Justice Department Probes Wells Fargo, Did Post Racial NAACP Get Kick Backs From Wells Fargo?

By African American Pundit

Well look at this, According to published reports, Wells Fargo  who happens to be the NAACP's favorite predatory lender, donor and “Lead Sponsor” of the NAACP’s 101st annual convention is the Target Of Justice Department Probe.

Get this, The NAACP which appeared to get "promotional kick back money" after mysteriously dropping it's lawsuit against Wells Fargo, the nation's largest home mortgage lender, for allegedly preying upon African American borrowers during the housing bubble and steering them into high-cost subprime loans.

This is not the first bad news for the NAACP's lead sponsor, Wells Fargo.

As reported by Faye Anderson over at Anderson at Large, On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve Board ordered Wells Fargo to pay an $85 million fine for steering borrowers with good credit into subprime loans.

The order reads:

The $85 million civil money penalty is the largest the Board has assessed in a consumer-protection enforcement action and is the first formal enforcement action taken by a federal bank regulatory agency to address alleged steering of borrowers into high-cost, subprime loans. […]

The order addresses allegations that Wells Fargo Financial sales personnel steered borrowers who were potentially eligible for prime interest rate loans into loans at higher, subprime interest rates, resulting in greater costs to borrowers. The order also addresses separate allegations that Wells Fargo Financial sales personnel falsified information about borrowers’ incomes to make it appear that the borrowers qualified for loans when they would not have qualified based on their actual incomes.

There is more... In 2007, the NAACP filed a class action lawsuit against 15 of the nation’s largest subprime lenders for “systematic, institutionalized racism in sub-prime home mortgage lending.”

One of the defendants included Wells Fargo Bank & Company.

As Faye Anderson reported in her blog post dated April 28, 2010, "The NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous was an outspoken critic of Wells Fargo. So you can imagine my surprise when earlier this month, I read the NAACP dropped its lawsuit against the predatory lender." So what did the NAACP get? As Citizen Journalist Faye Anderson ask in the same article.

Easy answer, that the Justice Department needs to probe. The NAACP in my humble observations accepted Wells Fargo’s tainted money as a "kick-back" for dropping the lawsuit.

AAP says: "Forget all the black celebrities that kiss the NAACP's ring in order to get an Image Award. Average black Americans who are hurting and facing depression-like unemployment levels have questioned for years the integrity and credibility of the National office of the NAACP.




Average black Americans have wondered for years if the NAACP represented them of the interest of big banks and corporate kickbacks. Well again, here is the smoking gun. Let's hope the Justice Department probe includes the "corporate kickbacks" from Wells Fargo to the national office of the NAACP."

The Root (WAPO) and The Grio (NBC) Working to Take Over Black American Politics?

Yes, I said it. And yes, I am wondering out loud, if Corporate black blogs like The Root and The Grio are working to control black political thought in America?





AAP says: "Move over grassroots black political bloggers, NBC and The Washington Post have hatched a scheme to take over black political thought over the internet. They are like ATT taking over the smaller telephone companies. They are buying co-opting as many black bloggers as possible, and unfortunately it just may be working."  

Now the question is, on the immediate political front, whether both of these corporate media giants (WaPo and NBC) are doing nothing more than under cover operatives (just like Rev. Al Sharpton) for getting President Barack Obama elected in 2012?

As I said in my earlier post, It get's under my black skin, that so-called black bloggers at (white controlled) corporate black blogs like The Root, owned by the Washington Post, and the The Grio, owned by NBC, are nothing more than a group of organized Obama loyalist who seem to never report on how blacks will lose $194 billion in wealth through 2012, or how the housing crisis continues to hits blacks the hardest and how President Obama (as Russell Simmons recently pointed out in his Open Letter To President Barack Obama) has all but ignored the plight of black America.  

I remember when I learned that NBC would launch a African American news site
and The Washington Post was planning to launch 'The Root', my gut reaction was, "there they go, white corporate America moving to "takeover" black political and social opinion over the internet."

I knew that folks at the Washington Post and NBC were getting concerned that black bloggers groups like the afrospear/afrosphere were getting too organized. I also felt in my gut that white media outlets, may have even sent its own operatives into the afrospear/afrosphere group to spread discontent. 

As I noted previously on this blog, there was a time when a group of black bloggers called the afrospear/afrosphere began to organize and became a force in the black America.

Unfortunately, the Afrospear/Afrosphere has seemed to 'step aside' as a group, and allow corporate black blogs like the Washington Post's The Root (owned by the Washington Post Company through its online subsidiary, Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive) and NBC's The Grio, to jump in feet first, and act as though they are the voice of on-line Black America. 

