The City Paper runs the numbers on the Baltimore Sun’s chosen ‘victim’.

Like so many others, Baltimore City Paper writer Edward Ericson Jr. takes issue with yesterdays Baltimore Sun font page housing foreclosure victim.  Mr. Ericson took the time to run a few numbers on Veronica Peterson’s mortgage and came up with a perhaps not so surprising revelation:

Victim Mentality

But it appears that Peterson made few–if any–payments. The foreclosure was filed July 31, 2007. The balance on the main note then was $435,735.86, plus unpaid interest accrued from Jan. 1, 2007, plus $1,005.72 in late charges. This suggests that Peterson made, at most, one payment on her house: the December, 2006 payment. Given the grace periods typical in home-mortgage business, it is at least as likely that her first payment was not due until January 2007, which would mean she has made zero payments.

So basically it looks like Peterson managed to game the system and live in a half a million dollar home for a year practically for free.  But remember, she’s the victim and the banks, who allowed her to go for a year without payment before forclosing, it the villan.  In Peterson’s own words:

“This bill doesn’t do anything for the people who have lost their homes or are in the process of losing their homes,” Peterson said, according to The Sun. “All the laws passed have been basically to help the lending institutions.”

Well of course…. because obviously taxpayers should be required to keep you in your McMansion…  while you pay nothing.

Baltimore Sun chooses the wrong ‘victim’

President Bush signed the housing bailout bill today (otherwise known as the ‘Punish those who act responsibly and reward the idiots and thieves’ bill). To highlight this, the Sun decided to pick a local ‘victim’ of the so-called foreclosure crisis to highlight on their front page.

They didn’t really think it through too well.

Rescue is quirk of timing

Hundreds of thousands of struggling homeowners may get the help they need to stave off foreclosure from the federal housing bill that Congress passed last week. But for hundreds of thousands more, people like Veronica Peterson, it comes too late.

So everyone is supposed to feel sorry for single Mom Veronica Petereson and her kids. Right?

Well fine…. then you read this:

Peterson is waiting for the eviction notice that will force her out of the $545,000 house she bought in Columbia two years ago.

Wha-Whaaaaat? She bought a half a million dollar home? Well she must have one hell of a job then. What? She runs a home based daycare? Oh. Then WHY IN THE HELL did she buy a .5 million dollar home?

She said her mortgage broker inflated her income and asset value to put her into a mortgage she could not afford.

Oh well OBVIOUSLY. No way is this her fault. I mean there’s just no way to expect a person to really be able to add up the dollars they pull in a month and compare that to a mortgage payment (and yes, even with an ARM its pretty easy to see if you’ll be able to afford the monthly payments or not).

I’m not alone in my reaction to this story. As of this writing, there are 249 comments to the Baltimore Sun article. The popular opinion is most definitely NOT in Veronica Peterson’s camp.

Both Veronica Petereson and her Mortgage Agent are at fault here and both need to face the music (though who knows… maybe the mortgage agent has already been arrested).

And what did I just say?

Ok… so I didn’t ‘just’ say it, I said it more like a month ago. Still…

As a refresher, a link to the post I’m talking about:

Gas taxes will be going up.

Peters expressed concern that the cutbacks have resulted in the collection of fewer taxes on gasoline.

And what article did I come across today?

Congress considers raising pump tax to help repair crumbling highways

The political vision of a summer gas tax holiday died a quick death in Congress, losing to a view that federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel will have to go up if they go anywhere.

…

lawmakers quietly are talking about raising fuel taxes by a dime from the current 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents on diesel fuel.

10 cents per gallon more to 28.4 cents. Thats over a 50% increase.

Is it any wonder the approval rating of this congress is in the single digits?

False Advertising #2

On the way into work the other morning, I caught a General Motors ad on the radio.  It started out talking about how bad gas prices were and how properly inflated tires could increase gas milage up to 1-3%.  Ok, fine.

The ad then goes on to say (and I’m paraphrasing a bit) ‘thats why all GM vehicles come with a tire pressure monitoring system as standard equipment’.

Bullshit.

All new vehicles, not just GM vehicles, but all new vehicles come with a tire pressure monitoring system.  Its been a Federal (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) regulation since late 2003.  It comes from the TREAD act which was a result of the Firestone/Ford Explorer rollover problems.

Of course the ad fails to mention that a large majority of these monitoring systems only report a problem when the tire pressure is reduced enough to cause a safety issue.  Proper manual monitoring is still required in order to keep a constant tire pressure that will have any positive effect on gas milage.

Nice try GM.

False Advertising #1

My local Rutters gas station had the following stickers on their pumps for quite a while now (yes, I took pictures of the stickers because they annoyed me):

It was a fairly small and unobtrusive sticker. All it really did was cause me to try and a find a station that was selling actual gasoline and not watered down gasoline. However, as more and more stations switch over to E10 fuel, that is becoming harder to find.

So a couple of days ago I found myself having to stop at this same Rutters and get a shot of so-called ‘gas’. You could help but notice the new Ethanol sticks which are almost 3 times as large as the original ones:

What? Enriched? Are they serious? Lets take a look at the definition of the word ‘enrich‘:

: to make rich or richer esp. by the addition or increase of some desirable quality, attribute, or ingredient <the experience will enrich your life>: as a: to add beauty to : adorn b: to enhance the taste of <butter will enrich the sauce> c: to make (a soil) more fertile d: to improve the nutritive value of (a food) by adding nutrients (as vitamins or amino acids) and especially by restoring part of the nutrients lost in processing <enriched flour> e: to process so as to add or increase the proportion of a desirable ingredient <enriched uranium> <enriched natural gas>

Blending ethanol into gasoline does not enrich it. In a best case scenario the automobiles MPG are not impacted. More often than not (as in my case), ethanol has a negative impact on fuel economy.

The only thing ethanol enriches is the bank account of the corn lobby.