What’s this Boyko / Deutsche Bank thing all about, anyway?

Here’s 4111 Archwood, a vacant foreclosed house four blocks down the street from me. (Click on it to get a closer look.)

The County Auditor’s database says the owner of this house is Deutsche Bank National Trust Company. It says Deutsche Bank NTC paid $50,000 for the house in a sheriff’s sale in March 2007. The sheriff’s sale was the outcome of Case CV-05-554639, an action for foreclosure against the previous owners, filed in Common Pleas Court in February 2005 by Deutsche Bank NTC “as Trustee”.

But Deutsche Bank never held a mortgage on 4111 Archwood. And Deutsche Bank doesn’t really own 4111 Archwood now.

We’ll get back to Case CV-05-554639 and that magic word “Trustee” in a minute. But first, a short tour of the New Mortgage Industry, courtesy of the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair.

Chairman Bair testified before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services last April. Her entire testimony is well worth reading, but it’s modestly famous for two charts.

The first chart depicts the mortgage transaction as many (most?) of us still understand it:

Simple. Straightforward. Ancient history.

Here’s Chairman Bair’s second chart, “Borrowing Under a Securitization Structure”, depicting the typical mortgage transaction in 2007 (click to enlarge):

As Chairman Bair explained to the Committee:

Securitization takes the role of the lender and breaks it into separate components. Unlike the more traditional relationship between a borrower and a lender, securitization involves the sale of the loan by the lender to a new owner–the issuer–who then sells securities to investors. The investors are buying “bonds” that entitle them to a share of the cash paid by the borrowers on their mortgages. Once the lender has sold the mortgage to the issuer, the lender no longer has the power to restructure the loan or make other accommodations for its borrower. That becomes the responsibility of a servicer, who collects the mortgage payments, distributes them to the issuer for payment to investors, and, if the borrower cannot pay, takes action to recover cash for the investors.

And she listed some of the roles in this modern mortgage transaction:

• Issuer – A bankruptcy-remote special purpose entity (SPE) formed to facilitate a securitization and to issue securities to investors.
• Lender – An entity that underwrites and funds loans that are eventually sold to the SPE for inclusion in the securitization. Lenders are compensated by cash for the purchase of the loan and by fees. In some cases, the lender might contract with mortgage brokers. Lenders can be banks or non-banks.
• Mortgage Broker – Acts as a facilitator between a borrower and the lender.The mortgage broker receives fee income upon the loan’s closing.
• Servicer – The entity responsible for collecting loan payments from borrowers and for remitting these payments to the issuer for distribution to the investors. The servicer is typically compensated with fees based on the volume of loans serviced. The servicer is generally obligated to maximize the payments from the borrowers to the issuer, and is responsible for handling delinquent loans and foreclosures.
• Investors – The purchasers of the various securities issued by a securitization. Investors provide funding for the loans and assume varying degrees of credit risk, based on the terms of the securities they purchase…
• Trustee – A third party appointed to represent the investors’ interests in a securitization. The trustee ensures that the securitization operates as set forth in the securitization documents, which may include determinations about the servicer’s compliance with established servicing criteria.

“Bankruptcy-remote”. What a great adjective.

So what does this all have to do with 4111 Archwood? While I explain, you might want to keep that second chart handy.

In August 2003, the couple that had owned 4111 Archwood since 1996 refinanced it for $93,500. Their lender was Argent Mortgage Company, LLC, a division of ACC Holdings of Orange, CA, which also owned Ameriquest Mortgage and AMC Mortgage Services. Argent was the biggest single subprime lender in Cuyahoga County between 2003 and 2005, going from no originations in 2002 to nearly 2,400 in 2003, 4,900 in 2004, and 3,800 in 2005. (Following several years of lawsuits and other problems, ACC recently closed Ameriquest’s doors and sold Argent, AMC and Ameriquest’s servicing contracts to Citigroup. Argent is now doing business as Citi Residential Lending.)

