SB 94 and AB 764

So our friends at the Capitol are at it again. Now, they clearly don't have enough to do. I mean, it looks like they are sitting around doing nothing and trying to save everyone. After all, we don't have a $24 Billion budget deficit. Yes, that is Billion with a B. How big of a deficit is this? This deficit is as big as the GDP of Trinidad and Tobago. Okay, if you don't get GDP, go ask your friendly neighborhood economist or that outstanding econ professor at CSU Sacramento, Prof. Lang.

What would you do if you had a $24,000,000,000 deficit? I would go about fixing it. But not these people. We are on the verge of paying vendors with IOUs and they are still doing other things. What great things are they doing? Trying to screw consumers AND put a whole bunch of good attorneys out of business.

Lets start with this concept: if you can't keep your own house in order, don't tell me how to run mine. Seriously, it is easy to sit around as a legislator and tell people who to run their businesses. But you can't even take care of your own business. I think the expression these days is "handle your business." I know, it is your business to protect people. That comes somewhere after PASSING A BALANCED BUDGET.

Now for those in the Assembly and Senate reading this, and I know you do because you freaking follow me on Twitter, let me give you a remedial math lesson. You cannot spend more than you take in. Simple. Income minus expenses cannot be a negative number. If it is, you are broke. If it continues, you file for bankruptcy. If it still continues, you end up being California.

You want to know why people spend more than they make? Because they look at their leaders who clearly think it is an acceptable thing to do. Oh, and don't sit there Mr. Conservative and blame the liberals, you won't freaking raise taxes. And don't blame the conservatives, Mr. Liberal who was giving away the farm doing the good times. Really, do you think that giving cost of living increases and step increases for pay can go on indefinitely?

Seriously, these folks are giving money away left and right. Now, I understand that some state workers are getting furloughed 3 days per week. That is a 15% pay cut. Where is your 15% pay cut, Dave "I want to be insurance commissioner" Jones. (For google purposes, DAVE JONES!") Darrell "I can't do math" Steinberg, I don't see you taking a 15% pay cut. But you want the working folks to take one. No, not want, force it on them. And Karen Bass, you aren't any better. Steinberg and Bass should resign now for their utter lack of leadership ability. You should have resigned before.

But, let me get back on track. While these yahoo's are screwing around over a state budget, a few of their colleagues decided they should try to regulate attorneys who help people get loan modifications. Their bills would ban an attorney from collecting any money up front. Yes, that's right. We would have to get paid AFTER we get the client a result. Fine. But, what client's do they think are going to pay AFTER getting what they want? Let's be honest. The mechanic doesn't give you the car back before you pay to make sure you are happy with the work. The home builder doesn't fix every problem before having the money. The legislator doesn't balance the budget before getting paid. No, these folks all get paid up front.

But let's play along. Now as an attorney I cannot get paid for the work I do up front. I can't even put the money in my trust account. I have to trust my client to pay me on the back end. Would some of my clients do this? Yep. Would most of my clients do this? Probably. Would all of my clients do this? Nope.

Imagine if you go to work every day and your boss decides to pay you 75% of the time. Would you go back to work? No. Of course not. Who would do work when there is no guarantee of payment? Very few people.

So, what happens in this scenario? The attorneys who are doing the work stop doing it. What's the problem with that? Well, according to the folks at the Capitol and the consumer groups, nothing. After all, the banks are doing a fine job giving people loan modifications. And the attorneys are all ripping people off. We have to stop the attorneys.

A little perspective: the State Bar has about 850 to 900 complaints about attorneys handling loan modifications. They have 100 attorneys under investigation. There are 200,000 or so attorneys in the State. Um, I am not that good at math, but that is, .05%. You are passing a law to stop less than 1% of the attorneys in the state who are scumbags.

Now, the banks? Nope, they can pay their attorneys anything they want. And the bank lawyers? They can charge anything they want and get paid up front. You see, we have to stop the attorneys who are representing consumers. We have to stop the small guys. Are there bad attorneys? Yep. I heard of a guy who has made millions since the beginning of this year alone and done no work.

Seriously, the legislators and the consumer groups think that the banks are doing a fine job as are the non profits. Have you talked to someone who has called a non profit? Ask them how much help they are getting. NONE! Are the banks offering loan modifications? Sometimes. Of course, Wells Fargo turned down a client because it wasn't in WELLS FARGO's best interest. Countrywide declined a short sale because they were missing 1 page for 1 offer and there were 6 other offers. Did they notify anyone that the page was missing? Nope. Just denied it.

Heck, GMAC has all but admitted that they will take attorney cases and move them to the front of the line. Yes, those folks go first. But now there won't be any of those folks. So, what is going to happen? Anyone? Bueller? After all, if the banks did the right thing in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess, would we?

Sure, consumers are to blame. They wanted to keep up with the Jones'. That isn't good. But mortgage brokers were putting people in mortgages that they knew couldn't be afforded. And real estate agents were selling people homes that they knew were outside of their price range. And banks were writing garbage no doc loans and accepting that people who were high school dropouts were making $150,000 per year as a street sweeper. But we are now supposed to believe that these same banks are trustworthy and are going to do the right thing?

I guess our legislators are either dumb, paid off or blind. I don't care which but if any of them has the cajones to debate me on the issue, I am game. You morons can't balance a budget but you want to tell me how to run my business? Really? Should I run my business the way you run the state? Should I run a deficit? Are you going to bail me out since you are now telling me who I can and cannot charge?

