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Among the ranks of scams, running a fake charity falls under the heading of “soulless.” That’s why it’s both dismaying and hopeful to hear that the Attorney General for the state of New York has, at least temporarily, put a stop to an organization it claims raised more than $500,000 under false pretenses.

In the lawsuit filed by the AG’s office, it’s alleged that a charity calling itself the Coalition for Breast Cancer Cures raised more than a half-million dollars by telling donors that their money would go toward fighting breast cancer. Instead, claims the AG, that money was spent by the CBCC’s administrator’s on “luxury shopping, travel, restaurants, and other personal living expenses.”

According to the Attorney General’s investigation, donated money was spent by CBCC on some of the following expenses:
* Over $3,700 in personal hotel and airfare expenses;
* Over $5,000 at restaurants including Peter Luger Steakhouse, Caesars Palace Mesa Grill, and Gotham Bar and Grill;
* Over $7,700 in retail purchases at stores such as Louis Vuitton, Victoria’s Secret, Home Depot, Best Buy, Costco, CVS, Loehmann’s, and Target;
* Over $8,000 for sorority dues and other university expenses and fees;
* Over $1,300 for a spring break travel package;
* Thousands of dollars on groceries, Netflix, and cable television.

Additionally, the AG alleges that the CBCC’s owners “mailed phony pledge invoices and reminder notices to trick people into thinking they had made pledges.” They are also accused of using donors’ credit card info to “make multiple unauthorized charges following an initial donation, even after complaints and demands that charges be reversed.”

The CBCC and its owners have been charged with engaging in a scheme to defraud along with violating New York State’s not-for-profit and charitable solicitation laws. A temporary restraining order has been issued that stops CBCC from soliciting donations, collecting money, or destroying documents.

Says Attorney General (and presumed gubernatorial candidate) Andrew Cuomo:

This money could have helped countless individuals if the donations had actually gone to legitimate charities. New Yorkers are very generous and we want to make sure they have confidence in the charities they support.

Official Release from NY Atty General’s Office

Case of greedy business, not greedy workers

I attended the community meeting to support sanitation workers on April 11 and came away with an even deeper appreciation for their issues and concerns.

Garbage haulers suffer very high rates of injury and illness due to the nature of their jobs — more so than police officers and firefighters. Although it was not said at the meeting, I suspect a majority do not make it to full retirement.

The other garbage contractors have settled with their workers for terms more generous than Waste Management (WM). So what is WM’s problem? The company is definitely not lacking funds. WM is the largest garbage company in the United States with a profit margin of $1 billion last year. Its CEO, David Steiner, earned $5 million in 2009.

This is not a case of greedy workers. It is a case of greedy big business and the reason the United States is in financial shambles. I am not a sanitation worker, but I will join any picket lines to support them should WM try a lock out or force a strike. Enough of greedy CEOs and corporations.

— Linda Averill, Seattle

Who’s the trash now?

Thank you for your story on the garbage haulers’ defense of their working conditions and benefits against Waste Management’s (WM) attempt to downgrade the haulers’ contracts and to break their union. [“Haulers approve Allied pact,” NWMonday, April 12.]

I was also at the community meeting called by the Teamsters and heard about the dangers and injuries they face on the job —the fifth-most-dangerous job in the United States.

WM wants to bring down standards of living for workers. It is trying to eliminate retiree health care and refusing to meet the same employee health-care protections that all the other waste companies in the area provide.

This economic climate is bad for workers and they should be supported —not preyed upon by the largest trash-collection company in the United States.

— Adrienne Weller, Seattle

Last March, I wrote a piece about the 10 apps a web worker can’t do without. A year later, and the app landscape has shifted significantly, so here’s an updated list of what I consider to be the best solutions for our critical tasks in 2010.

Backoffice

1. Invoice management

Freshbooks is still an excellent invoicing service, but there are some new and some improved invoicing apps in this space, such as:

• WinkBill
• SimplyBill
• WorkingPoint

You can also track expenses with:

• Expensify (see our review here)

And add functionality to your online invoicing:

• OfficeDrop (includes Freshbooks integration. See my review here)

Also check out Celine’s piece on managing your finances online. If you are looking for solutions for creating and managing contracts, check out Celine’s roundup of contract resources. You may also want to check out Outright, a bookkeeping and tax prep tool that Scott reviewed.