Less than two months after the mortgage on 4111 Archwood was signed, Argent Mortgage Co. LLC transferred it to Argent Securities, Inc., which “deposited” it, along with thousands of other Argent mortgages into something called “Argent Securities, Inc. Asset-Backed Pass-Through Certificates Series 2003-W5″.

Let’s just call it “ASIABPTCS2003W5″ for short.

As you may have guessed, ASIABPTCS2003W5 is one of those “bankruptcy-remote special purpose entities” Chairman Bair mentioned. It was set up by Argent to be the vehicle by which all that mortgage paper, with a face value of $1.5 billion, would be sold to investors. Once that was accomplished, the mortgage on 4111 Archwood became a tiny piece of the paper assets owned by ASIABPTCS2003W5, a corporate entity owned not by Argent but by its investors.

The “Pooling and Service Agreement” that created ASIABPTCS2003W5 named Argent’s sister company, Ameriquest Mortgage, as “Master Servicer” for all those mortgages.

And it named Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as the “Trustee” of ASIABPTCS2003W5 — the party paid to represent the interests of the investors and oversee the Master Servicer’s performance.

This all happened at the beginning of October, 2003.

Sixteen months later, in February 2005, the borrower was in default and Deutsche Bank — as the Trustee for ASIABPTCS2003W5 — filed an action for foreclosure in Common Pleas Court.

But — funny thing — nobody had bothered to tell the County Recorder, who’s legally in charge of keeping track of these things, that Argent Mortgage had sold the mortgage to ASIABPTCS2003W5. Ten months into the foreclosure proceeding, the magistrate somehow figured out that Argent was still the mortgagee of record and that Deutsche Bank lacked standing to foreclose on the property. (As the case summary, entry for 12/21/05, puts it: “PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO VACATE CASE AND PLACE ON THE ACTIVE LIST IS DENIED. THE PARTY PURPORTEDLY GRANTED RELIEF FROM STAY IS NOT THE PLAINTIFF IN THIS ACTION.”)

The lawyer for Deutsche Bank quickly filed a motion to make Argent the “substitute plaintiff” in the case. The magistrate agreed to this, putting the foreclosure back on track. Then Argent’s lawyer got it together to file the correct document — it’s called a “Release Assignment” — with the Recorder’s Office in February, confirming the sale of the mortgage on 4111 Archwood to, ahem…

“DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY AS TRUSTEE OF ARGENT SECURITIES INC., ASSET BACKED PASS THROUGH CERTIFICATES SERIES 2003-W5 UNDER THE POOLING AND SERVICING AGREEMENT DATED AS OF OCTOBER 1, 2003″

Finally, seven months later — after the foreclosure was granted to substitute plaintiff Argent, which had sold off its interest in the mortgage three years earlier — the magistrate granted a second plaintiff substitution, swapping Argent out and “Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as Trustee of ASIABPTCS2003W5″ back in.

So it was “Deutsche Bank National Trust Company as Trustee of ASIABPTCS2003W5″ listed as plaintiff on the sheriff’s sale notice, and as the grantee (buyer) on the sheriff’s deed. And now it’s “Deutsche Bank National Trust Company” listed as the owner on County records — with a tax mailing address at 505 City Parkway Suite # 100, Orange, CA, which just happens to be the last-listed address of Ameriquest Mortgage. (Remember them? Master Servicer for ASIABPTCS2003W5. Now defunct. Mortgage servicing contracts bought by Citigroup.)

But of course Deutsche Bank NTC doesn’t actually own 4111 Archwood, any more than it actually ever owned the mortgage.

ASIABPTCS2003W5 — that “bankruptcy-remote special purpose entity”, a paper creation owned by nobody in particular — owns 4111 Archwood.

Deutsche Bank, as Trustee, just represents ASIABPTCS2003W5 for certain purposes. Ameriquest Mortgage was supposed to take care of ASIABPTCS2003W5′s properties, but Ameriquest is out of business; this job may have passed to Citi Residential.

So who’s actually responsible for 4111 Archwood? Good question.

