Happy Easter Agrivillers

[parsley]

Lots of birds happy to be home Constant
blackbird cackling about the fluffs on the trees.
Had to squint, but from a distance, there is a slight
slight hint of greening trees. Aggressive pregnant
racoons are remodelling every building they can
rip apart. Perrenials are constantly warily popping
up. Parsnips are pretending they are perky tits.
Who has found a crocus?

[carebear300]

Ty Pars and the same to you and everybody else. Snowing here right now we need the moisture. Haven't found any crocuses yet.

[TOM4CWB]

Dear Parsley,

We are in the middle of doing our Love According to John passion play at the Edmonton Jubilee Auditorium. 7:30pm tonight and 1:30pm Sat.

There is no better way for us to live love... than to help bring this epic message; live to thousands of school students and the general public.

"http://www.lajlive.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&It emid=29"

IMHO... there will NEVER be a greater story told!

Cheers!

Thanks again for bringing this forward!

[TOM4CWB]

An angry priest scatters the money lenders


April 7, 2012.

Father Robert Rien, of St Ignatius at Antioch, a Catholic church east of San Francisco, speaks with a crisp buoyant voice that belies his 65 years. When he is angry it fairly crackles.

This Lenten season he is angry at America's big banks, so angry he has pulled all his parish's money out of the Bank of America and opened accounts at a small local bank.

He has called on his flock to do the same and joined a nationwide interfaith movement dedicated to divesting from the major banks. They see Lent as the perfect time to spread the word.

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''We have a mandate from the gospels to act,'' says Father Rien.

''Jesus went to the temple and he challenged the banking system of his day. He said, 'you are thieves and marauders, you are wrong in what you are doing'.'' On Ash Wednesday this year a group of San Francisco clergy spilled ashes outside a Wells Fargo ATM and called for a foreclosure sabbatical, invoking the Biblical term for the ancient practice of forgiving debts.

It is hard to exaggerate how poorly America's banks have treated their customers throughout the financial crisis that saw about 4 million homes being foreclosed upon, and Father Rien's voice crackles away as he discusses it.

The banks helped precipitate the financial collapse by selling mortgages to people who could never afford them. When the financial system collapsed they accepted a $US205 billion ($199.2 billion) bailout from taxpayers, but once refinanced they refused to help homeowners by modifying their mortgages.

''I actually went to a meeting in Washington and I said to Tim Geithner [the Treasury Secretary and author of the bank bailout], that he had to make them help, but he said there was nothing he could do. I was astounded,'' says Father Rien.

But it was the outright fraud by America's big banks that finally made Father Rien an activist for the first time since he was ordained 40 years ago.

As the crisis snowballed through 2007 and 2008, parishioners started coming to Father Rien for help, saying they had dutifully filled out and filed mortgage modification applications with the Bank of America, only to be suddenly evicted. Time and again the bank, equipped with their own legal documents, said their customers' paperwork had been lost and their applications were too late.

''I had 24 or 25 families just in my parish saying the same thing; it was untenable.''

When Father Rien approached the Bank of America to plead his parishioners' cases the bank told him he had no connection to the families and no right to speak on their behalf.

He did not know it then but Father Rien was seeing early signs of what became known as the robo-signing scandal, in which four American banks admitted forging signatures on untold thousands of documents to speed up foreclosures.

In February this year they came to a $US26 billion legal settlement over the issue, but Father Rien says they are still failing to help many of their struggling customers.

The priest seems stunned by what he says is the corporate and personal greed that has led to this situation.

''Look at how much money some of these people [in finance] earn; no one needs to be that rich, no one.'' So Father Rien joined PICO (Pacific Institute for Community Organisation), the faith-based network that launched the bank divestment campaign. ''I am angry,'' he says.

About six hours' drive up the Californian coast, in a suburb of Hollywood that over the past few years has transformed itself from near slum to thriving family neighbourhood, Pastor Ryan Bell found his way into PICO and the divestment campaign for the same reasons.

The Seventh Day Adventist pastor had always been engaged in his community, serving as a chaplain for local police and fire brigades. But he had never seen himself as an activist before the banks started foreclosing on members of his flock.

''The same people who transformed this area were being thrown out,'' he recalls. That many of their houses remained vacant after the evictions made the community even angrier.

Two years ago Pastor Bell found himself publicly supporting a city council move to only do business with responsible banks. It led to him divesting church funds from the major banks as well.

He, too, turns to the gospels to explain his protest, but for him it is the parable of the unforgiving servant that sheds best light on the banks' role in the crisis.

In this story a merciful king forgives the debt of a servant, who later chokes an even more humble servant to extract a debt owed to him. ''The taxpayer is the merciful king,'' says Pastor Bell. ''And the banks are choking my parishioners even though they have had that bailout.''

Pastor Bell has also targeted the Bank of America, which his church had banked with for 50 years. When he closed the church's accounts an executive did get in touch, but declined to help modify mortgages.

An assistant professor of law at Albany Law School, Ray Brescia, echoes the clergymen's frustration.

Two years ago he wrote in The Huffington Post, ''Isn't it high time to admit that mortgage lending in the United States and the foreclosures that have followed are so tainted by fraud, abuse and illegality that a moratorium on all foreclosures, everywhere, is the only just response?'' He described filing of falsified documents to facilitate foreclosures as ''likely the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the courts of this country''.

He says not only have the banks behaved unjustly, but they continue to behave illogically. ''In this environment when values have dropped so much, it makes more sense to keep people in their homes paying off their mortgages,'' he says. This would take what the divestment calls ''meaningful mortgage adjustment'' - cutting mortgage-holder's debt. ''If you foreclose everyone loses.''

Professor Brescia says banks' recalcitrance is borne of the business model they adopted to profit from the boom. When they sold on their mortgages they became middlemen. They no longer have any incentive to help customers pay off their loans.

''I can see why people are angry. There is a disconnect between how the government extended the banks a lifeline and then the banks turned around and pulled up the same lifeline that could have been extended to customers that are underwater.''

And so the campaign against the banks goes on.

''This is a season of repentance and looking inward; we ought to be asking our institutions to do that,'' Pastor Bell says.

A national organiser with PICO, Tim Lilienthal, says he expects pressure to grow on the banks throughout the year in the wake of the Lenten campaign. So far only 25 of PICO's 1000 affiliates have divested from the banks, removing a total of $US31 million. But the success has drawn interest and support from other members. ''I expect the divestment to grow in size and speed throughout the rest of the year,'' Mr Lilienthal says.

He says recent reports show that America may be only half-way through the foreclosure crisis, meaning millions more could lose their homes.

Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment, but this month announced that it would reduce the amount owed by up to 200,000 home-owners as part of its settlement over the robo-signing scandal.

In San Jose, 55-year-old Mercy Martinez, who claims to be the victim of a predatory loan from Bank of America, proudly pulled her savings out of the bank in front of television cameras with her priest at her side two years ago. She wants the campaign to spread: ''Keep moving your money. What good is an empty house?''


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/an-angry-priest-scatters-the-money-lenders-20120406-1wgro.html#ixzz1rIAOtllY

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/an-angry-priest-scatters-the-money-lenders-20120406-1wgro.html#ixzz1rIAcwFFe

[SASKFARMER3]

Happy Easter to All! Off to outlaws today
and tomorrow then Sunday with my family!

[crusher]

Snowbirds are coming home too!

Happy Easter to all. Those fence sitters, Sunday is a great day to go to church.

[farmaholic]

Happy Easter everyone, enjoy Easter dinner with your family!!