Find more on the bill here.

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN0952458820080511?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

A California man who has defaulted on nine homes and expects banks to foreclose on all of them, forcing him into bankruptcy, says he now considers it a mistake to have invested in the real estate market.

Shawn Forgaard, a 37-year-old software company project manager, bought one home for his family to live in and nine more as investments. He stands to lose all the investment houses in the mortgage meltdown but says he has come away wiser from the experience.

“Everyone stumbles. I’m not going to hide or run or live in denial, or with regrets,” Forgaard told Reuters in an interview. “On the surface it looks like total devastation but it’s just the opposite. I’m confident our lives will be much, much richer as a result.”

Forgaard bought a house in Santa Cruz, about 60 miles (100 km) south of San Francisco, in 2000. Four years later, using $800,000 in stock options, he began snapping up investment properties, putting 10 percent to 40 percent down on negative amortization loans — in which payments do not cover the interest so that a borrower’s balance grows over time.

It was those “neg-am” loans, which include triggers causing payments to balloon if the debt reaches a certain percentage of the original balance, that would come back to haunt him.

“I knew I was sitting on time bombs,” Forgaard said. “I knew the market was going to go soft and I knew that property values would decline. But I figured that I had enough equity to survive the storm and sell or take the loss and refinance.

“I didn’t anticipate a downturn of epic proportions such that home values are 40 percent less than they were,” he said.

That’s because you’re a fucking idiot.

While this type of scenario is very rare… having one or more investment homes was not and just as many primary homes are foreclosed so too are many many of these investment homes. They will all be counted in those numbers you see on TV when they report how many homes are in foreclosure. I’ve never seen them seperate it down into primary and secondary homes.

http://www.nj.com/…

A gambling ring that took in $1 million a month in bets was cracked yesterday with the arrest of 45 people, including four reputed associates of the Genovese crime family as well as a high school athletic director and a teacher from another school district.

Authorities also seized more than $5 million, about 5 pounds of marijuana and five vehicles during raids that began at 5 a.m. in Bergen, Hudson, Monmouth and Ocean counties.

The investigation was dubbed “Operation Off-the-Hook,” because two of the alleged leaders of the gambling ring, James W. Skinner, 69, of Allenwood, and his son, James J. Skinner, 40, of Hazlet, lived in towns just south of Sandy Hook, the prosecutor said.

The other ringleaders were identified as Mark Iafelice, 49, of Edgewater; Brian DiGuilmi, 48, of Emerson, and Bernard Duffy, 63, of Hasbrouck Heights. All are charged with racketeering, conspiracy and promoting gambling, which carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison. Molinelli described the Skinners, Iafelice and DiGuilmi as “associates” of the Genovese crime family.

Others arrested included a North Bergen High School athletic director, Jerry Maietta, 37, of North Bergen; a North Bergen school aide, Ralph Marino, 52, of Cliffside Park, and John Prato, 36, of Brick, a teacher at Freehold Regional High School.

North Bergen spokesman Paul Swibinski said, “Certainly everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”

Oh of course: “Innocent until proven guilty.” I’m sure none of their property was taken by force or anything. Really awesome stuff. A pig can murder a woman and maim her child and get max 8 months yet a group of people provide a gambling service and harm no one face up to 10 years.

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In his latest video for Reason.tv, Drew Carey goes all in to report how Dallas cops carried out a paramilitary-style raid on a poker game at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1837, which has now been forced to close its doors.

The raid is part of a broader move by local police to shut down poker games, arrest players, and seize property - even in low stakes games benefiting charity, like at the VFW. And it’s emblematic of the government’s misguided war on gambling, such as the recently enacted federal ban on Internet wagering. In most jurisdictions throughout the country, consenting adults are banned from gambling — unless of course they want to bet on low-odds games run by the government. State lotteries, that is.

The Dallas VFW case goes to court December 5.

This episode is pretty disappointing. They don’t talk about the whole internet gambling issue nor mention what’s being done to other groups nor what’s being done to combat all of it.