One of the nation’s biggest banks — JP Morgan Chase — admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

The admissions are an outgrowth of a lawsuit filed by Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles. Rowles is the backseat pilot of an F/A 18 Delta fighter jet and has served the nation as a Marine for five years. He and his wife, Julia, say they’ve been battling Chase almost that long.

The dispute apparently caused the bank to review its handling of all mortgages involving active-duty military personnel. Under a law known as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), active-duty troops generally get their mortgage interest rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure. Chase now appears to have repeatedly violated that law, which is designed to protect troops and their families from financial stress while they’re in harm’s way.

A Chase official told NBC News that some 4,000 troops may have been overcharged. What’s more, the bank discovered it improperly foreclosed on the homes of 14 military families.- MSNBC

None of this is surprising to me.  JP Morgan and other mortgage lenders have been foreclosing on properties they have no legal right to for some years. Here in Florida, Bank of America tried to foreclose on a home that had no mortgage. In another case, a homeowner saw two DIFFERENT mortgage companies try to foreclose on him. Guess what? The same law office filed both lawsuits!

Don’t get me started on robo-signers, securitization, etc. Mortgages have been sold and re-sold. The persons filing the foreclosure suits don’t have standing more often than not.

In the statement, Army Forces Command disputed that version of events. “The investigation revealed evidence … that she didn’t intend to deploy to Afghanistan with her unit and deliberately sought ways out of the deployment.” Hutchinson admitted to lying about the circumstances, officials said.  [Stars & Stripes]

______________________________________________

Original Posting: Via a reader tip, news has now come out that US Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson has been demoted and discharged from the Army just like expected:

A single mother from Oakland has been discharged from the Army for refusing to leave her infant son behind to go to Afghanistan, but she will not be court-martialed, her attorney said Thursday.

Alexis Hutchinson, 21, had faced criminal charges at a court-martial for refusing to accompany her unit when it deployed in November. Although that is no longer a prospect, Hutchinson has been demoted from specialist to private and will lose all military and veteran benefits, said her attorney, Rae Sue Sussman of San Francisco.

She said Hutchinson had been given an other-than-honorable discharge.  [SF Gate]

For those that haven’t been following this story I highly recommend reading my prior postings on this:

• Is Soldier Mom Right for Refusing Deployment?
• How the Soldier Mom Story is Being Manipulated By Anti-Military Activists
• War Resister Group Comments On Alexis Hutchinson Controversy
• Army Decides to File Charges In the Alexis Hutchinson Case

Contrary to popular belief she actually received pretty typical punishment for missing movement and going AWOL. The only thing that she got off light on was that she didn’t have to travel to Afghanistan to face a court martial.  It is also important to point out that she was not court martialed for a failed family care plan, she was court martialed for other offenses like missing movement.  Her lefty apologists have continuously tried to frame this case as the Army punishing her for being a single mom, which is simply not true.

Anyway I am sure her lefty apologists will still be making excuses for her even after this statement:

Kevin Larson, spokesman at the Hunter Army Airfield outside Savannah, Ga., where Hutchinson is posted, has said that her commanders offered her child care options but that she refused them.

Base commanders said in a statement Thursday that “the investigation revealed evidence, from both other soldiers and from Pvt. Hutchinson herself, that she didn’t intend to deploy to Afghanistan with her unit and deliberately sought ways out of the deployment.”

I have long suspected that there was something suspicious about this story because of the fact that I have personally dealt with helping soldiers with family care plans and even had to chapter someone before for a failed care plan.  There is absolutely nothing unusual about Hutchinson’s case other than she missed movement and then ambushed the Army with a bunch of pro-bono left wing anti-military lawyers with ties to George Soros.

It is too bad the Army cannot release the sworn statements from her and members of her unit that show that she had no intention of ever deploying to Afghanistan because she and her lefty apologists will just go around and say all the accusations are untrue.

