First they pass gun laws which are illegal, now the Sheriff of Philadelphia has apparently refused to do one of his key functions, which is to foreclose on houses:
With the economy soft and thousands of Philadelphians delinquent on their mortgages, Sheriff Green this spring refused to hold a court-ordered foreclosure auction. His move raised eyebrows on the bench and dropped jaws among lenders and their attorneys, who accuse him of shirking his duty to enforce legal contracts.
When I was shopping for a house, at the height of the sub-prime business, I avoided it because it looked like a stupendously bad idea. Why not lock in a low interest rate for 30 years? If you didn’t think carefully, or read the fine print, why should you be able to evade responsibility for your mistake?
And before you say I don’t have a heart, and don’t care about poor people, how do you think those poor people are going to fare when no one will lend them money for mortgages, or other loans, because banks decide that making loans in Philadelphia is too risky because the law doesn’t apply there?
Would we be in the middle of the foreclosure epidemic if the MSM, when reporting on foreclosures, reported like this?
“Today the number of deadbeats in “*” county who allowed their homes to go into foreclosure reached a new high. John Doe on Jefferson Ave, Joe Blow on Circle…. all failed to live up to their obligations to their families and their mortgage holders. These people are becoming more and more of a drain on society and are an embarrassment to the community. Pictures at 11:00.”
Why should Philadelphians bother to pay their mortgages? It’s like cars in Philly – if you want one, just take it and it’s yours. There is a reason why they have special difficult to steal registration stickers just for Philadelphia. When I moved out of the city my car insurance dropped to a quarter of what I was paying.
Someone remind me – why should anyone lend money to Philadelphians?
I’m speaking as one who sold his house for half what he bought it for ten years ago. In Philadelphia.
Preventing foreclosure – that will stop loan defaults for sure! Just like the prison cap stopped crime.
A lot of people who walked away from homes and left them to the mortgage lender were speculators who had not even lived in the houses, and had little if any money at risk. So even if you like the Robin Hood myth, this is not an example of it. Sheriff Green is more like the Sheriff of Nottingham than Robin Hood.
Call this racist if you like, but it has been my observation that every major American city run by Democrats has deteriorated under that rule. Major American cities run by black Democrats deteriorate faster. I’ll cite Detroit and Gary as particularly egregious examples, but I think the principal generally holds true across the board.
I suspect the reason is that Democrats have little sympathy with taxpayers since most of their voting base doesn’t pay taxes. Their economic actions drive productive people away. When black Democrats get into office, the oppressive economic policies get combined with a soft on crime attitude which exponentially exacerbates the situation. Productive people run twice as fast to escape.
“And before you say I don’t have a heart, and don’t care about poor people, how do you think those poor people are going to fare when no one will lend them money for mortgages, or other loans, because banks decide that making loans in Philadelphia is too risky because the law doesn’t apply there?”
They will fare just fine; they’ll just go to court and force those racist banks to lend….
This does little to counter my suspicion that there is a large segment of the population who cannot long abide any form of polity other than anarchy or tyranny.
Where is Governor Rendell? Isn’t he supposed to enforce the law?
I guess the fact that he and the mayor and I assume the sheriff are all democrat have nothing to do with anything.
Mac, I wondered about the same thing when I saw that fat piece of crap in Detroit not resigning after getting caught committing perjury.
If Obama gets in, giving the evidence, he will make things worse.
So now the Government can unilaterally void a private contract. Only contracts the Sheriff approves of are enforced.
Every entity that has a contract with the City of Philadelphia should just ignore it.
Yep, I’m sure this development (and others like it in other cities) will make the majority of us in this country go right out and vote for Sen. Obama (D-Carter’s Second Term) in November.
Yep, sure thing.
If a judge orders a sheriff to escort a prisoner to jail and the sheriff refuses, can the judge hold the sheriff in contempt of court?
City Council unanimously voted its approval – that would be Republicans as well as Democrats. Of course their vote was free of consequence, City Council has nothing to do with it. All they did was make an irresponsible political statement and thus let businesses and lenders know that they have no reason whatsoever to do business in Philadelphia.
I hope lenders sue Philadelphia for a civil rights violation based on the deliberately unequal enforcement of contracts. The City should be liable for any damages the lenders incur as a result of this.
“They will fare just fine; they’ll just go to court and force those racist banks to lend….”
And when that causes local banks to go bankrupt, and national banks to close local branches, Philadelphians will have to learn how to function without mortgages, business loans, checking and saving accounts, car loans, and student loans. Causing the few remaining productive people to flee the city, leaving a tax base of zero for city services.
This is the very sort of “government” which has worked so superbly in Zimbabwe.
Someone needs to get a writ of mandamus.