's house.

After all, think about it this way: you're struggling to support yourself/your family while an executive who helped tank the economy just got a million dollar bonus and seemed to be avoiding any consequences. If news came that one of those executives had been jumped by five or so people and beaten to a pulp: would your reaction be one of horror or a brief nod that "he had it coming."

Vigilantism is a strong impulse in humans, held in check only when there's a feeling that the governing authorities will instead do something to see that vengeance is meted out. It's been forgotten that this is one of a justice system's prime functions: vengeance dispensing. 

It works like this: a force outside usual social disputes (e.g. the state) deals out punishment to prevent the constant, low-level internecine killings and violence that humans otherwise resort to (Jared Diamond's superb essay Vengeance Is Ours is essential reading here).

When that system breaks down however, when people feel, on a deep level, that no pain or discomfort is being meted out to those who they believe deserve it, they resort to violence themselves (or, at the very least, support those who do). It's a human instinct and one that causes anyone attempting to push humans into a more peaceable way of life to get severe headaches.

I'd wager that within three months, I'll be posting here about such an executive attack.

Sacramento tent city grows

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Sacramento considers making tent city permanent

A tent city is burgeoning in Sacramento, Calif., prompting local officials to consider whether such an encampment should be made permanent, with plumbing and all.

The primitive settlement sits in the shadow of the state capitol and is home to about 300 people who have no toilets or running water, creating unsanitary conditions that advocacy groups worry could promote diseases like cholera. With the downturn in the economy and more working-class people losing their jobs and their homes, the tent city is expanding.

The mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, said in an interview that he wants to create a permanent tent city for the homeless, although he is not sure where it should be. He said he recognized that doing so would be difficult politically. But he said a permanent site could bring sanitation services and regulations like a ban on drugs and alcohol.

Mr. Johnson said that the rise in homelessness was a regional problem, and that surrounding localities should help pay for any solution, like establishing a permanent tent city. He will also have access to $2.3 million that President Obama’s stimulus package is giving Sacramento to deal with homeless issues.

“We’ve tried to sweep the homeless under the rug and it’s been our dirty little secret for far too long,” said the mayor, who took office three months ago and whose status as a former Phoenix Suns basketball star has helped attract media attention to the tent city. “We’ve been relying on good Samaritans and nonprofits, but they’re overwhelmed now.”

Sacramento has been particularly hard hit by the economic crisis. Now, any decent-sized city has a homeless population, and sometimes a considerable (and chronic one). However, what's happening now is that the population's being swelled by formerly working class people. That is, they were paying their bills, taking care of their kids, contributing to the economy, etc. Now they're facing cholera outbreaks.

For the record: 10.4 percent of rental housing units in Sacramento are vacant, along with 4.8 percent of owned units. Both are higher than the national average. However, being a mere city government, Sacramento can't move to put people in that housing. Anyone want to lay odd on how long it will take for someone (or some movement) to propose that it have that ability? A law only lasts so long as there's some consensus behind it. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a rise in communitarian ideologies or a serious squatter's movement in this country.

I've been covering the homeless issue for about the last three years in Asheville and some of this aligns completely with what I've seen. Ironically enough, efforts to reduce the numbers of chronically homeless (formerly the biggest part of the problem) seem to have had some measure of success, but the overall numbers are still rising as their ranks are swelled by the formerly employed. Charities and nonprofits that provide "last gap" services like helping the poor pay their rent or keep their power on (so they don't become homeless in the first place) are stretched to the limit.

One observation though: the official homeless count for Sacramento (pop. 460,000) is 1,226. The official count in Asheville (pop. 74,000) is 555. Either the numbers are off or, per capita, Asheville really does have a frickin' ton of homeless people.

Poems for Friday: America

(When I put "America" into an image search, this was one of the first images that came up that wasn't a map or monument)

Like many of the best Beat poems, this classic is best heard, here, with Ginsberg accompanied by Tom Waits. It's stunning:

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb 
I don't feel good don't bother me. 
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. 
America when will you be angelic? 
When will you take off your clothes? 
When will you look at yourself through the grave? 
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? 
America why are your libraries full of tears? 
America when will you send your eggs to India
I'm sick of your insane demands. 
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? 
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. 
Your machinery is too much for me. 
You made me want to be a saint. 
There must be some other way to settle this argument. 
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. 
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? 
I'm trying to come to the point. 
I refuse to give up my obsession. 
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. 
America the plum blossoms are falling. 
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for 
murder. 
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. 
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry. 
I smoke marijuana every chance I get. 
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. 
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. 
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. 
You should have seen me reading Marx. 
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. 
I won't say the Lord's Prayer. 
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. 
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over 
from Russia.

I'm addressing you. 
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine? 
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. 
I read it every week. 
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. 
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. 
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie 
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. 
It occurs to me that I am America. 
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me. 
I haven't got a chinaman's chance. 
I'd better consider my national resources. 
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals 
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and 
twentyfivethousand mental institutions. 
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in 
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. 
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. 
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? 
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his 
automobiles more so they're all different sexes 
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe 
America free Tom Mooney 
America save the Spanish Loyalists 
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die 
America I am the Scottsboro boys. 
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they 
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the 
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the 
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party 
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother 
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have 
been a spy. 
America you don't really want to go to war. 
America it's them bad Russians. 
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. 
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take 
our cars from out our garages. 
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our 
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. 
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. 
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. 
America this is quite serious. 
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. 
America is this correct? 
I'd better get right down to the job. 
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts 
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. 
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel

-Allen Ginsberg

Canadian workers seize auto plant

Windsor auto workers seize shuttered plant

CALGARY (CBC) - A group of disgruntled workers at a recently closed auto parts supply company in Windsor, Ont. have taken over the plant.

In the latest bizarre twist in a saga that has been brewing since two auto plants in the area shut down early last week, about a dozen workers occupied the Aradco plant Tuesday night. They have welded the doors shut from the inside and say they will not leave until they get what they are owed.

Work at the Aradco plant stopped last week because of a dispute between the plant owners and Chrysler, which has mused publicly about pulling out of its Canadian operations unless unionized workers make substantial concessions.

The Canadian Auto Workers Union that represents the Aradco workers say that in the wake of the shutdown, the workers are owed money for severance pay, vacation pay, and termination pay totalling $1.7 million.

The plant's owner, Catalina Precision Products Ltd. has offered the workers four weeks of severance pay or about $200,000 in total for all 80 workers.

The plant builds parts for Chrysler. Since last week, Chrysler has been trying to go in and collect parts and tools it says are its, but the workers are not allowing it. They have been blocking trucks from coming on to the property. Union representatives say the workers fear that if the tools and parts are removed, they will have no negotiating power.

"Some of the workers here have decided to take over the plant. That's the only thing they have in order to try to get the monies that are owing to them," said Gerry Farnham, president of the CAW local representing the workers.

It's not that bizarre at all, really, given the economic times. Honestly, I'm surprised it's not happening more often and in more places, though I have a feeling we'll see a lot more labor actions like this in the coming months and years, unless the economic situation drastically changes.

The second surprise is that we haven't seen more violent reaction against investment bankers, CEOs, etc. The AIG bonus backlash is an example of the some of the simmering public outcry that's there. All it would take is for times to worsen, just a bit -- or a few more outrageous examples of decadence from the overpaid white-collar types and assaults, torching mansions, etc. probably will come fairly swiftly. It's hard to spend $200 on a cocktail in this era, claim you work hard, run a company into the ground, ask for massive government money and not expect some visceral backlash, right or not.