That’s just one house. Deutsche Bank currently “owns” over 900 houses in Cuyahoga County through foreclosures in which it acted as Trustee for some “special purpose entity”, commonly an entity created by Argent. Argent alone organized at least thirty-one of these billion-dollar mortgage-backed investment pools from 2003 through 2006.

So maybe you can see why Judges Boyko, O’Malley, Rose, et al are making a big deal about checking Deutsche Bank’s paperwork.

Two down, thousands to go (or, Eloise Anderson’s amazing summer)

PD this morning:

A Solon builder who has been tied to mortgage fraud has agreed to get out of the construction business as part of his punishment.

Edward Emery Jr. pleaded guilty Thursday to submitting a false loan application for a woman who bought a $490,000 home on Sedge Circle in Solon that he built. Emery also admitted to similar schemes involving 37 homes that he built in Solon and Glenwillow.

Eloise Anderson of Richmond Heights pleaded guilty to using bogus job and income information to buy the Solon house, two houses in Cleveland and another house in Pepper Pike — closing more than $1.3 million in deals over a five-month span in 2005.

Emery was not connected to Anderson’s other homes, Assistant Prosecutor Michael Jackson said. A title company owner, a mortgage broker and two officials from another mortgage company also face charges in the case.

Anderson, a 60-year-old postal clerk, was passed off as a postal inspector earning twice her $55,000 salary.
She planned to quickly dispose of the homes under rent-to-own deals, Jackson said. Solon police broke the case when neighbors on Sedge Circle complained that the tenants were not keeping up the property.

Here’s the indictment, courtesy of the excellent Mortgage Fraud Blog.

So who lent Eloise Anderson all that money?

• For the house on Sedge Circle in Solon, she got $490,000 from Argent Mortgage. Then seven weeks later she got a $392,000 mortgage from First National Bank of Arizona, which somehow allowed her to pay off Argent. (This mortgage was sold a year later to Deutsche Bank — apparently serving as trustee for an entity involving JP Morgan Chase, because these two companies were co-plaintiffs in the foreclosure action against Anderson that resulted in the sheriff’s sale of the Sedge Circle house a couple of weeks ago.)
• To buy the two houses in Cleveland, at 3606 West 45th and 4081 East 64th, she got a total of $177,210 from Long Beach Mortgage, a major subprime subsidiary of Washington Mutual of Seattle.
• Finally, Anderson got $650,000 from Meritage Mortgage of Jacksonville to buy 2485 Lander Road in Pepper Pike, apparently with zero down payment. Meritage is a now-defunct subprime subsidiary of the now-also-defunct NetBank. (This mortgage was also acquired by Deutsche Bank, as trustee for an unidentified entity, in January 2007. It’s about to go to sheriff’s sale, too.)

The First National of Arizona and Meritage loans were actually provided by Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., which would have gotten the applications from the local mortgage broker(s) working with Anderson, signed up the two lenders, and then peddled the paper to Deutsche Bank.

Anderson got all of these mortgages approved between the beginning of May and the end of September, 2005!

None of the lenders listed above are implicated in Anderson and Co.’s fraud — in fact, they’re mostly listed in the indictment as victims. But think about it: She faked her income, faked her credit, applied to borrow a million and a half dollars in five separate steps over a five-month period, from four different subprime lenders, and they all bought it.

Maybe they were all just too busy to notice.

Or maybe they liked what they saw.

If you ran the county, what would you buy for $400 million?

The Commissioners want to raise at least $400 million (by spending upwards of $700 million in sales taxes on bond payments over the next thirty years) to buy a new public Convention Center.

The $400 million is not an actual investment which the Commissioners expect to earn back, e.g. through rental revenue. It’s a straight-up expenditure. The “return” it’s supposed to produce is private-sector jobs and taxes, in hotels, restaurants, the Medical Mart, etc.

So: If you were going to raise and spend $400 million in public money to spur private economic activity in Cuyahoga County, would you buy a Convention Center?