Larson said the Army had evidence that Hutchinson, regardless of her family situation, would have resisted deploying “by any means.” He said commanders decided a court-martial would be too disruptive to the Army, requiring soldiers now in Afghanistan to return to the U.S. to testify.

“This case wasn’t about a soldier having to choose between her duty to the nation and her family,” Larson said. “There is evidence both from Pvt. Hutchinson and her fellow soldiers to indicate she had no intentions of deploying.”

Sussman denied that Hutchinson was exploiting her status as a single-mom to get out of going to Afghanistan.

“She was willing to deploy, and was ready to do that if her mother had not backed out of taking care of her child,” she said.  [CBS]

Her apologists are already complaining about her loss of benefits due to the Other Than Honorable Discharge she received:

Hutchinson’s mother, Angelique Hughes, was thrilled with the recent news.

“I’m very happy,” Hughes told Truthout via telephone from her home in Oakland. “I just found out myself. I’m glad it worked out.”

However, Hughes was concerned about the fact that due to Hutchinson’s “Other Than Honorable” discharge, she will not maintain any of her benefits, like medical care for herself and her infant son.

“I don’t know why they didn’t give her an honorable discharge,” Hughes added. “Other single parents they’ve discharged got one. I’m glad they are letting her out, but now she lacks enough benefits … so it’s going to be a hard situation for her.”  [Truthout]

Once again you see how her apologists in the media are trying to frame the issue?  She wasn’t discharged for a failed family care plan, she was discharged for missing movement and other offenses.  If she just had a failed family care plan she would have honorably discharged like other parents in her situation.

Keep in mind none of this is about single parents in the military or failed family care plans.  As I have shown over, & over & over & over & over & over, & over, & over again the anti-military left is more interested in creating perceptions of the military even if they are unfounded because in their minds the ends justifies the means.  They are against the war in Afghanistan and are more then willing to manipulate a 21 year old specialist to advance their anti-military agenda.

“I currently don’t have a family care plan, but they told me they did not care and for me to get ready to go to Afghanistan,” explained Oakland, California native Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old soldier based at Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Georgia.

As I spoke to Alexis on the phone, I believed if I found her a civilian lawyer to work with the military, a reasonable resolution would be quickly found. Unlike most service members Courage to Resist assists, Alexis was not refusing to deploy. She was not looking to speak out against war. She was simply asking for more time to find someone to care for her 11-month old son Kamani. Within a few days, however, the Army had tossed Alexis in the stockade and turned Kamani over to the Chatham County (Georgia) foster care system.  [Courage to Resist]

Judging by this statement, was it Courage to Resist that put SPC Hutchinson in contact with anti-military lawyer Rai Sue Sussman? Sussman is quoted in the article as claiming that the military was trying to send her to Afghanistan to be court martialed, which is once again utter nonsense.  The Army doesn’t send people with failed family care plans to war zones to be court martialed.  The reason Hutchinson was arrested because she went AWOL instead of showing up at the deployment with her child.

Anyway here is some more details about this case published on the website:

That is the reason why Angelique contacted her daughter’s commanders last month to tell them that she could not be the long-term care provider for the infant as originally planned. She explained that they needed more time to find another family member or close friend to care for the boy while his mother is deployed to Afghanistan for a year. They initially received an extension, but that was revoked a couple of weeks later. Major Gallagher, of Alexis’ unit, later told Ms. Sussman that he did not believe this was a real family crisis, and that Alexis’ “mother should have been able to take care of the baby”

I looked up “Major Gallagher” on AKO and found out that he is the rear detachment commander for her unit over at Hunter Army Airfield  in Georgia.  So he is the person that is directly in charge of her right now since she didn’t deploy and is part of the rear detachment.  Here is more background information from another C.T.R. posting:

