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Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks

Below is another example of predators coming into the Black community to financially rape and rob home owners of hundreds of millions with little or no coverage by the media on a national scale. Yet as soon as there is a crime committed by a Black male of a few hundred dollars from a convenience store, it immediately gets massive repeated TV, radio and newspaper coverage.

By the way, that petty thief is given swift justice, while there is still debate as to whether these so called greedy black homeowner are to blame for their own sorry situation and not those who deceived them.

New York Times Reporter Michael Powell wrote the below article:

As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

These loans, Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services.

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

“We just went right after them,” said Ms. Jacobson, who is white and said she was once the bank’s top-producing subprime loan officer nationally. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.”

Ms. Jacobson’s account and that of the other loan officer who gave an affidavit, Tony Paschal, both of whom have left Wells Fargo, provide the first detailed accusations of deliberate racial steering into subprimes by one of the nation’s top banks.

The toll taken by such policies, Baltimore officials argue, is terrible. Data released by the city as part of the suit last week show that more than half the properties subject to foreclosure on a Wells Fargo loan from 2005 to 2008 now stand vacant. And 71 percent of those are in predominantly black neighborhoods.

Judge Benson E. Legg of Federal District Court had asked the city to file the additional paperwork and has not decided whether the lawsuit can go forward.

Wells Fargo officials have declined detailed interviews since Baltimore filed suit in January 2008. In an e-mail statement on Friday, a spokesman said that only 1 percent of the city’s 33,000 foreclosures have come on Wells Fargo mortgages.

“We have worked extremely hard to make homeownership possible for more African-American borrowers,” wrote Kevin Waetke, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. “We absolutely do not tolerate team members treating our customers or others disrespectfully or unfairly, or who violate our ethics and lending practices.”

City and state officials across the nation have investigated and sometimes sued Wells Fargo over its practices. The Illinois attorney general has investigated whether Wells Fargo Financial violated fair lending and civil rights laws by steering black and Latino homeowners into high-interest loans. New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, raised similar questions about the lending practices of Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, among other banks.

The N.A.A.C. P. has filed a class-action lawsuit charging systematic racial discrimination by more than a dozen banks, including Wells Fargo.

At the heart of such charges is reverse redlining, specifically marketing the most expensive and onerous loan products to black customers.

The New York Times, in a recent analysis of mortgage lending in New York City, found that black households making more than $68,000 a year were nearly five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as whites of similar or even lower incomes. (The disparity was greater for Wells Fargo borrowers, as 2 percent of whites in that income group hold subprime loans and 16.1 percent of blacks.)

“We’ve known that African-Americans and Latinos are getting subprime loans while whites of the same credit profile are getting the lower-cost loans,” said Eric Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Center for Responsible Lending. “The question has been why, and the gory details of this complaint may provide an answer.”

The affidavits of the two loan officers seem to bolster Baltimore’s lawsuit. Mr. Paschal, who is black and worked as a loan officer in Wells Fargo’s office in Annandale, Va., from 1997 to 2007, offers a sort of primer on Wells Fargo’s subprime marketing strategy by race.

In 2001, he states in his affidavit, Wells Fargo created a unit in the mid-Atlantic region to push expensive refinancing loans on black customers, particularly those living in Baltimore, southeast Washington and Prince George’s County, Md.

“They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as ‘those people have bad credit’, ‘those people don’t pay their bills’ and ‘mud people,’ ” Mr. Paschal said in his affidavit.

He said a bank office in Silver Spring, Md., had an “affinity group marketing” section, which hired blacks to call on African-American churches.

“The company put ‘bounties’ on minority borrowers,” Mr. Paschal said. “By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market subprime loans in minority communities.”

Both loan officers said the bank had given bonuses to loan officers who referred borrowers who should have qualified for a prime loan to the subprime division. Ms. Jacobson said that she made $700,000 one year and that the company flew her and other subprime officers to resorts across the country.

“I used to joke that ‘I’ll pay for your kids to go to private school if you give me clients,’ ” Ms. Jacobson said in the interview.

Loan officers employed other methods to steer clients into subprime loans, according to the affidavits. Some officers told the underwriting department that their clients, even those with good credit scores, had not wanted to provide income documentation.

“By doing this, the loan flipped from prime to subprime,” Ms. Jacobson said. “But there was no need for that; many of these clients had W2 forms.”

Other times, she said, loan officers cut and pasted credit reports from one applicant onto the application of another customer.

These practices took a great toll on customers. For a homeowner taking out a $165,000 mortgage, a difference of three percentage points in the loan rate — a typical spread between conventional and subprime loans — adds more than $100,000 in interest payments.

The accusations contained in the affidavits, which were given to Relman & Dane, a civil rights law firm working with the City of Baltimore, have not drawn a specific response from Wells Fargo. But city officials say the conclusion is clear.