2. Time tracking

Need to get a handle on how much time you’ve spent on a particular project or task? There are apps for that — some standalone, some that integrate with your invoicing systems, and some like Where is My Time that help you to analyze how the time flew by and how productive you were during that time. Here are some others:

• Klok
• BubbleTimer
• toggl
• Paymo (tracking with invoicing)
• Intervals (plus task and project management)
• RescueTime (with time management and project tracking. See our review here.)

And in the time-, cash- and distance-tracking category, take a peek at 1DayLater (see our review here).

3. Social CRM

Here are some startups that provide useful Social CRM products:

• BatchBlue
• SugarCRM

For quick contact information exchange, I love the Poken social business card and am so disappointed that they aren’t taking off like I think they should. I wear my cute skull Poken at every conference I go to but have yet to get “poked” unless Poken is a conference sponsor.

I’m also keen on Bump for the iPhone and Android, and also covered some other contact sharing apps in this roundup: DropCard, Rmbrme, BeamMe, ShareCard, SnapDat.

At SXSW, I was given a very impressive demo of relationship management tool Gist (see our review here) that promised a lot, though I have yet to incorporate it into my daily work.

4. RSS Reader

I don’t know about you, but I’m over RSS readers. But to be fair to those who have yet to discover the social firehose, you could go with the ever-popular Google Reader and the novelty of Snackr, which puts a little ticker at the bottom of your computer screen for passive, almost subliminal consumption of your feeds.

And here are a few other popular feed readers:

• Filtrbox (see my initial review here)
• Netvibes (this is really more of a “build your own landing page” service that incorporates feed reading features)
• Feedly (a similar landing page service)

For saving articles to read later, I currently use a combination of Delicious, Instapaper, and “favoriting” tweets containing links on Twitter.

Communications

5. Email management Social communications management

I have changed the heading of this section because I find that my communications are no longer mainly taking place through email, and are increasingly moving into my social networks.

While I am trying to move away from Gmail and start using email management tool PostBox again (its attachment management tools make it a compelling option for me), I am also looking out other social communications management systems and apps.

I was panicked to find Threadsy — the intriguing integrated communications client that you could use to see your email, social networks, and Twitter in a single place — under “re-construction” but have signed up to see what is happening with the app.

You might also like to check out a few email productivity add-ons we’ve reviewed, such as Xobni, Rapportive and MailBrowser.

6. Calls, Conferencing and Instant Messaging

Right now, my company has been moving away from Skype. Although we all love the app, it seems to drops our calls almost constantly now. We are moving back to the old-fashioned telephone for calls, while for conferencing we have been using FreeConference.com.

Here are a few phone conferencing and webinar-style conferencing systems that I also use:

• Calliflower
• DimDim
• GoToMeeting

Note that I didn’t include WebEx in the list. I am convinced that the company, which once dominated this space, has had a hard time keeping pace with the more nimble startups.

One other phone-related service that my company is trying is eVoice, because we need a virtual PBX system that can accommodate our UK office as well as multiple U.S. locations. Unfortunately,  I don’t have enough experience with it yet to tell you how it is working for us. Stay tuned.

Work Process

7. Project management

My company first used Basecamp for project management before switching to 5pm. Today, I’m seriously checking out glasscubes as it provides project management together with collaborative space. It is much lighter on the project management side — it’s really just a task management  app — but I’m getting a feel for the company’s interesting take on how virtual groups can work better together. More on that soon, too.

Just for giggles and grins, check out my old post about this topic: “Project Management, Collaboration and How Our Brains Work.”

8. Calendars and Schedules

I’m excited about the web-based services that allow me to give out a link to my calendar — or just a portion of my calendar — so  people can get on my schedule. But as my post about a scheduling bungle at SXSW due to system time zone issues, I know that there is still no single tool that “does it all.”

Still, here is a quick rundown of a few tools I’m still using or trying out:

• TimeBridge and their Meetwith.me feature
• TimeDriver
• Tungle
• ScheduleOnce

9. Cloud-based collaboration/document sharing

While I still use Google Docs, some fundamental integration issues are making me look elsewhere. As I mentioned earlier, my company is currently experimenting with glasscubes.

Here are a few others:

• iWork.com (from Apple)
• Zoho
• Colaab (see our review here)
• Backboard (useful for feedback on docs and files)

And I know you’re going to think this is kooky, but the 2.0 version of Spinscape combines mind mapping principles and collaborative communications in a way that is quite compelling to me.

