March 31, 2017 Friday On February 24, 2003, I attended a courtroom hearing on my charges against the banks, Ocwen, and Chase Manhattan. The banks had violated the law, and this violation prevented my approved refinance of my home of 26 years, with $110,000 in equity. Since as Judge Jury described, that this is just 'the tip of the iceberg' she ordered a continuance for ten days, till March 6, 2003. Transcript of motion for sanctions for violations of 11 USC 362(a) February 24, 2003 . Transcript of continued hearing held on March 6, 2003
This began the struggle that continues to this day. I want a trial or hearing. The courts don't want me to have one.
Now at US Supreme Court 16-7904 Ozenne v, Chase and Ocwen.
Trump Signs Executive Order Unwinding Obama Climate Policies
President Trump was joined by his E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, left, and coal industry workers on Tuesday as he signed an executive order rolling back previous U.S. climate change commitments.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump, flanked by company executives and miners, signed a long-promised executive order on Tuesday to nullify President Barack Obama’s climate change efforts and revive the coal industry, effectively ceding American leadership in the international campaign to curb the dangerous heating of the planet.
Mr. Trump made clear that the United States had no intention of meeting the commitments that his predecessor had made to curb planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution, turning denials of climate change into national policy.
At a ceremony, Mr. Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to start the complex and lengthy legal process of withdrawing and rewriting the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants, frozen construction of new plants and replaced them with vast new wind and solar farms.
“C’mon, fellas. You know what this is? You know what this says?” Mr. Trump said to the miners. “You’re going back to work.”
Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to roll back Mr. Obama’s major climate change policies, a set of ambitious E.P.A. regulations to curb greenhouse pollution from coal-fired power plants. He made clear that American leadership in the global campaign against climate change would take a back seat to his commitment to energy industry jobs.
With his order to move forward with the rollback, climate diplomats around the world maneuvered to fill the vacuum left by the exit of the globe’s second-biggest climate polluter.
“There are countless countries ready to step up and deliver on their climate promises and take advantages of Mr. Trump’s short-termism to reap the benefits of the transition to the low-carbon economy,” said Laurence Tubiana, the chief French negotiator of the 2015 Paris agreement, the landmark accord that committed nearly every country to take action to reduce planet-warming emissions.
Over all, the goal of the Paris deal is to keep the planet from warming more than 3.6 degrees, the point at which scientists say the earth will be irrevocably locked into a future of severe droughts, floods, rising sea levels and food shortages.
Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would cut its emissions about 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. Carrying out the Clean Power Plan was essential to meeting that target.
“This is not the time for any country to change course on the very serious and very real threat of climate change,” said Erik Solheim, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. “The science tells us that we need bolder, more ambitious commitments.”
Mr. Trump has not yet decided whether to formally withdraw from the Paris agreement. But by rolling back the policies needed to meet American commitments, the United States essentially announced that it would not comply, whether the nation remains a signatory or not, experts said.
“One of the greatest concerns is what other key countries, including China, India and Brazil, will do when the U.S. reneges on the Paris agreement,” said Robert Stavins, a professor of environmental economics at Harvard, mentioning some of the world’s other largest carbon dioxide polluters.
“The worst-case scenario is that the Paris agreement will unravel,” Mr. Stavins said. “That would be a great tragedy.”
Diplomats from some of the world’s other major economies say they intend to continue carrying out their climate change agreements, with or without the United States. But the Trump administration’s moves are likely to embolden opponents of climate action around the world.
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At the heart of the Paris accord was a breakthrough 2014 agreement between Mr. Obama and China’s president, Xi Jinping, in which the leaders of the world’s two largest polluting countries agreed to enact policies to cut their emissions. At the time, Mr. Obama offered the Clean Power Plan as evidence that the United States would meet its target.
Their hard-won deal was seen as the catalyst to bring other countries to the table to forge the Paris pact. If Mr. Trump reneges on his predecessor’s commitment, it could further fray a relationship that has become more tenuous since his election.
“Getting to that point was not easy,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, an expert on Chinese environmental policy at Tufts University who helped broker the Obama-Xi climate talks. “This undoes many years of work building up trust that the U.S. will honor the commitments it makes at the presidential level.”
Mr. Trump is tentatively scheduled to meet with Mr. Xi next week at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.
Mr. Xi has signaled that he is prepared to move forward with his Paris pledge that China’s emissions will drop by or before 2030. Speaking at the Davos economic summit meeting in January, Mr. Xi said, “All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it, as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations.”