In anticipation of going overseas Specialist Hutchinson flew to California and left her son with her mother Angelique Hughes of Oakland, as per her Army family care plan. However, after a week of caring for the child Specialist Hutchinson’s mother realized that she was unable to take care of Kamani on top of her other duties to her special-needs daughter, her ailing mother, and her ailing sister. In late October Angelique Hughes informed Hutchinson and her commander, Captain Gassant, that she was not able to care for her daughter’s baby after all. The Army gave Specialist Hutchinson an extension of time to find someone else to care for her son, and in the meantime her mother brought Kamani back to Georgia. However just a few days before Specialist Hutchinson was scheduled to deploy she was told that she would not get the extended time after all and would have to deploy, even though there was no one to care for her child.  [Courage to Resist]

For someone like myself that has dealt with deployments and family care plans of soldiers, from what I am reading here there is definitely more to this story, however it didn’t take long for C.T.R to throw out the racism card:

A few conservative websites have taken notice of growing public outrage over this case. Some have attacked Alexis because she is young black woman who got pregnant soon after basic training, yet she choose to remain the Army! Another blames her because Kamani’s father is not a part of their lives.

The Army is definitely not doing a good job at fighting the information war on this issue because they are letting all these far left anti-military groups frame the issue.  The Army should be getting their side of the story out.  What I suspect is happening right now is that her rear detachment commander Major Gallagher is busy getting her chapter paper work together to get her out of the military.  After this is done the Army will probably will release a statement while in the mean time the anti-military leftists will continue to control the news cycle.

A self-styled sheik has been arrested in Australia over letters sent to widows of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, accusing their partners of murder, as Canberra mulls an early withdrawal from the troubled country.

The Iranian-born Muslim spiritual leader, who calls himself Mufti Sheik Haron, was charged with sending hate mail to families of seven Australian soldiers killed fighting Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan over a two-year period.

“I feel bad that you have lost your son but I don’t feel bad that a murderer of innocent civilians has lost his life,” Haron allegedly wrote to the family of one Australian commando killed in January, the Daily Telegraph newspaper said on Thursday.

Haron denied the charges after his arrest. But New South Wales state Premier Nathan Rees said on Thursday that if proven true, the letters were an “evil act of cowardice.”

Australia, a close U.S. ally, has 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, including special forces, and is the largest non-NATO troop contributor. Ten Australian soldiers have died fighting alongside Dutch forces in southern Oruzgan province.- Reuters

While I find what Heron wrote to be despicable, I have always strongly felt that speech shouldn’t be a crime. I’ve defended people from Ann Coulter to Cindy Sheehan in their right to express themselves. That hasn’t stopped me from criticizing them also.

Letting the government regulate or criminalize speech is a quick way to put a free society in jeopardy.

It is bad enough that the sacrifices of today’s servicemembers are trivialized by the media but now even the sacrifices of World War II veterans is being trivialized as well:

For only the second time in 85 years, Time magazine abandoned the traditional red border it uses on its cover. The occasion – to push more global warming alarmism.

The cover of the April 21 issue of Time took the famous Iwo Jima photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines raising the American flag and replaced the flag with a tree. The cover story by Bryan Walsh calls green “the new red, white and blue.”

Donald Mates, an Iwo Jima veteran, told the Business & Media Institute on April 17 that using that photograph for that cause was a “disgrace.” [Business & Media Institute via Blackfive]

Make sure to read the whole thing but basically TIME magazine is trying to equate fighting Global Warming with fighting World War II.  This analogy is totally ridiculous to begin with considering the world has been cooling since 1998 especially this winter but that is besides the point.  The main point is that TIME magazine editors felt that it was fine to alter a iconic photograph that represented the sacrifices of the thousands of American servicemembers that not only died during the Battle of Iwo Jima where the photo was taken, but all the servicemembers that died in the Pacific theatre of the war. 

Ask yourself would the TIME magazine editors have altered a photograph of Martin Luther King with some tree with a message equating fighting Global Warming with fighting the civil rights movement in America?  This analogy is absurd as the one currently being presented by TIME magazine; so why should a cover trivializing the sacrifices of World War II servicemembers be acceptable but a cover trivializing the civil rights movement is not? 

