Foreclosure update: Sen. Shields responds

During the Christmas holidays, I received a phone call from Senator Shields. He was concerned that I had not been aware of his efforts to change the rules on foreclosures, and subsequently sent me an email outlining the work that the legislature had actually done and that he and his colleagues were proposing to do.

If passed, the bills would protect homeowners who have been subjected to the most egregious practices in the past. They would not allow banks to let you go through the process of mortgage modification and, while you think you are in compliance with everything they've asked of you, simultaneously foreclose under your nose. They would stop the banks from charging excessive fees and require pre-foreclosure mediation, etc. I have copied his email below, and request that you read and consider what he says. Together we can discuss whether these bills are worth supporting. And below his email, I have given my own opinion:


First, Sen. Shields:

"The legislature actually did pass SB 628 in 2009, that bill dealt with requiring a meeting prior to foreclosure...at least in its original form.  Here's a link to what that bill and HB 3630 from 2008 did:

http://dfcs.oregon.gov/ml/hb3630.html

"In the 2011 session, we passed SB 827 (summary attached) in the Senate, but it died in the 30-30 split House.

"But perhaps the biggest advance was removing the exemption banks enjoyed from being subject to the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act, which was a relic of 16 years of Republican control of the Oregon House.  It allows the banks to be sued by the Attorney General and/or individuals, if they engage in fraud.  We passed that in the Feb. 2010 session over fierce objection by the big banks. See here:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/2106700/what-if-homeowners-use-tools-like-oregon-house-bill-3706-to-fight-back-

"and here:

http://www.davidsugerman.com/2010/02/24/oregon-legislature-provides-consumers-with-tools-to-fight-bank-fraud/

"I have been a close partner in the foreclosure coalition that includes Economic Fairness Oregon, SEIU Local 503 and the Oregon Law Center (Legal Aid).  We decided through democratic means to go forward with the following bills.  Unfortunately, the group decided to take a different route than the one you proposed.  I encourage you to work closely with We Are Oregon, an SEIU 503 partner, to help steer the direction of the coalition.

"Here is a summary of the bills the coalition decided to pursue.  We considered yours, and I also argued for some other approaches, including making banks prove they had the right to foreclose in court, making Oregon a judicial foreclosure state.  We debated and debated and after that fairly democratic process, the group decided to move forward with the following bills:

"1) Ending the foreclosure dual track.

The dual track is a common situation of that happens when the lender simultaneously pursue loan modification or loss mitigation and foreclosure. The harm occurs when the homeowner is lead to believe the foreclosure sale has been postponed while they complete the loss mitigation review only to be surprised to learn their home was foreclosed.  This is most similar to the bill the Senate passes last session, SB 827. 

"2) Mortgage servicing rules.

These business conduct rules set a standard of good faith and fair dealing, restrict excessive fees and require a single point of contact for borrowers in default. This is most similar to SB 826 from last session.

"3) Pre-foreclosure mediation.

Requiring a review of loss mitigation options in the presence of a neutral third party has proven to be one of the most effective steps states can take to help avoid foreclosures and put both lenders and borrowers in a better financial position. So far, 24 states have adopted some form of pre-foreclosure mediation.

"4) A reintroduction of SB 827.

"I have also enclosed a summary of the first three bills and an endorsement form from Economic Fairness Oregon if you and the petitioners want to sign on.  I know these bills are not what you wanted.  You and the petitioners can decide for yourselves on whether you'd like to work to pass these bills or go another route.  We can use all the help we can get. 

"You can also help to get like-minded people elected against the wishes of the powerful mortgage-banking industry.  The Bus Project is an easy way to plug in to work on electing more progressive representatives:

http://busproject.org/

"I apologize that I didn't communicate as well as we should of.  I take full responsibility for that.

"As always, if I can ever be of service, please don't hesitate to call at 503-231-2564 or email here at my campaign address or at sen.chipshields@state.or.us."

Please note that I was unable to figure out how to link Sen. Shields' summaries of bills to this blog post. If you want those links, please email me.

