Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is against asking banks to reduce the amount of principal owed on underwater houses.
Is she also going to oppose sandbags and plywood during hurricane season?
Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi is one of 50 Attorneys General in negotiations with Banks and their Mortgage Servicers to settle government claims and lawsuits involving allegations of fraud by the Banks and their Mortgage Servicers in foreclosure proceedings against homeowners. Ms. Bondi took the position in these negotiations with the Banks and Mortgage Servicers. See Mary Shanklin, "Bondi Opposes Home Bailouts" p. A1, col. 4 (Orlando Sentinel, Monday, May 16, 2011).
Here, that does not help Florida Homeowners in Foreclosure. It does, however, help Banks and their Mortgage Servicers. Not only do Florida Homeowners become more likely to default rather than pay what they can afford to pay, but as readers of this space know, the Banks and Mortgage Servicers have been burdening Mortgage Insurance Companies with their claims to payment once the Mortgagor-Homeowner is not able to pay the Mortgage any longer.
The Banks and their Mortgage Servicers are not from Florida, the Homeowners are.
It is worth recalling that the goal of taking mortgage reductions "off the negotiating table" is not to combat "moral hazard". If that was the goal, then the announced position would be 'no mortgage reductions for proven frauds'. No, that is not what Ms. Bondi said. She said no mortgage reductions for anyone in a home in Florida. See, e.g., in addition to the above newspaper reports: David McLaughlin, "BofA Said to Target Individual States in Foreclosure Inquiry" (Bloomberg. com, April 28, 2011); Robert Schmidt & Tom Schoenberg, "Four Attorneys General Say Foreclosure Deal Terms May Cause 'Moral Hazard'" (Bloomberg.com, March 23, 2011).
So who is Pamela Bondi that she announced this position at this time?
Little is known, publicly, about her. What is known is sparse apart from the positions she announces from time to time. A person's priorities sometimes reveal who they are as a person.
It is known that she and her boyfriend flew to Las Vegas, Nevada four (4) days after she was sworn in, to attend a birthday party for her personal lawyer's ex-boss. See Mary Ellen Klas, "Incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi's Vegas Trip: Duty or Conflict?" (The Miami Herald Online, Saturday, November 13, 2010). Her boyfriend is a doctor.
It is also publicly known that she took over a lawsuit in February, 2011. The lawsuit was filed awhile before by whistle blowers who sued Bank of New York Mellon for fraud allegedly committed against Florida Taxpayers. In February, a Notice filed by her office advised the Court that they would be filing a new Complaint against the Bank soon in that case. See, e.g., Carrick Mollenkamp & Lingling Wei, "Suit Alleges Mellon Created Fake Trades, Overcharged" (Wall Street Journal at WSJ.com, February 4, 2011); Sydney P. Freedberg, "Florida Investigating Charges That Bank Defrauded State's Pension Fund" (St. Petersburg Times Online, February 4, 2011).
As of May 18, 2011 so far as is known to newspapers and reporters who report on such things, no such Complaint has been filed, yet.
We really know only a little about Pamela Bondi aside from her publicly announced position papers. The St. Petersburg Times online-accessible archives on politically oriented stories about her, begins at about the time that she ran for office in 2010. She had never run for office before. It seems that she never came to the attention of a newspaper reporter reporting on politics before she decided to run for attorney general. After she decided to run, we learned that she switched parties and she said that she forgot why.
She was a registered Democrat from 1984 to July 21, 2000. That date was one week after her boss, State Attorney Harry Coe and a Democrat, died. His chief Republican challenger, Mark Ober, then handily won the election and became Ms. Bondi's boss. "Despite those dramatic events, Bondi said she could not recall why she became a Republican when she did." Steve Bousquet, "GOP Attorney General Candidate Pam Bondi Has Democratic Roots" (St. Petersburg Times Online, July 13, 2010).
We know less about her, in short, than we knew about Jessica Lynch, a person she resembles, actually.
