On Tuesday, April 23, Bob Edgar, the executive director of Common Cause, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 69. Born in Philadelphia, Bob Edgar served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His district included sections of Delaware County where PICO staff person Monica Sommerville was raised. Monica remembers the impact that Bob Edgar had on her and her community in the following essay:

In 1974, as a fourteen year old growing up in a housing project in Chester, Penn., it was easy to be pessimistic and disillusioned about the political process.

My generation’s first glimpse at politics included a series of assassinations of inspirational leaders, the protracted Vietnam War that had taken its toll on so many families including my own, and the first ever resignation of an American president shamed by the Watergate scandal.

Locally, Delaware County politics had long been under the control of a political machine that corrupted the democratic process as party loyalty impacted every aspect of community life from garbage pick-up to municipal jobs.  Kids of blue-collar Democrats grew up understanding that their dads would not get one of those decent-paying city jobs and political candidates that challenged the entrenched power structure did not stand a chance of getting elected.

That was true until 1974, when Bob Edgar, a young, ordained United Methodist pastor – and a Democrat – successfully ran and got elected to represent the 7^th Congressional District. He was the first Democrat elected from this district in 36 years. For the next 12 years, as I grew up and got married, Bob Edgar represented me and my family in Congress. I recall feeling represented as Rep. Edgar pushed for good government and, a stronger democracy, and improving conditions for families like mine. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rev. Errol Thompson, Pastor New Fellowship Baptist Church
Chairman, PICO United Florida

Last summer, Ray Mercado and his wife began to struggle to keep up with their mortgage payments on their Orlando home. Like responsible homeowners, they reached out to their bank, JP Morgan Chase. Ray – a disabled veteran – estimates that he has spoken to 37 different bank representatives in his quest to get help. A barrier to negotiating an affordable payment: their home is worth $100,000 less than what they bought it for just four years ago.

Ray’s story is all too common. CoreLogic, which tracks negative-equity rates, estimates that 46 percent of mortgage-holders in Florida owe more on their loans than their homes are worth. Only Nevada and Arizona have higher rates of “underwater” homeowners.

Big Wall Street banks like Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase fueled the meteoric rise in housing prices in Florida, making billions of dollars along the way. But when this bubble inevitably went bust — due in large part to reckless lending — they left homeowners and taxpayers to pick up the tab for the resulting foreclosures and billions in negative equity.

These banks enjoyed all of the upsides of the boom while facing little of the consequences of the bust. Any attempt to make them forgive even a modest amount of this negative equity has been met with arguments from Wall Street CEOs that we need to ensure “fairness” in the modification process and warnings about moral hazard.

Read the rest of this entry »