And now, my comments:

My concern is that the existing and proposed legislation still leave an awful lot of people out in the cold--literally. To paraphrase the late Justice Harry Blackmun, they tinker with the machinery of foreclosure. In the meantime, we have an economy emergency here in Oregon, and everywhere else in the U.S. Millions of people have lost their jobs due to the actions of Wall Street, the big banks, and the multinational corporations. Others have lost their jobs due to illness and/or disability. (Millions of others are one major illness or one layoff away from homelessness.) These people have no way of paying a modified mortgage. Tinkering with the machinery doesn't help those who need it most. 

The current real unemployment rate, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is 16.2%. As others have noted, the foreclosure rate is actually higher than it was during the Great Depression.

As we all know, the banks and Wall Street have been bailed out. After exporting tens of thousands of American jobs to China, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt was named Obama's "jobs czar." And during the last session of the U.S. Congress, Obama pushed through three new "free trade" agreements which would export even more jobs to low wage countries. When he made his speech demanding that Congress pass these agreements, Mr. Immelt stood up and applauded wildly. The point I'm trying to make is that our jobs aren't coming back any time soon. We are looking at a permanent underclass of low-wage and unemployed workers, and an increasingly large homeless population.

The proposal I've made--and the petition many of you signed--asks the legislature to think outside the current rules that box them in. A moratorium on foreclosures isn't a new idea. Many states enacted it during the Great Depression.

In the petition we also asked the state legislature to take over empty homes and fix them up in conjunction with groups like Habitat for Humanity, and make them available as affordable housing. Sen. Shields' aide said that the state can't afford it. I don't know whether Oregon could find the money somehow, but clearly this is way beyond what they would consider. IMO, we need to support the Occupy people who are taking matters into their own hands.

There is nothing sacrosanct about our predatory system of home mortgages. In Europe the government helps disabled or unemployed people stay in their homes rather than kicking them out into the street. Call it socialism if you like. I call it doing unto others.

What happened to your petition

As noted in my post of September 22, I met with State Senator Chip Shields to discuss the foreclosure problem. He noted that two years ago, someone had introduced a bill requiring the banks to meet with a homeowner before they foreclosed on him or her, and to provide documents showing that they actually had title to the home in question. You would think that these are the minimum requirements a lending institution should meet before being allowed to take your home away, but the banks fought the bill tooth and nail, and it went nowhere. He said he was trying to re-introduce this bill.

He encouraged me to write the petition that many of you signed, and intimated that if we got 200-300 signatures, he would introduce legislation in the Oregon State House. I submitted over 200 signatures to him (I would've gotten more, but I came down with pneumonia and was out of commission for a couple of weeks).

I heard nothing back from his office, despite sending emails and making phone calls. MaryAlecia, his aide, did email me to say that he was meeting with Rep. Tina Kotek to craft legislation. After that meeting, I tried reaching the office again to find out what they had decided, and what I could do to help. For instance, did they want more signatures? Again, I heard nothing.

Finally, I told some people from We Are Oregon, and they agreed to call Sen. Shields' office last week. Two days later, I received a call from MaryAlecia, who apologized for not having contacted me sooner. She said that Sen. Shields was going to reintroduce the bill he had described during our first meeting--which in my opinion is too little, too late. He is not going to ask for anything related to our petition, like a moratorium on foreclosures. Why not? I asked. After all, quite a number of states enacted such moratoriums during the Great Depression. She replied that the laws have changed since then, but didn't say in what way. She said that legal counsel to the legislature would have to examine such a proposal. What about taking over abandoned houses? I asked. She said the state couldn't afford to do that.

Then she said that any member of the legislature is only allowed to submit five bills in each session. Three of the ones that Sen. Shields submits have to be co-signed by a Republican member on his committee. The other two were already written up long before I met with him. I got the impression that Sen. Shields will use our petition as support for passing the bill that the banks defeated two years ago. I told MaryAlecia that the housing situation is an emergency--that more and more people are being made homeless. She said that Sen. Shields is a really good guy, that he is on our side, but that he is bound by the rules.