But experts say that without action from the United States, China’s efforts to curb emissions may slow. “It may empower business and political interests within China that still opposed climate action,” said Alex L. Wang, a legal scholar of Chinese environmental policies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The same dynamic could play out in India, the world’s third-largest carbon dioxide polluter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi worked closely with Mr. Obama on climate change policies, but he did so against internal domestic pressures to prioritize economic development — including the provision of cheap coal-fired electricity to India’s rural poor.
Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Modi by telephone on Tuesday, but aides declined to say if they discussed climate change.
Harsh V. Pant, a research fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi, said Mr. Trump’s order would give the Indian government political space to delay some of its climate commitments.
“It will slow down a little bit,” he said.
Still, it remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s orders will fully vanquish Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy. Legal experts say it could take years for the E.P.A. administrator to carry out the process of withdrawing and revising the climate change regulations, and the process will be hit by legal challenges at every turn. A coalition of states, including New York and California, has already vowed to fight Mr. Trump.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York said he was preparing to challenge any effort to do away with regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Such a move, he argued, violated the Clean Air Act, as well as established case law.
“If they want to go back into the rule-making process, we believe they are compelled under law to come up with something close to the Clean Power Plan,” he said.
“They probably don’t want to hear this again,” he said, “but if they want to repeal, they have to replace.”
I am so disappointed with the current members of judicial power in the 29 Jurists of the 9th Circuit. They ruled I did not have constitutional authority to demand a trial. Where facts could be proven by an independent jury of my peers, to determine the facts, then demanding that the court applies applicable current law. Apparently, all 29 members skipped school the day they taught constitutional law. You know, the same class we all went through in 11th or 12th year of High School. Where it was taught that no one can take your property, or assets, without due process of law. A fair trial. This was the base law of the land After the latest introduction of this new administration, almost each declaration of incoming government officials, they all, including the President, promise to " preserve, protect and defend" the constitution of the United States of America. This is my civil right, like any other citizen, fortunate enough to have proof of their birthplace. So let's live up to this supposed guarantee of base law, that this country was founded upon. Gary O
I am thinking of my precious cousin Donna Gieszl. who took her energy into a better place last week. A beautiful soul has departed. Strength to Curtiss and Scott, and Tommy the boy's father, as well as Joanne, who I recall proclaiming when Donna was at a low point, that 'I love my sister' supporting her younger sister with Christian love. In Stone Mountain Georgia Also, a good pal, Lindsay lost her mom last week, came home from her job at church to find mom had passed. Since she lived alone with her mom, prayers to help her to find her way after such a sudden, complete change of her reality. Love and Light, to the Gieszl family My best friend Edward Lutz turned me onto John Donne before he passed in 2005. this (poem, part of a sonnet, used by Hemmingway, and Hollywood, from 6 centuries prior.
John Donne was born on January 22, 1572, in London, England
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
The next big political battle in Washington -– whenever the budget debate is declared over –- is likely to feature the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and whether Elizabeth Warren will become its first official head.
Harry Hamburg/Associated PressElizabeth Warren, head of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told a House subcommitteeon Wednesday, “We do not envision new rules as the main focus of how the C.F.P.B. can best protect consumers.”
But will this fight feature a classic left vs. right set-piece confirmation showdown in the Senate? Or it will it be resolved with cloaks and daggers closer to the White House – with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner working to prevent Professor Warren’s nomination, or her confirmation if she were nominated?
Ms. Warren was put in charge of establishing the agency by President Obama, but the Treasury retains the powers of the bureau until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed by the Senate — at which point the agency will fall under the authority of the Federal Reserve Board, while operating with a high degree of independence. The president has not yet nominated Ms. Warren to the post nor indicated if he will.
There is much to commend the left vs. right scenario. The Republicans, after all, want to argue that regulation is excessive in general and regulation of financial products is somewhere between unnecessary and dangerous for economic growth in particular.
This theme came up at times during the Dodd-Frank legislative debate on financial regulation last year, but it was largely lost in the larger and more confused conversation.
Now Representative Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has Ms. Warren firmly in his sights – with the mortgage settlement negotiations as the flashpoint.
In a recent letter to Secretary Geithner, Mr. Bachus said: “Reports about the role played by political appointees in the Treasury department — including those affiliated” with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “an agency that does not yet have any regulatory or enforcement authority — raise further questions.”