I guess the with big bucks from The Washngton Post and NBC, (The Root and The Grio) have just about become campaign organizations for President Obama's 2012 Campaign. Candidly, Both of these black corporate blogs or so-called black news outlets should be required to file with the Federal Election authorities as part of the Obama organization.

Will The Root and The Grio become the electronic voice of Black America?  I don't think so... the voice of the black blogging community continues to grow. It will take more than NBC and The Washington Post to control black political thought in this country... But they sure are trying...

Cross Posted on Black News Junkie.com, African American Pundit, MyDD, Networked Blogs.com, and African American Political Opinion, Independent Bloggers Alliance, and other blogs on the internet. Please feel free to link to, and report on this issue.

Ben Jealous, Lumumba snookering and pimping the Scott sisters

I want to discuss with you two old negro Civil Rights groups that have lost their way. First SCLC. They are becoming more and more irrelevant.  


As reported by wctv.tv for more than a year, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has declined to serve as president in a group her father co-founded.


Now Reverend Bernice King doesn't want the job at all.


Reverend King says she's decided to abandon the Southern Christian Leadership Conference because the once proud organization has struggled to stay relevant.


 


She says the group has split in two different directions and had its finances scrutinized. The former chairman was also indicted on theft charges last week. .

The former national chairman of an Atlanta-based civil rights organization was indicted Wednesday in Ohio on 51 charges that include grand theft, forgery and tampering with government records.

The Rev. Raleigh Trammell, 73, was indicted by a Montgomery County grand jury in Dayton, where he lives and also headed a local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Trammell was indicted on one count of grand theft and 25 counts each of forgery and tampering with government records. Read more HERE  Also read more about this story at the Washington Post

Martin Luther King, III says, "I think she was in an awkward position and she prays a whole lot, so I think as a result she was led to no longer want to accept the position."


The SCLC led the movement to end segregation in public facilities and earned more rights for million of black Americans today. More HERE







Southern Christian Leadership Conference leader Rev. Raleigh Trammell is escorted from the SCLC, Dayton, Ohio chapter office by an FBI agent Thursday, Feb. 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Dayton Daily News, Jan Underwood) AAP says: The SCLC is no longer relevant just like NAACP national office is no longer relevant. Speaking of the NAACP here is an interesting UPDATE: Word on the street is the NAACP is preparing to pimp the the Scott sisters. There is also word on the street that the national office of the NAACP may be creating conflict between the Scott sisters and the Scott sisters family. The blogosphere and blog talk raio is a buzz with Scott Sisters family members talking about the national office of the NAACP and Attorney Chokwe Lumumba are causing friction and conflict within the family. The Root's E.R. Shipp may just be right when in rights in The Root about how black folks get scorched by the spotlight of instant fame. In the article he talks about how Ted "Golden Voice" Williams isn't the only person to have his 15 minutes of fame before crashing to earth. Remember the subway hero? And what will come of the Scott sisters?

It's a must read article.  Here is a bit of what is said: "I think of Wesley Autry, who threw himself atop a man who had fallen onto a New York City subway track and saved him. He was honored by President George W. Bush at the 2007 State of the Union address and by other politicians in New York. Donald Trump gave him $10,000; he was given a Jeep and sports tickets. He was all over national television. And on and on.


But months later, when he still hoping for lucrative movie and book deals, he was passing out business cards identifying himself as "Wesley Autry Sr. -- Subway Hero." Terrie Williams says she saw him at one event carrying around some of his awards and "pulled his coat" to tell him that was not a good thing. He and an early team of managers ended up in conflict over their insistence on taking 50 percent of any income that Autry earned from the subway incident, but eventually settled out of court.


When it comes to prisoners -- from men and women freed as a result of DNA evidence brought to light through the efforts of the Innocence Project to the Scott sisters released from a Mississippi prison earlier this month after 16 years for a robbery that may have netted $11 -- there is often a rush of publicity and invitations to tell their stories. Then everything is expected to be normal.


