Seattle parent 'vindicated' by Supreme Court school ruling (Sometimes they get it right)

SEATTLE -- A Seattle parent who battled the school district over its
racial balancing policy says she feels vindicated by the today's
Supreme Court decision.

Kathleen Brose is president of "Parents Involved in Community Schools."

She says she's relieved the seven-year dispute was settled in her favor.

She says she felt the lawsuit was something she had to do after her
daughter was rejected from her top three choices for high school partly
because she is white.

Ruling in cases from Seattle and Louisville the Supreme Court rejected school assignment plans that take account of students' race.

The district says the policy was necessary for diversity but hasn't used it since 2002 while the case has been in the courts. The district has a news conference later today to comment.

Brose says she supports public schools and
diversity, but not discrimination. She says schools can achieve racial
integration through other policies such as magnet schools.

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God Hates The World

I find it ironic that so many people find that video offensive, considering how those people are all brainwashed just like most of mainstream America is today. Also I wonder why it bothers you that a group of people stands for something, albeit hating just about every living sole on the planet.

It just goes to show how easily people can be mislead and misguided in this day and age. Anyway I'm all for the right of those people to say exactly how they feel and who it is they feel that way about. In reality it's no different than any other group and what those groups might say and do behind closed door, these folks just come right out and say it. You can agree or disagree with them, but that's the right you have for being here.

Let's start a "God Loves the World" group, how'd you think we'd do?

Let’s try it again Sam ;-)

A picture is worth a thousand words. . .

I was trying to get word to post to my blog. I guess I succeeded!

These guy's really bother me. . . .

I'm sure it just makes every Americans blood boil whenever they read something these scumbags say about targeting "westerners" on the streets. . .

I wonder if they would like it if we targeted Islamic Fundamentalists in the streets of American, say we run up to them and cut their heads off were they stand. Sounds like a plan.

clipped from edition.cnn.com 'Terror leader' warns Westerners Militants will continue to target Westerners on the streets of Indonesia as they fight to impose full Islamic law, an accused terror leader told CNN.

Sub-prime, Who do they think their kidding?

Anxiety intensified Friday about the toll the sub-prime mortgage
meltdown is taking on the financial industry at large, as Bear Stearns
Cos. pledged to lend $3.2 billion to rescue a hedge fund battered by
rising defaults on home loans. The jitters sent stocks tumbling across
the board.



"We know that these holdings are not unique to Bear Stearns,"
said Drexel University professor Joseph R. Mason, co-author of a recent
study warning of dangers in securities backed by home loans to
high-risk borrowers. "It would be hard to find a Wall Street firm that
hasn't created similar funds."



The hedge fund, which is managed by a Bear Stearns division, had taken
in nearly $7 billion — $600 million raised from investors plus 10 times
that sum borrowed from Wall Street firms. Such a great amount of
leverage would sharply boost any profit generated — as well as any loss
incurred. The fund invested mostly in bonds that paid generous yields
and were backed by sub-prime mortgages.



But as the nation's housing market soured, setting off a wave of
defaults on sub-prime loans, the securities held by the fund lost
substantial value, although exactly how much hasn't been disclosed. The
borrowing by the fund magnified the losses.



One of the fund's lenders, Merrill Lynch & Co., this week seized a
reported $850 million in assets that had served as collateral on its
loans to the fund. Other lenders were threatening to do the same when
Bear Stearns stepped in with a credit line to shore up the fund.



Bear Stearns moved to prevent the fund's dissolution "because there
continues to be significant value in it," Sam Molinaro, chief financial
officer of the New York-based investment bank, said in a conference
call Friday.



Molinaro said the credit line would allow an orderly sale of assets, preventing "massive liquidations" at fire-sale prices.



The hedge fund's troubles, Molinaro said, "appear to be relatively contained."



But stock investors weren't comforted. The Dow Jones industrial average
dropped 185.58 points, or 1.4%, to 13,360.26, while the broader
Standard & Poor's 500 index sank 19.63 points, or 1.3%, to 1,502.56.



"We are selling on fear and lack of information," said David Brady,
president of Brady Investment Counsel in Chicago. "We've got a heavily
leveraged hedge fund in trouble, and that's got the market spooked."



All industry groups were hit, said Gary Schlossberg, economist with
Wells Fargo Capital Markets in San Francisco. That's partly because the
market simply doesn't know what other problems might be out there, he
added.



The big fear, Schlossberg said, is that hedge funds have borrowed too
heavily in an effort to pump up their returns. But borrowing amplifies
losses too and can fuel selling as asset values decline. "There is a
concern about a ripple effect," he said.



Still, Brady and Schlossberg said they believed that market
fundamentals remained strong. Unless another shoe drops, they said, the
market is likely to recover in a few weeks, when second-quarter
corporate earnings start to come out.



"It's similar to what happened in February, when the first round of
sub-prime fears started to rock the market," Brady said. "People sell
first and ask questions later. And the selling can really snowball."



Mason, the Drexel University professor, expressed greater concern about the potential damage from sub-prime mortgages.



