Humorless libruls just don’t get foreclosure mill humor:
Let me describe a few of the photos. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.
A second picture shows a coffin with a picture of a woman whose eyes have been cut out. A sign on the coffin reads: “Rest in Peace. Crazy Susie.” The reference is to Susan Chana Lask, a lawyer who had filed a class-action suit against Steven J. Baum — and had posted a YouTube video denouncing the firm’s foreclosure practices. “She was a thorn in their side,” said my source.
A third photograph shows a corner of Baum’s office decorated to look like a row of foreclosed homes. Another shows a sign that reads, “Baum Estates” — needless to say, it’s also full of foreclosed houses. Most of the other pictures show either mock homeless camps or mock foreclosure signs — or both. My source told me that not every Baum department used the party to make fun of the troubled homeowners they made their living suing. But some clearly did. The adjective she’d used when she sent them to me — “appalling” — struck me as exactly right.
Check out the pictures at the link above. And be glad that Nocera doesn’t say it’s all the libruls’ fault for not confirming Robert Bork.
Omnes Omnibus
Haven’t you used this song recently?
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought I used a different Velvet song.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: Ahem. Love the song and album though. Weirdly, I was listening to Sunday Morning when I saw this.
On Topic: Has Nocera recently become an idiot?
DougJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
That was more than two weeks ago.
Peter
Haha! Homelessness and poverty!
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: Recent is a relative term.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Those pictures really are disgusting. What do you say to people like that?
Waynski
Don’t hate the players, DougJ. Hate the game. I guess the ass wipes in the photo should get another job that isn’t so morally disgusting… oh yeah, they’re in Buffalo. It’s probably the best gig in town. The puppet masters in Republican Washington and on Wall Street know that almost everyone has a price. Making morally correct decisions is easier when you have economic options. When you don’t have options it’s easier to make excuses for immoral behavior. That’s not to absolve the folks in the photos. I’m just pointing out that the animal spirits that can inspire people to build positive things when they’re not threatened can also inspire them to rip the bread out of another’s mouth when they are. That’s why creating conditions where making the moral decision is the easier thing to do is so important for our society. We won’t survive peacefully with some of us being more equal than others. And vodka also too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: WRT Nocera’s idiocy, it appears that it comes and goes.
Cliff in NH
This only helps me explain where I think the market is going over the next few years.
Whata bunch of aholes.
Roger Moore
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Meet my friend, Madame Guillotine.
evinfuilt
Can we get the pitchforks out now? Never a more deserving group of scum to line up for what comes next.
RareSanity
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Nothing you could say to them would leave the slightest mark on the Armor of Asshole they put on every morning.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Waynski: Those people wouldn’t be interested in a job that “isn’t so morally disgusting”. From the photos, they positively enjoy inflicting pain on people.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Roger Moore:
Actually, having their employer turn its guns on them would be
amusinginteresting.Waynski
@The prophet Nostradumbass: You’re prolly right about those folks. My point is that this kind of behavior would be much more a target of shame (as it damned well should be) in a more equitable society. The more we drift toward a Hobbesian state of nature, the less leverage we have to shun and discourage these types of people and the more likely it is that they will end up with the power.
Calouste
@Roger Moore:
They’re really asking, taunting to be strung up on lampposts, aren’t they?
To be honest, if seeing these pictures drives a foreclosed homeowner in Buffalo over the cliff and gets them to shoot up the office of Baum, my only thought would be “you were asking for it”.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Waynski: yes, you’re right about that.
Susan Chana Lask, Esq.
Wow, what a loser Baum is. Unfortunately for Baum, I’m not dead yet and I’m coming at him and his monster group ten times harder now.
I wonder if he has a picture of his recently divorced wife in a coffin too–poor woman? Or does he throw darts at AG Schneiderman’s picture? What monsters these Buffalo people are, and how embarassing to the State of New York and the practice of law.
If he was a real man, then I’m asking him to meet me face to face in a boxing ring, because I promise all the people he made homeless and the entire State of New York that I can knock him out in 10 seconds flat.
Come on divorced Sloppy Stevie, take me up on my offer…..in the least, you owe the world an apology for this disgusting display of disturbing foeecloure mill practice parties.
And by the way, you put me in a coffin and tore my eyes out–didn’t your father die? How’d it feel when you had to watch him in a coffin dead and go 6 feet under–or do you think it’s acceptable for your employees to put me in one at your demonic office party. You’re not even a human being Baum–you’re a monster, you’re hated by many and you’re going to be run out of town for this.
arguingwithsignposts
Wow, didn’t see that coming.
Mino
Whoo, source was disaffected former employee.
El Cid
@Susan Chana Lask, Esq.: Whether you’re actually her or a pseudonymic invocation, go get them.
harlana
Wow, this Baum is a fucking idiot! Even putting aside the “evilness” factor, no lawyer worth his salt would be stupid enough to pull something like this, knowing cameras would be about. Apparently, hubris overcame good sense. Pride goeth before a fall.
harlana
The women in those photos make me ashamed of being a woman. Women are supposed to be compassionate.
harlana
Love the song also, I’m a Velvet and Velvet/Nico fan.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Susan Chana Lask, Esq.:
If you get him in a ring I want to bet $100 on you to kick his ass.
Keep being a thorn in his ass and anywhere else on him that you see fit to pierce. :)
MaxB
When we–I use the term loosely–treat an identifiable outgroup inhumanely, we tend to regard them as less than human. It’s not a bad way to keep guilt from driving us crazy (well, not bad from the perspective of the guilty…from the outgroup perspective, there are more constructive approaches).
Cat Lady
Oh please, please PLEASE Eric Schneiderman – keep your pants on.
Jay in Oregon
Those pictures should be blown up, put on poster board, and be center stage for the next OWS rally. Name them and shame them.
As I keep saying, I’m really not a fan of the tumbrels-and-guillotines options, but if that’s the way they want this to go down I’m sure I can find it in my heart to oblige them.
Catherine Isobe
Here’s hoping that none of the employees pictured work in the department that funnels loan modification materials to the mortgage servicers, you know, those voluminous documents containing the borrowers’ private personal data and virtually their entire financial lives?
catclub
@harlana: actually, so are men.
You know, those real men who love Jesus?
Johannes
@Catherine Isobe: What’s the Worst that Could Happen?/Bad Idea Bears
Carl Nyberg
The banks can’t prove service and they think this is some technicality?
WTF?
Jason
Even Marie Antoinette never staged a “starving peasant ball” in the midst of a famine.
Gabriel Ratchet
When I read that I immediately thought of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. Those fuckers are in sore need of some comeuppance like that ….