Anyway, this is how TIME magazine has decided to defend itself:

“I think since I’ve been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that’s needed in journalism is that you have to have a point of view about things,” Stengel said. “You can’t always just say ‘on the one hand, on the other’ and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We’re experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let’s just say so.”

A point of view you say?  Well my point of view is that I’m not going to buy your crap magazine (not that I have bought their magazine in recent months anyway) and I encourage others to do so as well.  Ironically if everyone quits buying their magazine that would save the very trees they claim to be so concerned about.  So everyone do your part to combat global warming by not buying TIME magazine.

National Priorities Project (NPP) is a 501(c)(3) research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent. Located in Northampton, MA, since 1983, NPP focuses on the impact of federal spending and other policies at the national, state, congressional district and local levels.

So the next question that needs to be asked is who funds this group.  You can view who funds the NPP here, but it is basically funded by a consortium of leftist groups with links to none other than George Soros.  Mr. Soros is on quite the roll lately with his leftist organizations launching now multiple hit pieces against the US military with the aid of the complicit media.  I debunked this “dumber” Army stereotype last year and this year the usual suspects are trying to once again create a false perception of the military that is not true.

Since now we know the NPP is a Soros front group that immediately made me question their findings.  Thus I decided to check around the Pentagon site and find the recruiting numbers straight from the source.  Wouldn’t you know it, the NPP’s claim of only 71% of Army recruits having high school diplomas is incorrect.  The actual number is 79% of recruits had a high school diploma.  This is an important distinction because 79% puts the Army above the national average of high school graduates.  The NPP is trying to create the perception the Army is getting “dumber” when in fact even with a slip in the total number of high school graduates the Army is still “smarter” than the American public in general.  Something else the NPP isn’t telling people is that all the other services recruited over 90% of new enlistees with high school diplomas which compensated for the Army thus causing the Pentagon to overall meet their 90% goal.

Also I want to reiterate that I believe the people should be given the maximum opportunity to serve their country and I don’t appreciate the elitist mind set that “dumb” people with a GED shouldn’t be allowed to join the military. This elitist mind set is very similar to what elitists decades ago used to say about black recruits and once they received increased opportunities in the military they excelled. The ranks in the military are filled with many great black soldiers and leaders. People should be given every opportunity to serve their country even if they are “dumb”, fat, female, a “gangbanger”, a “hick”, black, or have polka dots. If once they are in and cannot meet the standards than there are ways to chapter them from the ranks.  In my career I have seen so many soldiers that have been initially classified as “dumb” go on and excel and provide a great service to their country. However, we don’t know if these people can excel if we don’t give them an opportunity which elitists from the Soros front groups would rather deny to these people for solely political reasons.

Something else the NPP isn’t disclosing is that the military had an above average result in recruiting soldiers with aptitude scores between Mental Categories I – IIIA which is much higher than the military had in the 80′s when there was no war going on.  The Army is far from getting “dumber” and I believe the US military has never had a more educated force than what we have right now.

With that all said, I do believe that recruiting is more difficult, but it is not because of the war.  The main reason is the need to recruit more soldiers because of the expansion of the military.  Once the expansion is complete, recruiting becomes easier because you do not have to recruit so many people.  The military also has to compete with a surging economy and low unemployment rates.  The economy may be slowing down now and if it does this may make recruiting easier.  Only time will tell but there a variety of reasons why recruiting is difficult and the war is not the main one that the Soros funded front groups want people to believe it is.

HT: Michelle Malkin

Lauterbach’s mother reported her daughter missing December 19 – five days after she last spoke with her. By that time, she had been placed on "unauthorized absence" status by the Marine Corps.

The case comes as the New York Times reports on a study that says at least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have been implicated in a killing in the US since returning from combat.

More than half the 121 killings in which Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were implicated involved guns, and the rest included stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drowning, the study claimed. All but one of those implicated was male.