10. File storage/backup/sync

Take a look at SugarSync. It provides backup, file sync and file sharing “on-the-go” on any Mac, PC or mobile device (check out my review here). Here are some other useful options:

• DropBox
• Box.net
• Mozy

A newbie in the “active backup” and file storage space is Soonr, which also has Mac, PC and mobile capabilities.

What are some of the must-have applications you’ve found invaluable in your own web work?

stock.xchng images by johnnyberg, gun, toutouke

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

Cram was the first amongst many to submit the story that online publications won Pulitzer Prizes for the first time ever. Sherri Fink of ProPublica, a non-profit online journalism service, won the investigative reporting prize for her piece about overworked doctors in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which was co-published in the New York Times Magazine. Mark Fiore won for his editorial cartoons on SFGate.com, which marks the first time that an online-only entity has won a Pulitzer. To us, this is only an affirmation of a trend that we’ve been watching here for years. Nothing about a physical newspaper inherently makes it better suited for doing great reporting. Print and online are just a mediums, and as consumption patterns shift towards online, we should see more of this in the future. As we’ve seen recently with the breaking of the huge Collateral Murder story by Wikileaks, there’s an opportunity to do great hard-hitting investigative reporting not only outside of the print medium, but also outside of the traditional journalistic institutions themselves. The question is, will Pulitzer recognize such efforts? From the Pulitzer eligibility rules:

Entries for journalism awards must be based on material coming from a text-based United States newspaper or news site that publishes at least weekly during the calendar year and that adheres to the highest journalistic principles.

So, it’s unclear whether or not blogs would be eligible for a Pulitzer. Plenty of blogs would meet the weekly publishing requirement, but from the rest of the definition it would appear that any site not affiliated with an “official” news site would not be eligible. As for the “highest journalistic principles,” The National Enquirer was accepted as a nominee this year, so surely there’s a blog or two out there that can bring their quality of reporting up to that level.

That said, the Pulitzer does not have to change their rules to include blogs, after all, by definition, it is a prize for the newspaper industry. Magazines and broadcast news are also not eligible. But, these prohibitions seem artificial since many of the prizes focus on reporting, and plenty of quality reporting happens outside of the newspapers. Times change, and if the Pulitzer wants to continue to be relevant in the public eye, it needs to evolve or it risks becoming a big award in a small pond.

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Obey the laws or get out

I do not support the cause of illegal immigrants because they are lawbreakers. [“Thousands rally for immigration bill,” NWSunday, April 11.]

It is that simple: I do not condone criminal activity, no matter what the rationale is. In the case of the illegal immigrants, there is no valid rationale. They are embroiled in a dilemma of their own concoction: They bemoan their current, self-induced predicament of enjoying their lives in the United States, but having to do it without benefits of citizenship.

Sorry, no crocodile tears here.

No one dragged them kicking and screaming across the border into the United States against their will. They sneaked across the border because they wanted to, and they thumbed their noses at our immigration laws in the process, thereby placing themselves above the law —a privileged position that no U.S. citizen enjoys by birthright or fiat, much less an illegal immigrant. But they insist that they should be rewarded with citizenship rather than exported for their criminal acts.

I respectfully disagree. It is the bedrock responsibility of every nation to control who enters the country, who becomes a citizen and who does not. In the United States, we have a codified set of laws; they are not “rules” as Congressman Jim McDermott suggests They set forth the parameters of immigration to the United States. People who want to immigrate here must learn and abide by those laws or get out.

— Richard Porter, Langley

Defrocking means removing a layer of supervision

Contrary to popular belief, a Catholic priest cannot be unordained any more than a person can be unbaptized. As stated in paragraph 1583 of the Catholic Catechism, “ordination is forever.” [“Vatican defends handling of priest’s case,” News, April 11.]

Canon law does recognize “dismissal from the clerical state.” This generally means a priest is dispensed from his priestly vows and the bishop is relieved from that point forward of his responsibility for and obligations to the priest. With respect to a priest charged with molesting minors, such dismissal is advantageous to the church in the sense that the bishop will no longer be responsible for supervising and monitoring the priest’s activities and will not be liable for future misconduct.

However, dismissal could be disadvantageous to the public, as one control for keeping the offenders away from minors will no longer exist. The offender will be a “free agent,” released from the bishop’s supervision, and subject only to one restraint — the law. Before dismissal, there were two restraints —the bishop’s supervision and the law.

— Peter Anderson, Mercer Island

Back when this site was on the SBNation network, we made a concerted effort to stick to all things Buckeyes, and not write about other teams, college or pro. The network had blogs from just about every team/sport out there, so we thought that writing about topics that weren’t related to Ohio State would be the equivalent of stepping on someone else’s turf.

