UNJUSTICE
A Sydney Sullivan Story
“Although inspired in part by a true incident, the following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.” Photos throughout the fiction are to assist with your own imagination
John G. hesitated with a guilt-ridden stammer, “Louis Harding.” ‘Oh my God’ Ole thought, ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’
“You don’t mean “Saint” Louis Harding, do you?” questioned Carl. John G. raised his eyes, looked upward and nodded.
“I worked with him in the Public Defender’s office. His nick name was “Saint Louis” because he was so pure… so honorable, I mean he should have been appointed to a US District Court judge position. Is this really necessary, I mean, isn’t there another way?” Ole asked. “We’re elected, not appointed – if this gets out we could get creamed in an election.”
“I tried to have some of the other attorneys intervene and tell him to withdraw the complaints, but he’s dug in his heels – so, we’ll have to rule and then the federal bench will have him sanctioned and suspended for a while until he wises up,” John G. responded
and then he felt a tug on his line and snap! The leader line had broken. “I knew I should have changed that leader line this morning – I had that feeling, you know?”
“Yeah, I got it right now – déjà vu. I can’t believe we are having this conversation,” Carl picked up the bourbon and took a belt. “We have to ruin a good attorney because Washington is afraid he’ll have a winning argument?”
“Yup,” said John G., “and we have to make him look extremely incompetent. This has to send a message. Look, we probably shouldn’t even be hearing these cases – looks to me like these are securities and that’s above our pay grade. The federal judges are appointed for life or until they retire whichever comes first. They don’t have to worry about an election or what their constituents would think. They’ll take all the heat.”
Ole sat there and thought about the cases he had been pouring over the last 2 years. The hierarchy had determined that unless there was a crackerjack case, foreclosures were better handled at the appellate level.
The thought process was that most homeowners couldn’t afford their homes but those that could afford an appeal deserved at least a shot of justice and with the added time could push forward for a modification. Homeowners who wanted modifications generally were not looking for a “free house” and those that had been screwed around in the HAMP plan made Ole the most uncomfortable especially pushing them into the added expense of an appeal.
Carl passed the bottle over to Ole and as he swallowed two shots worth he confided some of his conflict, “You all know I was raised Catholic and though I try to leave my religion at home, my core being isn’t adjusting to this torturing of families and their futures. The farm crisis nearly killed my father. I’ve seen the evidence – decent people were tricked into these phony short-term mortgages. Everything is Xerox’d – there are no original documents and I don’t think the banks know who even owns the note. God, there must be some other way. I keep looking for a sign or for someone to say, ‘okay you can follow the law now’… what I know in my heart isn’t corresponding to my mind because I realize the pension funds must be protected until someone can fix this mess or they figure something else out.” Ole stopped because he felt like he might be sounding peculiar – and just then another walleye grabbed the jig.
Across the lake Erik was still listening to every word and praying that the wind would not shift. He look at Howard and said, “Holy shit!” Howard jumped up and yelled, “Got one?!” Erik didn’t want to discuss what they were hearing just in case it wasn’t the wind that carried the voices and maybe it worked in both directions.
Erik put his fingers to his lips to indicate “shhhh, be quiet – don’t say anything” and then listened closely to see if anything had been heard.
It was still early in the day and the judges, as well as Erik and Howard, were catching fish. The judges were known to stay out late as long as the fish were biting and usually would stay at the lodge on the lake so they wouldn’t have to drive back to Minneapolis at night. That also meant they could consume alcohol without worrying about getting on a highway. Erik’s resort cabins were not winterized or the judges would take one of the cabins as they did in the summer. The lodge, however, was extremely comfortable and very warm. Not only did it have a central heating unit, each room had a fireplace and the porters would bring up extra wood upon request.
There was some small talk about the fishing tackle and the weight of the fish each judge caught and then all seemed quiet until John G. brought back up the foreclosure topic. “We really have no choice, it’s the pension funds all… all those people’s retirement… our retirement. If the entire system crashes Wall Street will never be able to cough up their settlement amounts – and that’s it for over a quarter of million Minnesotans…zip! Nothing! And the state could go bankrupt. Do we really want that on our consciences?” It was as if John G. was at a campaign rally, “besides, he continued, these homeowners can’t afford to own a home, they’re just trying to get a free house.”
Ole snapped back, “wait a minute John – many of these folks were just trying to reduce their loan payment after the financial crash because they were in corporate laid offs or in construction.
They had to remake their lives and many of them can afford to make the payments but the banks jacked them around for years with that HAMP deal. There are people I know aren’t looking for a free house, just a fair deal and a level playing field.”
In the back of Ole’s mind was the thought that there was a good possibility that John G. was bucking for a federal judgeship appointment and that he’d go along with anything Washington wanted. Ole had never been interested in a federal job and really looked forward to when he’d have his tenure completed and could retire. He had hoped he might get a state appellate court position which would make a private practice position more lucrative should he return to the private sector. However, the thought of losing his own pension was too difficult to contemplate.
Carl took another swig of the bourbon and then looked at both men closely studying them, then squinting his eyes he said, “You wanna know what I think? I don’t think there’s any money to fund the pension funds – period.” The look of shock or disbelief that Carl would even utter that thought made Ole and John G. terribly uncomfortable.
“What the hell do you mean?!” moaned Ole. John G. remained quiet and let Ole and Carl duke it out, hoping the subject would pass quickly.
“Well,” answered Carl, “Minnesota’s public pension plans for government employees are underfunded by $16.7 billion — a deficit that’s $4 billion larger than it was when the legislature took steps to allegedly fix the problem in 2010.”
“The pension scheme might as well be at the bottom of this lake. There’s just too much debt in those derivatives overall, trillions upon trillions of dollars. Some say over $700 trillion in debt – do you know how much that is? All the homes in the U.S. together can’t cover that debt. What makes you think that we can keep it together by allowing those carpetbaggers to foreclose on our constituents?”
“Where’d you hear that it was that much debt?” Ole trustingly probed, although he had heard that number batted about and he had seen the headlines of $62 Trillion in debt – $700 trillion was a wildly high and crazy figure.
“Some say it’s over $2 quadrillion,” Carl’s eye brows raised, “but that’s just got too many zeros for me to even comprehend. In any case, the unfunded debt is too high to make all of this “foreclosure-gate” even plausible. I don’t think there’s any money and it’s just a matter of time. The Federal Reserve has been printing the paper, giving it away to these banks – but there’s nothing to back it up.”
Erik and Howard felt like they were in a movie eavesdropping like the NSA – but without the technical equipment. Erik had no idea how much money a trillion …or even a quadrillion dollars was – but he knew it was a lot. He had never thought about how many homes there were in the U.S. before or how much their mortgages would add up to.
Erik knew his grandfather had complained when the silver-back currency was eliminated and how his grandfather always saved every silver dollar he could find, because his father would tell him those stories.
‘Wow, I really want to understand this,’ Erik thought to himself.
“We don’t need to be the weak links to take this country down,” John G. pushed. “We have to think of Minnesota first. This isn’t even debatable – there is just too much of the state pension funds invested in these risky derivatives.” John G. knew that judges played with the market and often took the riskiest investments because they had the best returns – judges had a choice, unlike the average government employee. All the more reason to protect the status quo.
John G. pushed, “Are you with me?”
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UNJUSTICE is a new series on DeadlyClear that will upload as chapters are completed. Please subscribe so you don’t miss as the story progresses. Inspiration and research in part with Vermont Trotter and our foreclosure defense network.
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