Here are a few alternatives to consider:

• One Convention Center @ $400 million, or

• 400 megawatts of utility-scale wind generators (with no debt to pay off, so the power would be very cheap)
• Full-ride tuition at Cleveland State for more than ten thousand county residents
• 8,000 street miles of optical fiber at an average cost of $50,000 per mile (1,300 miles would cover the entire city of Cleveland)
• Major weatherization and furnace replacement for 60,000 to 80,000 homes. (While you’re at it, you could probably throw in lead paint abatement.)

That’s just off the top of my head. What’s your $400 million idea?

Make a wish.

SB 117 and the city: Moving on

The end of local cable franchising is not quite law in Ohio, not yet. The Ohio Senate must accept the House’s changes to SB 117, or a conference committee must reconcile the two versions, and the Governor must sign the final product. But this will all happen in a matter of days. The argument is over, the deal has gone down. Time to move on.

I think there are two take-aways for Cleveland community leaders and citizens who actually give a crap about what will happen to the city’s ability to govern itself and survive through the next couple of decades.

Take-away one: Nobody in the Columbus power structure — including the people we send there to represent us in the General Assembly, and the people we’ve supported for statewide office with our votes — gives a rat’s tookus for that quaint old concept known as municipal home rule. Nobody. It just doesn’t matter to them, when weighed in the political scales against anything desired by an industry, a moderate-sized labor organization, or fifteen random guys on suburban barstools.

The reason is simple and self-evident: Voting to take away another piece of Ohio communities’ self-governing power has no political cost, even when it’s your own community. Oh, the mayor might make a speech, and city council might pass a resolution, and the local paper might even write an editorial calling on you (not by name) to preserve municipal prerogatives. You might be forced to explain to a few voters how deeply you believe in home rule and how agonizing it is to balance that deep belief with the other concerns you’re called upon to address. But in the end, you can safely cast your political lot with the check-writers — the police and fire unions, the gas drillers. the gun lobby, the phone company, the cable company, the phone company’s union — against your own community, knowing that nobody will remember at election time.

If Frank Jackson and Cleveland City Council members really want to preserve a shred of home rule for this city, some Democratic Representative from Cleveland must lose his or her primary election in 2008 for voting against it. Otherwise, stop whining.

Take-away two: “Our” cable company, headquartered in Connecticut, and “our” phone company, headquartered in Texas, have decided they’ll no longer accept a cooperative, accountable relationship with us to operate their networks over our municipal rights of way. The General Assembly has eliminated the necessity for them to do so. So Cleveland now loses its free institutional network and other bandwidth services, its right to ensure citywide deployment of fiber, its ability to negotiate support for community technology training (i.e. getting the networks to help pay for community programs that train new customers for them), etc.

If there was ever a good reason for Cleveland to hesitate to build our own community-owned, multi-user network infrastructure, that reason is now history.

This “City of Choice” needs affordable real broadband in every neighborhood, we need it in the next couple of years, and we need to stop pretending that “the private sector” is going to provide it.

The city’s real private sector — thousands of small and mid-size companies trying to make a buck in a global marketplace — needs robust connectivity like it needs paved streets. It’s time for this community to start paving our own Information Streets so that the whole community can use them, not just one or two mammoth Triple Play vendors who are never going to consider our future to be their problem.

The Mayor’s wireless initiative is a good first step, but it’s just a first step. I recommend Bob Frankston’s current commentary at MuniWireless for a good place to start a more strategic consideration of Cleveland’s new situation.

****

Above all, people who care about Cleveland must learn the lesson that these people — AT&T, Time Warner, Ohio politicians of both parties — are not our friends. Not that they’re our enemies, either. But it’s time to stop mistaking smiles, handshakes, writing the occasional charity check or showing up at the occasional fundraiser for friendship. They’ve just demonstrated exactly how much they care about this community. Let’s learn our lesson and move on.