Three things have happened since we agreed to that stance.

1) We’re not on the network anymore.
2) It’s spring, and there’s less OSU topics to cover daily.
3) I have an exclusive contract with Fox Sports Ohio and can’t discuss Buckeye football here, and I wanna write, dammit.

So I hereby change that policy. The BBC is a Buckeye-centered blog, but we’ll discuss whatever the hell we want from now on. When the Buckeye news hits, we’ll be all over it….but we’re going to expand the horizons a bit, too.

With that, comes discussion of the Cleveland Cavaliers (yay).

Tonight, the Cavs take on Atlanta is a virtually meaningless game. Cleveland has secured the #1 seed, and there is nothing left to gain. Same thing goes for the Hawks and their #3 slot being solid. This is the time for the main superstars to get some rest and prepare for Game 1 of the first round.

So, even though Shaquille O’Neal is activated and ready to play again, we won’t see him tonight. Same thing for LeBron James. I’m willing to bet that the rest of the starters get about 20 minutes in before they hit the bench.

The only genuine interest in the NBA tonight comes from two other teams. If Chicago wins tonight at Charlotte, the Bulls get the 8th seed and will be our first-round playoff opponent. If Chicago loses, and the Toronto Raptors win at home against the Knicks, we’ll play Toronto in the first round.

If both Chicago and Toronto lose, we get the Bulls.

The playoffs begin Saturday, but we’ll see when our first game is sometime tomorrow. If it’s against Chicago, expect a Sunday 1pm or 330pm tipoff. More potential viewers will give us the prime Sunday time slot.

Frankly, I want the Bulls. The perfect playoff run is being setup for us, and I want it.

Round 1 – Chicago. Revenge for all those Michael Jordan nightmares
Round 2 – Boston. They’re the 4th seed and in line to face us in the Conference Semifinals. Revenge for two years ago.
Round 3 – Orlando. Do I need to explain the revenge factor?
The Finals – L.A. Lakers. Let’s settle this once and for all.

OR

The Finals – San Antonio. Revenge for 2007.

Either way, this weekend begins the quest for what Clevelanders deserve. A championship.

While you’re waiting….here’s a present for Cavalier fans everywhere.  Rasheed Wallace scored on his own basket last night with nobody around him.  Savor it.  Nom nom nom.

Biebs Behind The Wheel: According to TMZ.com, teen star Justin Bieber –- who received a Range Rover for his 16th birthday last month – – was spotted at a DMV in Atlanta posing for his first driver’s license photo.

Military service not a breeding ground for killers

Like most political extremists, Daniel Ruuska characterizes evidence in a way that supports his warped views [“Video Games Helped,” Northwest Voices, April 8].

First, the 2005 University of Michigan study was more than a bit light in its statistical base: A total of 39 male undergraduates were sampled. The study is suggestive, but generalizing to a larger population without further research is irresponsible.

Second, the best way to breed anti-social behavior —especially in male children —is to raise them without a present and responsible father figure who could discourage addictive behavior of all kinds. It is difficult to be a good parent these days, but decades of research have shown that an effective sociological father is a key to raising responsible adults.

Third, the military service does use video games as a recruiting tool, but it is simply employing current technology to attract the attention of young people it would like to enlist. Modern targeting systems are also high-tech, but they are not “video games.” Service members are trained to use these weapons and instructed on rules of engagement. If they violate those rules, punishment is called for.

Finally, Ruuska claims there is a “killing is fun” mindset needed for military service. Only a psychotic among the millions who have worn the uniform of our country ever had thoughts like that. It is apparent that Ruuska never spent a single day in uniform. He should be ashamed of making that statement.

— Phillip Johnson, Seattle

War, violence existed before first-person shooter video games

In response to Daniel Ruuska’s letter, stating that first-person shooter (FPS) games create the “killing is fun” mindset and that they are responsible for the incident in the Middle East is illogical.

Not only is there no proof that the soldiers in question played these games, the first FPS game widely released was “Wolfenstein 3-D” in 1992. The military has existed for far longer, as have violent assaults upon innocents. An example would be the My Lai Massacre, which occurred in 1968 —24 years before “Wolfenstein” was released and four years before the concept of FPS was invented.

—Alex Halbhuber, Sammamish

by Jonathan Hiskes

Courtesy

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Bristling with power and technology, the RS5 is a wicked steed.