I conclude that we can't expect help from the legislature. If we wait for the government to stand up for us against the 1%, we will starve and freeze. Right now people across the nation are taking matters into their own hands, preventing evictions by surrounding houses when the sheriffs come, or occupying empty houses and moving homeless families in. Of course these actions are illegal and might result in jail time. However, standing by and letting our neighbors be thrown out into the streets is immoral. Those of us who can't risk jail for one reason or another (e.g., health) should support those who are willing to take the risk. To quote a song from the Civil Rights era:

It isn't nice to block the doorway
It isn't nice to go to jail
There are nicer ways to do it
But the nice ways always fail

I met with the Senator. We signed the petition. We did it the nice way. Now let's find an effective way.

Why Joseph isn’t My Hero

Remember the Bible story about Joseph? This wizard of economic interpretation told the king of Egypt that there would be seven good years and seven lean years. Pharaoh put him in charge of taxing the people during the good years. Back then nobody had coins, so the peasants paid in grain. Joseph made sure the grain was stored in vast silos.

Then the lean years came. First Joseph sold the grain back to the peasants for their gold and silver. During the next year he gave them bread in exchange for their horses, cattle, and all their flocks. In the year after that, the destitute people came to Joseph and said, “There is nothing left but our bodies and our lands. Buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants to Pharaoh.”

In that way all of Egypt became Pharaoh’s, except for the lands that belonged to the priests. All the Egyptians became Pharaoh’s bondsmen—as the Bible says, “until this day.” And the people thanked Joseph for saving their lives.

The important thing to remember is that the grain in those storehouses was produced by those peasants. Pharaoh didn’t produce it and neither did Joseph.

So why is this legend relevant today? Whose tax money bailed out Wall Street? Why are Americans losing our jobs, our health insurance, our pensions, our homes and any equity we had in those homes—what financial wizards drove the economy into the leanest years we’ve seen since the Great Depression? The more we struggle in this quicksand, the deeper we sink. Get behind on one credit card, and the rates on all the rest go up to heights that would make a loan shark blush. Borrow money to go back to school, but don’t expect to find a job that would enable you to pay it back. You will be enslaved by the banking industry forever.

Today’s Josephs are enthroned on the banks of the Hudson River and the Potomac.

How Sus Domestica Came to Wall Street

Archeological research shows that domesticated pigs first appeared in the Tigris basin at least 9,000 and possibly 15,000 years ago. During the dry season, when other types of food were scarce, our Middle Eastern ancestors slaughtered great numbers of pigs. At some point they began using pigs for healing rituals, or to placate the Mesopotamian demon Lamashtu, or as a sacrifice to the Egyptian god Horus.

Later on the Hebrews stopped eating pork, but nobody really knows why. Verses in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah forbade it. The poor animal is considered so “unclean” that a Jew making a religious pilgrimage shouldn’t touch it, lest it contaminate him. It is permitted, however, to use a porcine heart valve to replace a defective human one. Pigskin shoes are also okay—apparently the tanning process removes the impurities. Mohammad, who initially considered himself the last Jewish prophet, adopted this prohibition, and it is repeated four times in the Koran.

I don’t know why Christians started to eat pork again. I suspect that the various pagan peoples they wanted to convert were reluctant to change their diet. After all, most of us do resist giving up favorite foods, even when the doctor warns us that we are (as the saying goes) digging our graves with our spoons. Maybe the early church thought it would be easier to save souls if they didn’t try to police people’s stomachs as well.

Although the Spaniards first introduced pigs to the Americas, the later-arriving Dutch and English colonists no doubt brought their own herds. Free-roaming pigs wandered New York, rampaging through grain fields, until the human residents built a wall along the northern edge of lower Manhattan to keep them out. The street that followed this wall was named…Wall Street.