SB 117: Breaking other people’s eggs for AT&T’s omelet

Q. What do these Ohio cities have in common?

Athens. Newark. Mansfield. Ashtabula. Brunswick. Portsmouth. New Philadelphia. Lorain. Elyria. Norwalk. Hudson. Medina. Marion. Wapakoneta. Lima. Defiance. Bryan. Van Wert. Oregon. Bowling Green. Ashland. Wooster. Carrollton. Piketon. Lorain. Amherst. Oberlin.

A. These are just a couple of dozen of the hundreds of Ohio municipalities that are about to lose their home rule authority to negotiate and oversee cable franchises, and get absolutely nothing of value in return.

The House Public Utilities Committee is holding its proponent hearing on Senate Bill 117 right about now. Much is being said about the wonders of the competitive video service AT&T is ready to deliver to lucky consumers, just as soon as we get rid of those pesky local franchises. The Communications Workers spokesman is telling everyone how this is the next step Ohio has to take to get a thousand new jobs and a 21st century network. (No, I’m not there but trust me, I’ve got it memorized.)

But no one is talking about exactly where these marvels are going to take place, or more important, where they aren’t.

No one is explaining to Rep. Hottinger that SB 117 will bring Newark no closer to cable competition that it is today. No one is showing Rep. Distel and Rep. Barrett how the 21st century network will bypass Ashtabula, Lorain, Amherst and Norwalk. Unless Rep. Goyal or Rep. Stewart asks, no proponent witness is likely to mention Mansfield or Athens. It’s even less likely that any of today’s witnesses have brought along a map like this…

… showing just how much of Ohio is eligible to benefit from a law designed solely to propel AT&T into the competitive broadband video business.

Yes, to make an omelet you have to break some eggs. But normally, if the eggs you’re cracking belong to me, I expect to get some breakfast.

It’s remarkable how free AT&T and SB 117’s other cooks are with other people’s eggs.

P.S. There’s a simple amendment to SB 117 that would fix the “other people’s eggs” problem. Just make the change from local franchising to a state “video service authorization” system effective only for communities where a new video service is actually entering the market.

No competition, no change. Fair enough?

SB 117: Where’s Verizon?

If all goes according to plan, an amended version of SB 117 will be voted out of the Ohio Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee this afternoon. The vote to approve will be lopsided, possibly unanimous. There will be much praise for Senator Jeff Jacobson, the sponsor, for listening to the legitimate concerns of cities and public access providers and tweaking the bill in response. (Which is BS, but that’s another post… see Pho.) And there will be promises of wondrous benefits to Ohio consumers from the unleashing of “cable competition” throughout the state.

Of course the room will be packed with lobbyists. But there’s one important player who won’t be represented — or whose representative will be very, very quiet. And nobody will notice.

No one will ask: Where’s Verizon?

The single purpose of SB 117, Ohio’s “state video franchising reform” bill, is to clear the way for major telephone companies (”incumbent local exchange carriers”, or ILECs) to sell video and “triple play” services over fiber-enhanced versions of their existing infrastructures, without getting approval from the local governments that own the rights of way where those enhancements will take place. Versions of this bill have been moving through legislatures across the country. Early iterations, as in New Jersey and Texas, encountered serious lobbying opposition from the cable industry, which saw them correctly as an attempt to grab a big competitive edge in markets where phone companies are losing customers to cable VOIP. To blunt this inconvenient opposition, the telcos cut a deal last year in the Michigan legislature which was then imported to Ohio and other states: No more local video franchises for anyone! Thus, we got SB 117.

In this national march through the statehouses, state video franchise legislation has had two major backers: AT&T and Verizon. (In some states like Massachusetts, it’s known to opponents as “the Verizon bill”.) The nation’s two giant telcos are both banking on big-bandwidth converged services, video-VOIP-Internet, to recover and grow their shrinking telephone markets. And they’re both pushing “video competition” as their selling point to policy-makers.

In the national arena, Verizon is actually pretty far out in front of AT&T. Its “FiOS” product — optical fiber all the way to the premises — is simpler and faster than AT&T’s beefed-up DSL service (”U-Verse”), though more expensive to install. Verizon reported over 300,000 FiOS video subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2007, compared to fewer than 20,000 for U-Verse.