According to Volkswagen Group’s chief designer Walter de’Silva, the Audi A5 is the most beautiful car he has ever designed: “It’s elegant and powerful, yet free of aggression and arrogance.” Yet no one would accuse the A5’s hot-rod brother, the new RS5, of a lack of aggression or arrogance: The thing clearly means business. Wheels as large as 20 inches squat in the wheel wells, a trick automatic spoiler rises from the rear deck, and huge air intakes up front suck in vast tracts of atmosphere while fat, R8-style exhaust pipes shoot the air back out again, burned up and spent. Sounds fantastic, right? Prepare your checkbook, as the RS5 will be sold in the U.S., a fact recently confirmed to us by Audi CEO Rupert Stadler.

Keep Reading: 2011 Audi RS5 – First Drive Review

Related posts:

1. 2011 Audi RS5 – Spied
2. Audi RS5 Confirmed for U.S. – Car News
3. 2010 Audi RS5 @ 2010 Geneva Auto Show – Video

With the Home Affordable Modification Program faltering in its effort to stem the foreclosure crisis, Dean Baker, the co-chair of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues for a simple and free way for Congress to aid banks and underwater homeowners.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, headed by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.), he says that home values still need to deflate 10 to 20 percent. To ensure that underwater homeowners do not simply walk away from their mortgages, Congress should create a right-to-rent program letting people undergoing foreclosure rent their homes for five or ten years:

[M]ost homeowners who purchased their homes near the peak of the market are unlikely to ever see any equity in their home. In addition, even they are likely to be paying more in ownership costs than they would to rent a comparable home, even if they were to benefit from a modification and receive a lower cost mortgage….[An] efficient approach would be Right to Rent legislation that would temporarily change the rules on foreclosure to allow homeowners to stay in their homes, paying the market rent for a substantial period of time following foreclosure. By incentivizing lenders to negotiate, Right to Rent would immediately benefit all homeowners facing foreclosure. Finally, Right to Rent could be implemented at no cost to taxpayers and would require no new bureaucracy.

It’s a familiar situation: you’re halfway out the door when you realize the gadget you just pocketed is utterly out of juice. The FreePlay ZipCharge battery can give you precious extra hours of life with a mere 60 second charge. More »

According to a recent University of Illinois study, consuming a diet containing high levels of omega-6 fatty acids may help maintain healthy skin and avoid chronic issues such as dermatitis.

Using a mouse model, the research team discovered that low blood levels of arachidonic acid caused the subjects to develop severe ulcerative dermatitis, a condition characterized by redness of the skin, inflammation and bleeding sores.

After feeding the mice diets that were rich in the compound, lead author Manabu Nakamura, associate professor of food science and human nutrition at the university, and his colleagues found that the condition subsided and the itching symptoms dissipated.

"This new understanding may have implications for treating the flaky, itchy skin that sometimes develops without an attributable cause in infants," said Nakamura. "This new knowledge is a starting point in understanding the mechanisms that are involved, and we need to do more research at the cellular level."

Common dietary sources for omega-6 fatty acids include vegetable oil, soybean oil, acai berries and a variety of nuts. The nutrient may also be taken as a dietary supplement.

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Videos, UK, Specialty

By all accounts, the Hennessey Venom GT is an all-new level of bat-guano crazy. When everyone’s favorite Texas tuner announced that it would be creating a hand-crafted, mid-engine terror, we all knew it was going to be special, even if our feeble little minds couldn’t quite comprehend just how incredible the car would be. Now that the covers are off and we know that a 725-horsepower V8 feeds the rear tires a universe of punishment, we can’t help but want a little seat time.

New footage of the $600,000 creation whipping around the streets and bi-ways of England has surfaced. Unlike the track video we caught a glimpse of last time, the new clip dishes up all the audio glory you’d expect from the behemoth. Hit the jump and crank it up.

[Source: YouTube]

Continue reading Video: Hennessey Venom GT blasts through Merry Ol’ England

Video: Hennessey Venom GT blasts through Merry Ol’ England originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Testifying before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on April 14 that he is cautiously optimistic that the moderate economic recovery will continue, although the job market may sputter in the coming months.

Bernanke also urged lawmakers to recommend further budget cuts to help minimize the record federal deficit and help improve the nation’s long-term economic health, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

"Addressing the country’s fiscal problems will require difficult choices, but postponing them will only make them more difficult," he warned the committee.