Her political story, at least, reportedly begins with a political operative who called her from a phone in a parking lot. He urged her to run for office. The experienced politician, so the reported story goes, had previously been employed by one Rudolph Giuliani when he, Mr. Giuliani, was told to run for political office. See Colleen Jenkins, "Bondi's Rise to Attorney General Began With One Man's Idea" (St. Petersburg Times Online, November 7, 2010). Soon she could be seen as a 'legal analyst' on Fox Television. See id.
Another thing that is publicly known about her is the dog story. I will put that story on a split post, extending this entry for that story. It is true, so far as I know having tracked down several sources for it, but it may not necessarily reflect on the kind of lawyer who negotiates on behalf of other people by announcing that she will not even ask, she will not negotiate at all, for what may be in some cases in the best interests of the State of Florida, her clients.
Conclusion: You Make The Call.
So, then, you decide: Why should Florida's A.G. declare that poor people living in Florida should not even think about having their mortgages reduced while she is in office?
Please Read The Disclaimer.
"I feel sorry for the state of Florida if they elect her. She has no compassion at all." Ms. Dorreen Couture, grandmother of orphaned children and a plaintiff against Ms. Bondi in a lawsuit for custody of a dog in which the Coutures and their grandchildren on the plaintiff's side, and Ms. Bondi on the defendants' side, contested ownership of a dog. Quoted by Emily Nipps, "As Bondi Runs For Attorney General, Bitterness Over Dog Lingers" (St. Petersburg Times Online, September 3, 2010).
Here is the Pamela Bondi dog story as reported in newspaper reports in Florida.
Briefly and factually, children in Louisiana lost their parents in 2005 before Hurricane Katrina. During Hurricane Katrina, the orphans and their grandparents lost or left their dog. Pamela Bondi ended up with the dog. The orphans and their grandparents somehow tracked the dog down and asked Ms. Bondi for their dog back. She refused.
At this point, the dog and Bondi were in Florida, and the orphans and their grandparents were in New Orleans. It does not take a lawyer to figure out that there was only one way to get the dog back: The orphans and their grandparents would have to hire a lawyer in Florida and file a lawsuit before they would get their dog back. See Demorris A. Lee, "Family Pleads to Reclaim Pets" (St. Petersburg Times Online, June 28, 2006).
They did.
The Florida Judge apparently ordered visitation rights to visit the dog, particularly after Ms. Bondi refused. (It is unclear whether this was ordered, but apparently there were some visits with the dog, and then around Christmastime, Ms. Bondi refused to voluntarily allow any more. The Judge then announced to the parties that he was prepared to enter an order allowing the visits, unless the attorneys could work things out without a Court Order.) See Demorris A. Lee, "Judge Orders Dog Visitation" (St. Petersburg Times Online, December 27, 2006).
Ms. Bondi's lawyer in the dog case had formerly made an appearance in the case of Schiavo v. Bush against Terri Schiavo's husband. (You may recall, or have heard, that the Schiavo litigation involved claims that Terri Schiavo was not brain dead, instead she was alive, because of various facial gestures she allegedly made to her parents or perhaps others. The end result of that case was an autopsy which confirmed that Terri Schiavo did not have a live brain and could not have made any cognitive gestures of the kind claimed.) Ms. Bondi's lawyer reportedly told the Judge in the dog case that they were concerned that the dog might harm the children. This came as news to the children. See Demorris A. Lee, "Katrina Dog Case Moves From Talk to a Trial Date" (St. Petersburg Times Online, April 18, 2007).
After nearly a year of this lawsuit, Pamela Bondi settled. Id. Supposedly she agreed to pay for the dog's care in exchange for visitation rights. See Emily Nipps, "As Bondi Runs for Attorney General, Bitterness Over Dog Lingers" (St. Petersburg Times Online, September 3, 2010).
At last report, Ms. Bondi has not gone to Louisiana to visit the dog. See, e.g., id.
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