But here in Ohio, Verizon’s contribution to the video franchising debate has been deathly silence.

Verizon hasn’t offered testimony on SB 117. Its name doesn’t appear with AT&T’s as a sponsor of www.ohiotvchoice.com. Its spokespeople have been completely absent from news coverage of the bill.

The whole SB 117 narrative is about AT&T. It’s all about AT&T competition, AT&T jobs, AT&T’s political clout. All the red Communications Workers t-shirts at the hearings are worn by AT&T workers.

Most important, the “buildout requirements” in SB 117 apply only to AT&T. That is, they apply only to telecommunications companies with more than a million access lines in Ohio. As you’ll see below, that’s one company.

Hmmm. Is AT&T the only phone company in Ohio? Or the only company that’s able to deploy modern network technology?

Are cable rates and “competition” a concern only to consumers who have AT&T phone service?

Will cities and villages lose their cable franchising authority under SB 117 only in AT&T’s service territory?

No. No. No. And noooo.

Yes, AT&T is Ohio’s biggest ILEC by far. In 2005, it served about 53% of the state’s 5.1 million reported access lines, and 51% of residential lines. It dominates all of the urban/suburban areas except Cincinnati, where Cincinnati Bell rules; and it has a pretty fair share of more rural markets as well.

But AT&T’s local exchanges still cover less than a third of the state. Here’s the map, courtesy of the PUCO:

Who’s minding the phone in all those other counties and fractions of counties? There are more than forty other ILECs reporting to the PUCO. Some are tiny; fifteen of them served fewer than a thousand home access lines in 2005. The big guys are:

Verizon, with over 800,000 access lines in 80 counties;
Cincinnati Bell, with almost 700,000 access lines in six counties;
Embarq (fm Sprint/United), with about 550,000 access lines in 45 counties;
Windstream Western Reserve, with 170,000 access lines; and
Windstream Ohio (fm Alltel), with 120,000.

With the exception of Verizon, these are “second tier” players in the national telecom pecking order. But Verizon, with annual revenue in excess of $80 billion, is definitely first-tier.

Unfortunately, in Verizon’s pecking order, Ohio appears to be very near the bottom.

I've written before about Verizon’s reported desire to sell off its Ohio access lines, as it recently did with its operations in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Given this desire, it’s not surprising that this state is not to be found in Verizon’s announced plans for FiOS deployment. In fact, Verizon only got around to making regular ADSL Internet service available to most of the communities in its Ohio territory five months ago — and only because it was required to by PUCO rules for “alternative regulation” of its basic phone service.

I recommend that you scroll down to the bottom of that last link and take a look at some of the Verizon communities that didn’t have normal ADSL access six months ago. Brunswick. Wadsworth. Oberlin. New Philadelphia. Norwalk. Portsmouth.

So what do you think are their chances of getting “cable competition”, via Verizon fiber to the premises, if SB 117 becomes law and Ohio gets state video franchising?

If you said “slim to none”, go to the head of the class. But under SB 117, all those cities are going to lose their cable franchising authority, just like those in AT&T territory, just like every other municipality in Ohio. And all their Senators and Representatives are being told that their voters will get “cable competition” in return.

It’s a lie.

Take another look at that map of Verizon’s Ohio service territory. Very few if any of the communities and consumers in that blue territory are going to get what they’re being promised by the sponsors of SB 117. No fiber to their homes. No video competition. No new broadband access. No jobs. Not… gonna… happen.

No wonder Verizon is keeping its head down and its mouth shut.

Any halfway responsible Senator or Representative who represents Verizon households, and who’s thinking about voting for SB 117, has a duty to make a simple phone call to the president of Verizon North, Todd Colquitt. (He also happens to be chairman of the board of the Ohio Telecom Association, which is pushing SB 117 — I’m sure they can provide his phone number). The phone call should consist of a single question: “Mr. Colquitt, if SB 117 becomes law, when can households in my district expect to have Verizon FiOS video service available?”