About a third of the victims were girlfriends or relatives, including a two-year-old girl killed by her 20-year-old father while he was recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq.  [Sydney Morning Herald]

The most read newspaper in Australia ends its article with what is clearly false information that has nothing to do with the killing of Lauterbach because the person who killed her Corporal Cesar Armando Laurean never served in Iraq in the first place:

"She was raped," Steiner said. "The Marines, unfortunately, did not protect her, and now she’s dead."

Originally from Dayton, Ohio, Lauterbach was reported missing Dec. 19 by her mother, who last spoke with her daughter on Dec. 14, authorities said. Her cell phone was found Dec. 20 near the main gate at Camp Lejeune, and she missed a Dec. 26 prenatal care appointment.

Lauterbach, who joined the Marines in 2006, and Laurean were personnel clerks in the 2nd Marine Logistics Group of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Lejeune. Neither had been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. [CBS3 News]

Of course the claim the Marines did not protect her is false and a subject I could write a whole another posting on considering the way the media is reporting it, but the fact that both did not serve in Iraq or Afghanistan is interesting because why isn’t the media reporting this?  I had to go to the website of the local North Carolina CBS affiliate to track down the information that Laurean had never served in Iraq or Afghanistan and if he did he wouldn’t have seen combat anyway because like Lauterbach he is a personnel clerk.  I have yet to see on a television news report or in a major newspaper the fact that Laurean never served in Iraq and was a paper pushing personnel clerk, not an infantry grunt as I have seen some media outlets describe him as. 

The Telegraph in the U.K. is spreading the same NY Times disinformation as well furthering showing how this incompetent reporting and disinformation is quickly becoming the international conventional wisdom which I feel confident is what the New York Times hoped to do when they first reported the story. 

International media outlets aren’t the only ones passing off disinformation, so is America’s very own CBS News:

Earlier in the Iraq war, revelations that there had been more than 100 sexual assault cases in Kuwait, Iraq and the rest of the Persian gulf coupled with complaints from female service members that the male-dominated chain of command did not take their allegations seriously, brought charges from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that victims of a sexual assault in the military face far more obstacles in getting the help that she or he needs, reports Martin.  [CBS News]

The alleged rape of Lauterbach did not happen overseas so why include this paragraph which has already been widely debunked?  All you have to do is read my GI Crime archive to see how readily the military tries sexual assault cases.

However, watch as this tragic case is continued to be misreported and becomes part of the conventional wisdom one that GIs returning from overseas deployment are crazed and unstable.  If anything if the Lauterbach murder case totally debunks the NY Times claims, but I don’t expect any media outlets to point it out.  Thus the conventional wisdom is continuing to be formed.

A very conservative estimate of how many different service members have passed through Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since 2003 is 350,000 (and no, that’s not double-counting those with repeated tours of duty).

Now consider the Justice Department’s numbers for murders committed by all Americans aged 18 to 34 – the key group for our men and women in uniform. To match the homicide rate of their peers, our troops would’ve had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007.

In other words, the Times unwittingly makes the case that military service reduces the likelihood of a young man or woman committing a murder by 80 percent.

Yes, the young Americans who join our military are (by self- selection) superior by far to the average stay-at-home. Still, these numbers are pretty impressive, when you consider that we’re speaking of men and women trained in the tools of war, who’ve endured the acute stresses of fighting insurgencies and who are physically robust (rather unlike the stick-limbed weanies the Times prefers).

All in all, the Times’ own data proves my long-time contention that we have the best behaved and most ethical military in history.  [New York Post]

Ralph Peters also found out that in the 18-34 year old demographic that composes most of our military members that just in 2005, 8,718 of these young Americans were killed in America.  This number is over twice as many soldiers killed in six years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Military service not only reduces murder rates, but it can keep you alive as well. 

So when is the New York Times going to run a front page article that we currently have the most well behaved and ethical military history?