The Fed chairman pointed to several signs of economic improvement, including the 1.6 percent increase in retail sales in March and the minimal inflation boost during that time. Bernanke also reiterated his pledge to keep interest rates low for an "extended period" to support the recovery.

During the meeting, Bernanke admitted to some mistakes regarding the Fed’s unclear role concerning consumer protection, The Economic Times reports.

"I can understand why some advocates would want to have a purely independent agency," he said. "While we have acknowledged being late on these issues, I do believe we should receive some credit forr a much better performance in recent years."

Too slow, ineffective and unaccountable.

That’s how the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) describes the Treasury in regard to its HAMP foreclosure prevention effort in a report (.pdf) released today. It follows another critical oversight report on the program issued last month by the Special Inspector General of TARP the with many of the same findings. While the COP places some hope in recent changes to HAMP, overall it’s very displeased with the Treasury’s progress thus far.

The COP report lists three main complaints:

Timeliness

The committee asserts that the Treasury isn’t quick enough to determine necessary changes, institute them and generally stop foreclosures. It says that even Treasury’s March revisions won’t be felt until early 2011, by which time millions more Americans will have lost their homes.

Sustainability

Here, re-default is the worry. We’re beginning to get a taste of that from March’s HAMP report. But re-defaults have barely begun. COP is concerned that temporarily lowering mortgage interest rates to achieve smaller payments won’t be enough. First, underwater homeowners may not find it worthwhile to modify if principal is left alone. Second, in five years when the mortgage’s interest rate goes back up under the program’s conditions, borrowers may find their home unaffordable again and re-default. COP writes:

The redefaults signal the worst form of failure of the HAMP program: billions of taxpayer dollars will have been spent to delay rather than prevent foreclosures.

Accountability

This echoes one of the SIGTARP concerns. COP wants the Treasury to measure itself on real success and clear goals — not half-victories and moving targets. The committee also expresses concern about Treasury’s oversight of servicers participating. COP calls for strict enforcement if HAMP rules aren’t followed.

Will Banks Go Along?

Treasury’s March changes really only address the sustainability criticism. If principal reductions do ramp up, then modifications will have a better chance of succeeding. That is, if banks go along.

Some banks are resisting principal reductions. In fact, two of the biggest players in the mortgage market — JP Morgan and Wells Fargo — are open about their dislike of this tactic for modifying mortgages. They said so at a committee hearing Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee. The two other big banks, Citigroup and Bank of America were mum on the subject, though Bank of America did start a small program to begin principal reductions in March.

It’s easy to understand why big banks fear principal reductions — they will create big, immediate losses. According to its quarterly report (.pdf) issued today, JPMorgan lists $247 billon in mortgages and home equity loans on its balance sheet. Of that $79 billion are considered “impaired,” bought through its Washington Mutual acquisition. The report indicates that the charge-off rate for non-impaired loans is running at 4.9%, while their delinquency rate is at 7.3%. Meanwhile, its impaired portfolio’s delinquency rate is 28.5%. If JPM started writing down a lot of principal from its portfolio to modify loans, then some very large losses would result very quickly, given these ugly statistics.

By Matt Hawes

Click here to get a PDF of our H.R. 4995 “End the Mandate” flier and spread the word at any tax day events you may be attending tomorrow!

Two half sheet fliers will print per page.  We’ve also included a “I share the mission!” form you can put on the reverse side to sign up new members for Campaign for Liberty.

Today, a report from the Congressional Oversight Panel faults the Treasury Department’s efforts to stem the tide of foreclosures:

Treasury’s response continues to lag well behind the pace of the crisis. As of February 2010, only 168,708 homeowners have received final, five-year loan modifications — a small fraction of the 6 million borrowers who are presently 60-plus days delinquent on their loans. For every borrower who avoided foreclosure through HAMP last year, another 10 families lost their homes.

The Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration’s flagship effort to help borrowers reduce their monthly mortgage payments and stop the foreclosure crisis, is not going well, the report concludes. Among the more distressing findings, flagged by the Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasiripour, is that homeowners who go through modifications often end up deeper underwater — owing more than their house is worth — than before modification. (The more underwater the homeowner, the more likely he or she is to walk away.) All in all, three-quarters of the program’s participants owe more than their house is worth.

In a separate report, the Treasury Department said that the number of homeowners who modified via HAMP but then still later defaulted doubled in March to 2,879. It also said that HAMP initiated just 57,000 new trial modifications in March, 15,000 fewer than in February, due to “servicers increasingly requiring upfront documentation from homeowners to comply with pending HAMP policy requirements.”