The Chainlink Towpath

I thought you all might like a peek at the newly opened section of the Towpath Trail running through Stripmall Steelyard Commons. Click on the picture for a short slideshow…
 

The pictures were taken walking south from the rear of Home Depot to the rear of Target. As you can see, this is basically a long, narrow chainlink tunnel with the Mittal railroad yard on one side and, um, the back of a brand new strip mall on the other side. So lucky Towpath visitors can now glimpse Cleveland’s recent industrial past juxtaposedwith the symbols of our postindustrial future — prefab architecture, loading docks, dumpsters, the whole exciting World Class Retail package.

(Soon, I’m sure, the view through the chainlink will include 21st-century Clevelanders grabbing a smoke on their break and watching other 21st-century Clevelanders root through the dumpsters.)

It’s hard not to admire such a compelling representation of Cleveland’s modern economic history. And though the new stretch of Stripmall Steelyard Towpath may seem isolated and constricted — maybe even claustrophobic — it isn’t really that unfriendly; the eight-foot fences aren’t topped with razorwire. You can get over that sucker if you really need to.

But it sure seems a long way from the canal.

Update 5/7:  There’s been some debate about this post in comments at BFD.  My friend Laura says I’m being a curmudgeon and wonders where I buy my underwear.

I reply at curmudgeonly length.

If you’re unfamiliar with Stripmall Steelyard Commons, here’s a recent panorama.  Here’s a closer view with the mills behind it. And here’s one of the Towpath tunnels that Adam and Phil were talking about.

The Markos vs. the Menace

I’m not a Kos reader, so I didn’t know The Markos had posted this trash job on my Congressman till I read about it at MaxSpeak. It’s eleven hours old and there are already a thousand twelve hundred comments, so, you know, why bother? — whatever I’m gonna say is already in there somewhere.

But I would like to point out to whoever wanders by here that Kucinich’s’ so-called “urban 58 percent Kerry district” (the Ohio 10th CD), where I live, was held by a Gingrich Republican for two terms before Dennis ousted him in 1996, and that three-fourths of the precincts in this district are in the suburbs, not the city of Cleveland. Running for his sixth term last year, Dennis won 66% of the vote, 616 out of 641 precincts, and every single city, village and township in that mostly suburban district.

The western 25% of the 10th CD is the same as the 16th Ohio House District, which had a Republican state rep until Jennifer Brady squeaked out a 51% win this November. The 16th HD consists of five upper-middle-class suburbs, of which three have Republican mayors. Kucinich carried all five of those communities in November, winning 58% of their votes and 114 of their 138 precincts. (P.S. The 16th HD went for Bush over Kerry 53%-47%.)

I’m not claiming Dennis has a broad national or even statewide appeal; see the quote from Max below. But the idea that he’s just a city lefty whose message automatically alienates middle-class, suburban swing voters is refuted by the electoral evidence.

Not that I think The Markos gives a shit about evidence.

Also I would just like to mention that anyone who cites this book as evidence of anything needs to get off the freaking airplane and visit an actual city. Dennis screwed up his mayoralty in many ways, but refusing to “negotiate” Ralph Perk’s debts with Cleveland Trust by trading off Muny Light to CEI was not one of them. He preserved the asset, he got an income tax increase passed, and he handed both successes off to Voinovich who used them to become Mr. Solvency. Cleveland residents (and many suburbanites) know this, and have voted accordingly for the last twenty years.

Otherwise, I think Max’s response to Kos is about right. Yes, even this part:

Hear me now and believe me later: mockery of Dennis Kucinich is founded on fear of progressive politics, either from enemies on the right, or those who feel it threatens electoral viability and professional interests on the left.

And it’s true. Progressive ideas do threaten electoral viability for Democrats. This is a feature, not a bug. We want to threaten the viability of business as usual, whether in Iraq or in the homeland, because business as usual sucks. There are better and worse ways to do this. DK is acting the good Democrat, participating in the primaries. Wherever you are heading, he has already been there.