“They confirm our worst fears: that this is not just a case based on a review of numbers and a statistical analysis,” said the city solicitor, George Nilson. “You don’t have to scratch your head and wonder if maybe this was just an accident. The behavior is pretty explicit.”

Both sides expect to appear in court at a hearing in the case in late June.

Janet Roberts contributed reporting.

 

Racial and Religious Hate rs Destroy s Everything Around Them.

As we look back on a week of tragedy at the Holocaust Museum we see what hate can do to destroy lives. Not only was a hard working Black man killed, he was also a loving father. It hurt my heart to listen to officer Stephen John's 11 year old son talk about the great dad he  lost. This young boy's visible pain brought back vivid memories for me 47 years ago when at the age of six my own mother told me my dad had died. All children need their father.

And then there is the 32 year old son Erik von Brunn of the white supremacist killer. He tells below what life was like growing up in a home full of  hate.

Museum shooter's son condemns father's actions- Michelle Basch, WTOP Radio

The man charged with murdering a security guard at the Holocaust Museum this week remains hospitalized in critical condition, but his son is speaking out.

Erik von Brunn, 32, says the shooting was an unforgivable act of cowardice. In a written statement, the son apologized to the family of the murdered security guard, special officer Stephen Johns.

The younger von Brunn tells ABC News his father's white supremacist beliefs "destroyed our family and ruined our lives as well."

James von Brunn, 88, is charged with first degree murder for Wednesday's shooting.

Investigators say the weapon used to kill the guard was a 22-caliber Winchester rifle made between 1908 and 1928, before records of gun purchases were kept.

A memorial will be held Saturday for the slain guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns.

The public service starts at 11 a.m. at the 7th Day Adventist Church at 727 West Montgomery Avenue Rockville, Md.

A scholarship drive is being launched for Tyrone Johns Jr., the guards son.

The below information appears on American Jewish Committee's Website:

The American Jewish Committee’s Washington DC chapter has established a memorial fund for Stephen Tyrone Johns, who was killed in the line of duty at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Stephen T. Johns Memorial Fund

In light of the tragic shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, AJC has created a fund for the family of Officer Stephen T. Johns who bravely gave his life protecting others as well as the peaceful values that the museum embodies. This horrific event reminds us that AJC’s fight against intolerance and extremism are as critical as ever, and it is essential that we respond swiftly in the wake of tragedy. Please join us in honoring the life and bravery of Officer Johns and consider making a donation to this fund.

The local chapter of the American Jewish Committee and Johns' employer, Wackenhut Services, are also establishing memorial funds.

You To can donate here.  I just donated $100. Any amount will help this young boys future.

We are all our brother's keeper.

Dear Charles,

AJC thanks you on behalf of the family of Officer Stephen T. Johns who bravely gave his life protecting others as well as the peaceful values that the museum embodies. This horrific event reminds us that AJC’s fight against intolerance and extremism are as critical as ever, and it is essential that we respond swiftly in the wake of tragedy.

Thank you,

Melanie B. Maron
Executive Director
American Jewish Committee, Washington Chapter
1156 15th Street NW, Suite 1201
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 785-5475 (202) 785-0390 fax

Obama s Father ? Obama Says Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow Fathers Must Be Responsible

There has been no responsibility more important in my life than fatherhood. Like Obama, I grew up without a father when mine died when I was 7 because he let alcohol control his life. I, like Obama, made a decision as a child that I was going to be the father I did not have. When I sit with my college age kids now, its not the things that I bought them that they remember, it is the time spent and words shared in good and challenging times for them. I learned early, its not only what I say as a father, its also what I do.

Obama tells men what kind of dads they should be By CALVIN WOODWARD –

 WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama got a basketball, his first name and ambition from his father. Little else. The son gave back more than he received: a lifetime of ruminations about the man who abandoned the family, a memoir named "Dreams from My Father," and endless reflections on his own successes and shortcomings as a parent of Sasha, 8, and Malia, 10. As a candidate and now president, he's been telling men what sort of father they should be. It's become his Father's Day ritual. He's asking American men to be better fathers than his own.

The president showcased fatherhood in a series of events and a magazine article in advance of Father's Day this Sunday. He said he came to understand the importance of fatherhood from its absence in his childhood homes — just as an estimated 24 million Americans today are growing up without a dad. Fathers run deep in the political culture as they do everywhere else, for better and worse.

Michelle Obama has said many times how her late dad, Fraser, is her reference point and rock — she checks in with him, in her mind, routinely, and at important moments. Obama's presidential rival, John McCain, called his own memoirs "Faith of My Fathers," tracing generations of high-achieving scamps.

The father-son presidencies of the George Bushes were bookends on Bill Clinton, whose father drowned in a ditch before the future president was born and whose stepfather was an abusive alcoholic nicknamed Dude. A Kenyan goatherder-turned-intellectual who clawed his way to scholarships and Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. left a family behind to get his schooling in the United States.