Bear Stearns, he noted, is tying up its own capital on a bet that it
can hold onto the risky investments until the market for them improves.
Merrill Lynch made the same bet by auctioning off only a fraction of
the assets it seized from the Bear Stearns hedge fund, he said.



The problem, he said, is that sub-prime woes will grow as home prices
fall in many areas and monthly payments jump over the next year on
almost $1 trillion in adjustable-rate mortgages.


Bear Stearns is relying "on the implicit assumption that recovery
is right around the corner, when in fact it looks like we're in for a
summer of increased defaults," Mason said.



What's worse, he said, is that the biggest investors in mortgage-backed
debt are not hedge funds, whose investors are supposed to be wealthy
enough to withstand losses. Instead, they are banks, asset managers,
pension funds and insurance companies that serve mainstream Americans
and have put their money at risk by buying exotic mortgage securities,
he said.



Kurt Eggert, a Chapman University professor who testified to Congress
in April about the complexities of such securities, said it was
unsettling that Bear Stearns, which has a reputation on Wall Street as
"the smartest guys in the room," was unable to manage the bonds' risks.
He, too, said the threat from the sub-prime market was wider than many
realized.



Securities backed by mortgages have "allowed the risk of sub-prime
loans to pervade our financial institutions," Eggert said. "The
sub-prime market can affect people and institutions that would have
seemed to be walled off from it."

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You have to love the law of the land. . . .

Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP

Drawing attention to inequities in the New York Lien Law and calling for legislative reform, a New York Supreme Court recently considered itself bound by existing law to deny enforcement of a bonded mechanic's lien for materials supplied to a for-profit theatre project because the underlying land was owned by 42nd Street Development, a public benefit corporation, which is a subsidiary of New York State's Urban Development Corporation. Jersey Electrical Supply Co., Inc. v. MJR Electrical Contracting Corporation, Supreme Court, New York County, Judge York, November 2000.

Jersey Electrical furnished materials to a theater complex project being built by Loews, a major motion picture theatre developer, on 42nd Street in Manhattan but was not paid. The supplier filed a mechanic's lien for nearly $200,000. The mechanic's lien was discharged by a surety discharge bond posted by Loews. Jersey Electrical sought payment on the bond.

Loews had subleased the land from Dream Team Associates, LLC, a private entity, which in turn had leased it from 42nd Street Development and from the City of New York as fee owners.

The defendants moved to dismiss the mechanic's lien claims. Jersey Electrical argued that all transactions concerning the project were entered into solely by private parties and that ownership of the underlying land by a public entity under such circumstances should not prevent recovery on the bond.

The court acknowledged that Jersey Electrical's arguments were compelling but stated that the "law has not yet caught up to common sense." Citing New York Lien Law §2 (7), the court found that when land is owned by a public corporation, no mechanic's lien may be filed regarding it, even when the role of the public corporation is only "nominal." The only exception is when the public corporation is an "industrial development agency." Because 42nd Street Development was not an "industrial development agency," the limited exception was not applicable, and the mechanic's lien could not be enforced. Because the New York Legislature explicitly used the phrase "industrial development agency" in the exception and because a public benefit corporation and an industrial development agency generally are not interchangeable and were not interchangeable in this case, the Lien Law had to be interpreted as barring enforcement of the mechanic's lien.

The court also dismissed Jersey Electrical's claim for payment on the surety bond. The court noted that the order discharging the mechanic's lien from the real estate when the bond was filed required, as is normal in New York, that Jersey Electrical obtain a judgment nominally enforcing the lien against the real estate in order to recover on the bond. Also, §19 (4) of the Lien Law provides that a condition of the discharge bond is "the payment of any judgment which may be rendered against the property for the enforcement of the lien." Accordingly, the court ruled that because Jersey Electrical was legally barred from foreclosure on the real estate, it could not recover on the bond.

Jersey Electrical failed to name the City of New York as a defendant. Therefore, the court did not address the applicability of the Lien Law to a municipality and instead focused on 42nd street Development's status as a public benefit corporation.

This ruling should be of concern to materialmen, suppliers, subcontractors and contractors doing business in the State of New York with public development corporations, even when the particular project appears to be entirely private as here. Legal advice should be sought in such situations about ways to obtain or secure recovery in the event of nonpayment before signing contracts, subcontracts or material supply agreements.

Basically just another way for the State of New York it give it to you right in the ASS!

Less credit worthy home buyers

clipped from news.moneycentral.msn.com Shares of both brokers fell following the release of results that deflated investor hopes lifted earlier this week by stellar results at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. . Bear Stearns shares rallied late in the session. All three investment banks were haunted throughout the week by the debacle in lending to less credit worthy home buyers. Lehman disclosed on Wednesday that it would merge two residential mortgage units, cutting 400 jobs.

I guess they like to make it sound that way when in reality most of those were to people at very high interest rates. Sometimes 3 or 4 points higher then the average, thus making their payments very high with no real chance of ever making it. At least the banks made about $20,000.00 at the closing though. . .