[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

One year ago, Dean Andal announced his candidacy for Congress in California’s 11th congressional district. Since then, his campaign has been noticeably quiet, and Andal’s fundraising has started to dry up. (Perhaps Andal is too focused on his latest development project to be bothered with his campaign?) Regardless of his excuse, many observers have taken note of Andal’s conspicuous absence from the campaign trail ("GOP recruits show lagging fundraising").
 
However, we haven’t forgotten about Dean and his run for Congress, so we thought posing a few unanswered questions to him might jolt him back onto the trail.
 
Stockton has the highest home foreclosure rate in the United States. How do you plan to address the foreclosure crisis?

Last week marked the five-year anniversary of President Bush’s infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. Do you support President Bush’s "stay the course" plan for Iraq?

Where do you stand on expanding the state children’s health insurance program (SCHIP) and California Healthy Families to provide health care to millions of uninsured children?

There's more...

Image courtesy the Lodi News-Sentinel.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By J. Mijin Cha
Policy Specialist
Progressive States Network

Not surprisingly, the Bush Administration's proposal for fixing the subprime lending crisis is an industry-led deal that involves completely voluntary actions to fix the current crisis and will ultimately help only a few of the millions of people who have either lost or are in danger of losing their homes. With absolute failure at the federal level, it is again up to states to step in. In two recent editorial pieces, the executive directors of the Progressive States Network and the Drum Major Institute called on New York Governor Spitzer to impose a six-month moratorium on foreclosures to stop the rapidly increasing rate of home loss, a policy all governors should enact. A moratorium would give lenders incentive to restructure loans on fair terms and fight back against the Wall-street backed predatory lenders.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Don Perata
President pro Tem
California State Senate

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Ted Lieu
Chair
California State Assembly Banking and Finance Committee

The roots of the worst home foreclosure crisis in American history can be traced directly to the Federal Reserve’s lax regulatory regime during the last few years. Apparently the Federal Reserve still has not learned its lesson when today it promulgated reforms that will do little to stem a crisis of this magnitude from repeating.

The Federal Reserve utterly failed to ban yield spread premiums, also known as broker kickbacks, which allows mortgage brokers to receive incentives to place people in higher interest, riskier loans even though the borrower qualified for a lower interest, prime loan. Two respected studies have shown that between 55% to 61% of all subprime borrowers had actually qualified for prime loans.

Instead of banning such kickbacks, the Federal Reserve merely required disclosure. However, in states across the nation and particularly in California, there is zero emphasis on financial literacy and most people fail financial literacy tests. As a result, the disclosures will largely be meaningless and do nothing to prevent brokers from being financially rewarded by placing people in higher interest loans that are unsuitable for them.

by calvin davis [courtesy of Blog for America]

This election cycle should repersent the American worker, the American worker is under more stress today than at anytime in resent history. The American worker is not given a fair chance at reaching the American dream, in toady's economy. With the high rate of  health care, fuel cost. home foreclosure at  a all-time high and the cost of a college education for there childrens fading from site, family saving not a real option. Jobs being sent overseas for low wages, without concern for this nation welfare.

In this presidential season we the American worker should be demanding tax reform, in the form of total elimination of the overtime tax penalty that the worker is now paying, The American worker is working harder and longer hours only to have his earning go to big government. France removed the overtime penalty on there work force and the economy took off, with higher worker productivity. They base the taxes the worker pay on thrity five hour work week, we have a forty hour work week, and should be tax on a forty hour work week, so the American worker can take home his or her overtime pay.