He started another family here, then left his second wife and 2-year-old Barack Jr. to return to Africa with another woman. His promise flamed out in Africa after stints working for an oil company and the government; he fell into drink and died in a car crash when his son was 21, a student at Columbia University. "I don't want to be the kind of father I had," the president is quoted as telling a friend in a new book about him. His half-sister, Maya, called his memoirs "part of the process of excavating his father." Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers — not the kind who must be unearthed in the soul.

His finger-wagging is most pointed when addressing other black men, reflecting years of worry about the fabric of black families and single mothers, but it applies to everyone. Father's Day 2007: "Let's admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a child." Father's Day 2008: "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father.

It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father." Father's Day 2009: "We need to step out of our own heads and tune in. We need to turn off the television and start talking with our kids, and listening to them, and understanding what's going on in their lives." He doesn't hold himself out as the ideal dad. No driven politician can. "I know I have been an imperfect father," he writes in Sunday's Parade magazine. "I know I have made mistakes.

I have lost count of all the times, over the years, when the demands of work have taken me from the duties of fatherhood." He volunteered for those demands, as all people do when they want power. His years as a community organizer, Illinois lawmaker, U.S. senator and presidential candidate often kept him apart from family. At the same time, he went to great lengths in the 2008 campaign to find time with his girls and wife, and now considers the routine family time one of the joys of living and working in the White House.

The new book "Renegade" by Richard Wolffe recounts strains in the marriage early this decade, arising from his absences and from what Michelle Obama apparently considered his selfish careerism at the time. The author interviewed the Obamas, friends and associates. Obama himself attributed his "fierce ambitions" to his dad while crediting his mother — a loving but frequently absent figure — with giving him the means to pursue them.

"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes," he once wrote, "and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else." By malady, he meant the will to achieve. Obama was a schoolboy in Hawaii when his father came back to visit. He gave his dad a tie. His father gave him a basketball and African figurines and came to his class to speak about Kenya.

He was an impressive, mysterious figure whom Obama found compelling, volatile and vaguely threatening. The visit took a sour turn when Obama went to watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and his father made him shut off the TV, saying he watched too much. Obama slammed the bedroom door; a loud argument ensued among grown-ups. Not the quality time Obama has in mind in asking dads to turn off the TV now. Associated Press writer Ann Sanner contributed to this report. Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

What do you think about fatherhood?

Michael Jackson: What He Means To Black America

Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five represent yet another example of Black excellence emerging against the odds. Barry Gordy started Motown with nothing more than a dream, desire and hard work. Young Black entertainers came to him with the same and together with trust and committment in themselves and one another they were able to tear down the walls of racism that had divided the music industry with segregated audiences and the limiting of Black entertainers access to the marketplace.  Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 were at the forefront of this sweeping change.

After hearing of the death of pop star Michael Jackson, three people hug as they sing songs in front of the Apollo Theater in the Harlem, NYC Photo: AFP

Twenty years ago in America every black girl wanted to marry Michael Jackson

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 11:30AM BST 26 Jun 2009

As a young black performer Micahel Jackson's songs communicated emotions far beyond the grasp of an adolescent boy and black America swooned.

When he burst on the scene in the 1970s at the heart of his family group the Jackson 5, he seemed like the boy who knew too much.

When the band first toured the Mid West it often opened for down-at-heel striptease acts on what was known as the "chitlin' circuit". The Jacksons eventually signed with the black record label Motown in 1968.

As a dancer and a performer, Jackson was an androgynous boy-man figure who broke down racial barriers becoming the first black performer on MTV. He turned the music video into an art form, giving modern pop music a huge space in which to flourish.

Jackson's signature ethereal dance move became known as the Moonwalk. His stage presence was extraordinary and he could create delightful confusion about race, gender and age.

Though derided by many for his high pitched tones and foppish style, Jackson's music and vocal range helped shape hip hop, pop and contemporary R&B artists from Mariah Carey to Justin Timberlake.

With his signature single white glove and red leather military cut jackets Jackson also influenced the world of fashion.

When the album Thriller was released in 1982, it was played endlessly on MTV turning Jackson into a true crossover artist, straddling the world of black and white music in ways that millions could could relate to.

Thriller was his masterwork and it transformed mainstream pop. As the world's best selling album ever, it knocked down boundaries between black and white music and brought the sounds of the dance floor into millions of living rooms.

As one critic said: "Executives hummed it, the poor danced to it. Blacks enjoyed it, white kids from the suburbs loved it."

Jackson transcended boundaries not just in America, but across the world. He became the biggest star in the pop universe, developing new sounds with producer Quincy Jones based on funk, soul elements of jazz, disco and Beatles-style rock.

It was, music critic Ann Powers said, "a smooth mix that created new possibilities for crossover pop."

"The news of his death was like losing a long-lost lover, someone you remember differently, adored innocently."