No matter that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau became involved only when the state attorneys general asked for advice. Mr. Bachus is taking the opportunity to follow up on what he said recently: “In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”
The industry is unhappy because the proposed settlement — or, you could say, its transgressions with regard to foreclosures — could cost them up to $20 billion.
Mr. Bachus would not have a direct voice in any nomination hearing, which is the purview of the Senate, but plenty of Republican senators share his views, including Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking minority member of the Senate Banking Committee. And The Wall Street Journal regularly joins in the chorus opposing Ms. Warren’s views.
Ms. Warren actually represents a much more nuanced view -– arguing that transparency and simplicity, from the perspective of customers, creates a more level playing field and is good for the industry.
Some community bankers seem to be on her side. She is also good at explaining this view, and a confirmation hearing would be the perfect place for the country to witness and hopefully participate in this discussion. (Read her recent speech to the Credit Union National Association or her testimony Wednesday to a House Financial Services subcommittee and make up your own mind.)
As Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and a member of the Senate Banking Committee, pointedly framed the issues for the foreclosure debacle: “No person or company is above the law. And that’s good for capitalism, it’s not antibusiness, and it’s not a minor inconvenience that can be ignored in pursuit of bigger profits.”
But before you set aside time in the early summer for potentially gripping television from Capitol Hill, Ms. Warren has to get past Secretary Geithner.
During the Dodd-Frank debate, Mr. Geithner frequently asserted that “capital, capital, capital” was all we really needed to fix the financial system. Yet his team agreed to the Basel III agreement, which sets a lower bar for equity financing than Lehman Brothers had on the day before it failed. There is no sign that systemically important financial institutions will be required to have a significant extra capital buffer though this has supposedly not yet been decided.
And despite the undecided capital standards and large evident problems still facing banks (the foreclosure fiasco, commercial real estate woes, continuing high unemployment), the Financial Stability Oversight Council — which Mr. Geithner heads — is about to sign off on letting banks increase their dividends.
This makes no sense at all in terms of economic policy. Yet that is Mr. Geithner’s position. (If anyone you know at Treasury thinks this assessment is unfair, I have laid out this case in recent posts.)
And having Ms. Warren on the scene — providing an alternative, pro-consumer perspective — may not be to his liking.
President Obama missed his best opportunity to reform the financial system when advisers — including Mr. Geithner – recommended in March 2009 that he defer to top bankers, as James Kwak and I noted in “13 Bankers.”
His team further punted when they failed to push for real change in the spring and summer of 2010, while the financial-sector legislation was before the Senate.
Mr. Geithner and his people were instrumental in defeating the Brown-Kaufman amendment, which would have limited the size and the leverage (debt relative to equity) of the largest banks in the United States.
Will Mr. Geithner side with the Republicans in blocking Ms. Warren’s appointment? Will he now help prevent Ms. Warren, potentially the most effective modern regulator, from coming up for a vote in the Senate? That remains to be seen.
Correction: March 17, 2011 Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post misstated the given name of a co-author of the book "13 Bankers." He is James Kwak, not Simon Kwak. The post also misstated the position of Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama on the Senate Banking Committee. He is ranking minority member, not chairman.
March 15, 2017 We lost my cousin Donna last night. Her years in this consciousness, with the help of Tommy Hass, produced two beautiful boys, Curt and Scott who are dealing with their grief. as I type this. Sister Joanne must be almost paralyzed with grief, herself, losing her younger sister, that she has looked after her, from before their teens, fast forward to the end, Joanne never left this angel unprotected. Cousin Yale, oldest of the Gieszl kids, must also be bewildered, relying on his personal and Christian beliefs to make sense, of this tremendous loss. Everyone loves you and Elvie.
Now Donna has launched into the next consciousness. The last time I saw Donna was in Joannes driveway, I was leaving and she was arriving,, when she saw me her face lightened and she shouted "Gary" as if it had been years (it was) since we saw each other, she hugged me tightly, and I recalled all of the energy, of this beautiful blond cousin.
March 7, 2017 The United States Supreme Court has put my case on their docket No. 16-7904, Ozenne v Chase Manhattan et. al. (and others). Now my chances increase to one in one hundred 1/100, to be reviewed from the thousands of petitions filed each year, the court typically choses cases with national importance. www.supremecourtus.gov docket 16-7904 Ozenne v Chase Manhattan et. al.
Let's all pray for Justice, what happened to me, could just as easily happened to you !
