“Because of Jerry Brown, California homeowners are now forced to beg for modifications from their mortgage servicers like some Dickensian orphan begging for food.”

Many of you youngsters weren’t around to remember the punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s which brought great artists like the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, and the Dead Kennedys.   So, please indulge me while I reminisce about the music that made me the sarcastic and politically incorrect malcontent that I am today.  Back then Jerry Brown was a Jimmy Carter-In-Waiting as Governor of California and a song named California Über Alles by the Dead Kennedys was released and dedicated to Jerry Brown and it equated his leadership to Hippie Fascism.

Yes, the same Jerry Brown, the old bald guy running for governor now in 2010.  Back then, he was known as Governor “Moonbeam” because he proposed launching an emergency communication satellite into the Earth’s orbit.  It was actually an idea ahead of its time and Mike Royko a syndicated columnist from Chicago who coined the nickname later retracted it.  Unfortunately, for Jerry Brown, some nicknames never go away and his opponents used it to attack his unorthodox leadership during his tenure as governor.

What Brown attempted to do albeit unsuccessfully, was to emulate the liberal leadership styles of then-Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and President Jimmy Carter.  Although equal in arrogance, ego and quirkiness as Trudeau, Brown was not as an effective a leader as Trudeau.  However, he was more charismatic than Jimmy Carter and had more friends in show business which helped put him on the national stage.  He did match Carter’s fiscal prudence which led to many of the problems California faces today.   Like Carter, he dismissed the opulence of public office.  Brown refused to use the Governor’s Mansion in favor of sleeping on a futon in an apartment in Sacramento and drove around in a Plymouth Satellite instead of a limo.  Carter sold the Presidential yacht and refused to remodel the interiors of both Air Force One and the White House which had not been remodeled since the Kennedy Administration.

However, Brown unlike Carter and Trudeau was not afraid to wear the face paint of an Eco-Warrior.  Brown wore the face paint by cutting freeway spending and draconian environmental regulations that favored low-sulfur oil.  Unfortunately, all he did was wear the face paint.  What he wasn’t telling his constituents was that his family was pocketing millions of dollars from his father and former California Governor Pat Brown’s ownership interest in Perta Oil, an Indonesian Oil Company that specialized and imported low-sulfur oil into California.   The family’s ownership interest was then handed over to Jerry Brown when he left the governor’s office in 1983.  So this calls into question Brown’s motivation for pushing through the California legislature these draconian environmental regulations that Californians still live under.

About seven months ago, I wrote an article on one of MFI-Miami’s sister sites called, “Is the California DRE even relevant anymore?” (You can read it here: http://www.mfi-modsquad.com/is-the-california-dre-even-relevant-anymore).  Since writing that article, Jerry Brown, who became California Attorney General in 2006, realized DRE wasn’t getting the job done of cracking down on shady loan modification companies and decided to now put on the face paint of “Consumer Watchdog”.  With the fervor that he used with going after “big oil” in the 1970s, he went after attorneys and modification companies like Puritans looking for witches in Salem.  He rounded up lawyers and litigated modification businesses out of the business.  His blood lust wasn’t just limited to the questionable and unsavory modification companies which are back in business today calling on unsuspecting homeowners in other states.   He went after the legitimate modification companies that were actually getting successful modifications completed.

Like his involvement in Perta Oil in the 1970s and early 1980s where no one connected the dots, today, no one is questioning Brown’s motivation for going after loan modification companies with such vengeance.

Before Brown became the Attorney General of California, he was elected Mayor of Oakland in 1998.  In his new position of mayor, he realized this job was more challenging than his cushy governorship he had in Sacramento during California’s boom times of the 1970s.  He needed help from two groups, banks and real estate investors and these two groups do not like dealing with liberal politicians especially ones with eccentric reputations like Brown.  Brown realizing this was the first step of shedding his image as Governor Moonbeam came to the conclusion he had to tone down the rhetoric and move to the political center if he was going to turn the City of Oakland around.

He began making alliances with financial groups and banks like Goldman Sachs which not only benefited him as mayor but would benefit him if and when he ran for statewide office again.   The rationale being that if these same groups profited during his tenure as mayor would make willing contributors in the future.  Brown’s gamble paid off.  These same bankers, real estate people and attorneys contributed in droves to his 2006 attorney general campaign.

The housing crisis and the modification industry that sprung up from its ashes created an idyllic situation for Brown who by now had his eyes back on the Governor’s mansion.  He could play the super hero to troubled homeowners and keep his financial backers happy.

As consumer complaints came into his office about shady loan modification companies, Brown seized on the opportunity.  Under the guise of the consumer watch dog, Jerry Brown single handedly destroyed any options a California homeowner had to level the playing field to negotiate with their lenders.  Granted there were quite a number of shady modification companies and modification attorneys but he didn’t just go after them, he went after the legitimate companies and law firms that were getting meaningful and long term modifications done for homeowners.

Jerry Brown delivered to Mortgage Bankers absolute control when it came to dealing with the housing crisis in California while at the same time making it appear that he’s a consumer’s best friend in Sacramento.   Because of Jerry Brown, California homeowners are now forced to beg for modifications from their mortgage servicer like some Dickensian orphan begging for food.

What’s Brown’s motivation for this? Connect the dots by looking at the pattern and remember what Jerry Brown’s one time campaign manager Mickey Kantor said, “Jerry has given hypocrisy a bad name.”