The Scott sisters' story became international in part because of outrage that a condition of their release was that one donate a kidney to the other. They have relocated to Florida, where they have family, but the Mississippi NAACP is more or less continuing to advocate for them, according to Derrick Johnson, the state conference president. It will convene a meeting in coming days to coordinate their medical and transportation needs and to identify a facility to perform tests to determine if Gladys Scott is a match for her sister, Jamie."  More HERE

AAP says: As I said earlier, word on the street is the national office of the NAACP is creating a bunch of mess with the Scott Sisters and their family. NAACP President Ben Jealous The NAACP and Atty Chokwe Lumumba are talking it up with the Scott sisters, telling them that they too can get lucrative movie and book deals. the only problem is, the real heroes are the mother, Nancy Lockhart, black bloggers, blogtalkradio, black radio, blacktalkradio, and other activist.  Yes, the NAACP will have the Scott sisters on the NAACP Image Awards, and probably won't ask the mother or Nancy Lockhart to attend. AAP says: lets remember folks, this is "Ben Jealous, he is the same guy who issued a statement decrying  shirley Sherrod's so-called  abhorrent statements she made during an address to members of the NAACP at a banquet, about denying a white farmer as much help as she could because of the color of his skin. Then to cover his self he said the NAACP was “snookered” into condemning former Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod.  Now Ben jealous and Chokwe Lumumba are snookering the Scott Sisters." Unfortunately the national office of the NAACP and Atty Chokwe Lumumba are now selling the Scott sisters another Jena 6 dream, now the question is whether the Scott sisters will be passing out business cards identifying themselves as "the Scott Sisters. -- former prisoners of the Mississippi prisons, new prisoners of Chokwe Lumumba and the NAACP." Listen and join in the conversation on my blog talk radio show. We will discuss how the NAACP and Chokwe Lumumba are snookering and pimping the Scott sisters. Tonight on Blog Talk Radio. "If you can handle the truth."

Ben Jealous and NAACP Sleeping With The Enemy

Well it appears that NAACP is sleeping with the enemy.  You see, The NAACP believes, what Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour believes, that government should control our bodies and can do what it likes with them after it declares us to be a criminal." As Desiree Washington also noted, "This action of making organ donation compulsory if one wants a fair prison sentence transforms an act of altruism into state oppression that could imitate and rival China’s lucrative forced organ harvesting market." Read More Here 



What am I talking about? I'm talking about how Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour on Thursday of last week, suspended the life sentences of two black sisters who’d already served 16 years for an armed robbery that netted $11. Barbour conditioned the suspended life sentences on the promise that one sister would donate one of her healthy kidney to her sister, who is presently on dialysis paid for by the state to the tune of about $200,000 annually. And get this, the national office of the NAACP is making bizarre comments about his decision, saying,  “This is a shining example of how governors should use their commutation powers.”


AAP says: There goes NAACP President Benjamin Jealous again, this time he is stepping up as Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour "yes um" boss man, negro...


I agree with the Root's E.R. Shipp, "Pardoning two women serving life sentences for an $11 robbery they may not have committed is hardly a profile in courage." Read More HERE




(above) NAACP President Benjamin Jealous plays in black face and charlatan for Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour

As reported by Desiree Washington, many are saying that Barbour’s conditional pardon may be unethical and possibly illegal”


Get this, Michael Shapiro, chief of organ transplantation at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, told the Reuters news agency. “He is unaware of the procedures of transplantation that include making sure donors are not coerced.”


I'm in agreement with so many black bloggers, like who are raising questions about the NAACP Sleeping With The Enemy, and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour brand of  Mississippi justice.


As Earl Ofari Hutchinson noted, Jealous’s praise of Barbour as a “shining example” was stunning, given Barbour’s years of resistance in the face of a national campaign for the sisters’ release and the conditions he imposed on the two women when he finally did show mercy. Thirty-six-year-old Gladys must donate a kidney to 38-year-old Jamie, who is seriously ill. Meanwhile, four convicted killers whom Barbour earlier pardoned and another whose life sentence he suspended had no conditions placed on them in return for clemency, despite the brutality of their crimes.  More HERE


As Reid Report Editor Joy-Ann (“Joy”) Reid a political columnist for the Miami Herald and editor of The Reid Report noted;  Ah, Mississippi justice. … The women, who are being housed in different parts of a prison just outside Jackson, Mississippi, say they want to go to Florida to be with their mother and children. Florida corrections officials would be in charge of making sure the kidney ransom is paid.

And while it’s a very good thing for the women to be freed, one wonders whether Barbour would have done it had he not come under fire for his ridiculous comments on race and the segregation era, and were he not likely seeking the presidency. I’d wager a guess it wouldn’t have happened. The Scott sisters’ case isn’t new. It has been a cause among activists for years.


Here’s Barbour’s statement on the release. I’m surprised he didn’t add a condition that the sisters appear in a campaign commercial for his presidential run, praising him as a fine example of Southern courtliness and good favor toward the colored people."  Read more HERE