Well into the 19^th Century, our porcine companions continued to roam the rest of the island. Pedestrians might encounter sows and boars devouring garbage up and down the streets and alleyways. They didn’t join a union or demand a pension plan; the only drawback was that they left a certain amount of their own excrement behind. Eventually, however, this four-legged sanitation department was banished from the city.

But like the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm, they stood up and achieved bipedalism. And there have been pigs on Wall Street ever since.

If It's Good Enough for Rockefeller

On Sept. 15 I attended a meeting here in Portland about fighting foreclosure in our neighborhoods. Present were representatives from citizens’ groups and a representative from the attorney general’s office. At the end of it, I had an idea about how we can turn the situation around. It depends on a legal precedent set by the Rockefellers. Hey, if it worked for them, it can work for us!

Facing astronomical foreclosure rates, dropping property values, and still-rising unemployment rates, what can we do? What if we get the states to take foreclosed properties that are sitting empty back from the banks—as they do for large commercial development projects—and fix them up for people who have lost their homes in the current economy? Oregon can’t afford to do this alone, but could partner with groups like Habitat for Humanity. Prospective residents who aren’t disabled could invest via sweat equity.

The Situation 

Even if you can’t stand numbers, please bear with me while I throw a few out there, because this will give you an idea of the size of the problem.

At the Sept. 15 meeting, I was told that the foreclosure rate is three times higher than it was during the Great Depression. Yes, it really is. This is according to the National Consumer Law Center.

The Case-Schiller Home Price Index (published by Standard & Poors) shows a decline in property values of 29% for the Portland area, and a 33% decline for the 20 cities they track. This was as of March 31. According to the Oregonian (March 8, 2011) 23.1 % of Oregonians owed more than their homes were worth. It’s even worse in some other states. Per a Bloomberg report on real estate, on May 9, 2011, 28% of mortgages in the U.S. were underwater. Figures went as high as 85% in Las Vegas and 73% in Reno.

The official unemployment rate is holding steady at 9.1%, while the actual total number of unemployed is 16.2% and rising. What’s the difference? The official rate tracks people who are unemployed and actively looked for work in the last four weeks. Total unemployed includes people who were too discouraged to continue looking and those who took part-time jobs or work well below their capacity (for example, flipping burgers instead of doing construction work).  Both figures are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2011. There are five unemployed people for every job opening (NY Times, March 11, 2011).

If you’re out of work, you can’t pay the mortgage. That sends the foreclosure rate up, flooding the market with distressed properties.

The federal government made a lot of noise about a program to help homeowners, but they relied on voluntary action from the banks. I was told at the meeting that only 5% of borrowers have had their loans permanently modified.

At this point, it is important to remember that the banks wrote one fraudulent mortgage after another. They continue to write fraudulent foreclosure documents and have them signed by people who don’t even read them. And the government bailed out those same banks with billions of dollars of our tax money.

Even if you aren't out of work, underwater, or facing foreclosure, the situation has consequences for you and your home. When the banks foreclose on a home in your community, and nobody buys it because nobody can afford to anymore, the house sits vacant. The lawn becomes a waist-high jungle of thistles and dandelions. The building deteriorates. Leaks aren’t repaired, so rain may damage walls and floors. Thieves may break in and rip out copper pipe, appliances, or anything they can sell. They may even use the house as a hideout, meth lab, or base for fencing stolen goods. The value of every neighbor’s property continues to plummet, and everyone in the community is endangered, homeowner or not.

If you rent your home, and the bank forecloses on your landlord’s property, you can stay until the end of your lease. If you have no lease, you may have to leave within 90 days. In either case you will not be reimbursed for relocation costs. (This is according to the “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act,” signed by Pres. Obama in 2009.)

Overall, a grim picture. So what can we do?

The Proposed Solution

Not many people know that the land used for the World Trade Center was acquired by eminent domain. David Rockefeller wanted to build the towers, which would increase the value of his other assets in the area, such as the Chase Manhattan Bank building. As his brother Nelson was governor of New York, Rockefeller was able to get the state to take over the properties that were in his way. Hundreds of small businesses were displaced. Some of them fought the proposal all the way to the Supreme Court, but the Court refused to take the case.