But it gets worse for me. The State Bar agreed with this idea. They had a board of governors meeting. The President, of course, was on vacation and couldn't fly back for the meeting. She couldn't even attend by phone? Webex? Video conference? Freaking pick up the phone and call and be put on speaker phone? Apparently that is too complex for her. So, President-elect Howard Miller ran this meeting and pushed this idea through. Miller claims to be a plaintiff's lawyer or a consumer attorney. I guess if you consider a millionaire a consumer attorney then he may be. But he just said to every other consumer attorney "I think you guys should sit and spin."

He just agreed to let the legislature tell us how to run our business and how to charge our clients. What's next? Maybe a personal injury attorney can only charge 10%? Maybe a criminal defense attorney can only charge his client if the client avoids jail? Maybe the medical malpractice attorney shouldn't be able to charge a fee since someone in the legislature must think doctors do good things. Maybe if Miller is so happy with the way the legislature wants to regulate business, he will let them come in and tell him what he can charge and how much. No? He doesn't want that? Then here is an idea: don't support them telling me how to run my business, numskull.

We have the perfect storm. The State Bar has now decided that the legislature should tell attorneys how to charge. The legislature gets to deflect attention away from their complete and utter failure and lack of ability to do their jobs and claim they are out protecting people. And the banks get to continue making their millions of dollars by screwing consumers. And somehow the consumer groups think this is good. Do we really wonder why our state is falling apart when we have a system where I was told by a legislative staffer "that may be the truth but that won't sell in the Capitol?" When these bills pass, the government of California will have failed to protect consumers once more while continuing to cover up their incompetence.

By the way, to those of you reading this at the Capitol, the offer still stands: a public debate of these bills. Yes, that goes for you Nava, Calderon, and Corbett, as well as you Jones, Steinberg and Bass. Oh, and you alleged consumer groups, that goes for you as well. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Freaking Wells Fargo

Okay, so this was going to be a rant about standardized testing. And I started it at about 8:20. I got through part of it and my work phone rang at 8:34. Yes, 8:34 at night. PM! After dark. When most people are not answering their phones. Kids in bed time. After dinner. Looking for a little snack time. Just over 12 hours to go time. You know, NIGHT TIME!

But, being the dedicated employee, er, attorney that I am, I answered the phone. After all, the phone number that showed up on caller ID was a 414 number. You know the rule - if the phone rings at night, it is not good. The later it rings, the worse the news. And when it comes from a different area code, it is really bad. There is a 1 to 10 scale on bad news.

You know, the phone rings between 6 and 9 and its like a 4. It rings between 9 and midnight and its a 7. If it rings between midnight and 4 am, it is a 10. If the phone rings after 4am, then you know someone had a baby.

Seriously, who else calls you between 4am and like 8am? No one. Only expectant fathers whose wives are in labor and they want to tell you. No one else would call you then.

And if the phone rings between 6 and 9 and it is from a different area code, add 1 so its a 5. Between 9 and midnight from a different area code, it is an 8. And after midnight from a different area code, then is like a 12 - and the scale stops at 10!

Anyway, so the phone rings and I answer it. It is Wells Fargo. It is not the next stage, it is the never calls you back stage. They want to talk to me about a client. A client who I have been helping since OCTOBER! They are just getting around to it. It is May. Yes, it took them 7 (SEVEN) (SIETE) (SEPT) (SETTE) months to get back to me. 7 freaking months. That would be over 28 weeks. That would be more than 196 days. It would be 4,704 hours. 282,240 minutes for them to call me back, give or take a few hundred minutes.

Then this lady, who called me, and by called me, I mean dialed my phone number by herself, and by dialed, I mean she used her chubby little fingers to push the buttons. And I am sure she did push the buttons. But, this lady who called me asked me for my client's home address. Um, its 8:34 at night and I happen to be at home. How would I have my client's address? I asked her that. She said she needed it to verify my identity before she could talk to me.

I asked her, and I did this with a serious tone, "Um, you called me. You dialed my phone. I answered the phone 'This is Jonathan.' Doesn't that verify my identity?" I thought I was in Sneakers. No, not the tennis shoes, the movie. Sheesh, Robert Redford flick. Great movie. Anyway, she says that this is their procedure. She called me. She dialed the phone. I answered very simply with the name of the person she was calling. Yet, apparently, that is not good enough for her.

I asked why I was getting a call at 8:34 at night. She said that she doesn't start working until 4pm my time and most of her customers are in California. So, let me see if I get this right. You don't START until most of the people are about to quit working? Now, I understand there are some jobs that can be done at night and it works. Custodian, UPS driver, long haul trucker, police officer, prostitute, phone sex operator: all good night jobs. Bank representative who is trying to negotiate something: BAD NIGHT JOB! I mean, seriously, when you are calling attorneys for your job and you start at 4pm, how many people do you think you are going to talk to?

I know, that is the point. They can just leave us messages and not have to talk to us. Then why not have a robo-dialer do it. How about someone with at least a cool voice? I mean, maybe Billy Mays is available to record a message. "Hi. This is Billy Mays for Wells Fargo Bank. We are trying to reach you about your client. You aren't there. If you call in the next 10 minutes, we will double your order and you will get 2 bottles of Oxyclean, 2 Mr. Puddy Wall Fix Kits, 2 shark repellant thingermerbobers from Pitch Men, and 2 overly expensive mortgages that you cannot pay back." At least that would be enjoyable.

So, I asked her what would have happened if I didn't answer the phone. She would have left me a message and tried again - when I got back to the top of her stack. I figure that would be sometime around December, 2009. Maybe. If I was lucky. Which, of course, I am not!

Is it any wonder our banks have screwed up our economy? They can't deal with people during normal business hours. They have some arcane policy and don't even try to deal with real life people. I mean, if any of us ran our business this way, the government wouldn't give us bailout money - they would tar and feather us. I know the State Bar would be all over me. Yet, we let the banks do it - and we pay them to. Unreal!