What if our state takes over foreclosed-upon houses, and fixes them up for people who need them?

Nobody likes the idea of eminent domain. Very often it displaces homeowners or destroys thriving businesses, as it did in New York City. But the houses lost to foreclosure aren’t thriving. By evicting residents and leaving the houses vacant, the banks are acting to destroy communities.

The State of Oregon, no doubt like many other states, has no money to restore distressed properties. However, the state could cooperate with partners such as Habitat for Humanity, whose purpose is to build housing for, and with, the people who need it. People who want to live in the houses repossessed from the banks could put in sweat equity.

These houses should be reserved for people who have lost their homes through unemployment, disability, or outright fraud by the banks. They should not be made available to speculators—many of whom are already gobbling up foreclosed-upon homes at fire sale prices.

The banks will oppose this project, of course. They are likely to make exorbitant demands, for instance that the taxpayers reimburse them for the total amount of the mortgage rather than the actual value of the slum they’ve created. The mission and purpose of a bank is to conserve, and increase, its profit. They can't, and won't, let one penny go without a fight. In recent years, we have had ample reminders that a bank has no capacity to care whether Americans live on the street, or whether our neighborhoods rot. We can't expect any cooperation from the banks unless there is some way for them to profit from the project, either directly or in terms of marketing and public relations.

At the foreclosure meeting on Thursday, I proposed the idea—of acquiring foreclosed houses by eminent domain and working with Habitat for Humanity—to one of State Senator Chip Shields’ aides, Mary Briggs. She was enthusiastic, and has arranged a meeting for me with Senator Shields on October 12. I will also be sending this proposal to my local Representative, Tina Kotek, and trying to arrange a meeting with her.

What Can You Do to Help?

If you live in Oregon, send an email to Senator Shields at sen.chipshields@state.or.us and tell him you support this idea. Send another to Rep. Kotek, at rep.tinakotek@state.or.us. The more people who support it, the better chance it has of becoming a reality. If you live in another state, meet with one of your legislators and propose something similar.

Our Bodies Our Selves?

A recent article in the New York Times reported on transgender women, born male, who couldn’t afford the surgery they so desperately desired. They paid “pumpers” to inject silicone into their cheeks, buttocks, and chests so that they would look more like women. The injections might cost up to $20,000.  The pumpers, of course, were not licensed medical professionals. The equipment wasn’t always sterile. The silicone was sometimes industrial rather than medical grade, and because it was not encased in an elastomer shell it began to migrate throughout the body. (Even medically-approved breast implants can rupture and the silicone can migrate.) Some of these people died. Others were left disfigured, permanently disabled, or in constant pain.

Although the Times didn’t mention it, I’m fairly sure that transgender advocates would say that health insurance should cover the surgery as it is a medical necessity and should be available to everyone who needs it, not just the wealthy. In other articles appearing around the country, transgender prisoners are suing their states for this purpose.

In Portland, Oregon, where I live, an FTM is suing his insurance company. He has undergone some medical procedures and self-injects with testosterone, but still has ovaries. As a result, he is at high risk for ovarian cancer—the deadliest of gynecological cancers—and wants the insurer to pay for removal of those organs. Portland's mayor is backing a proposal to have the city pay for sex reassignment surgery for its employees.

The last article I’d like to mention appeared in Just Out, Portland’s LGBT newspaper. The story is about a little girl who started calling herself a boy and played only with boys. When she was ten, the mother took her to a “trans therapist", who said, “You have a little boy there.” As a result, the child was given a boy’s name and allowed to use the boys’ bathroom at school.

I don’t want to see desperate people dying at the hands of pumpers or from ovarian cancer. I believe we all have the right to decide what to do with our own bodies. However, I also believe that “transgender” is a cultural issue, not a medical one, and calls for cultural change, not a medical solution. Even with the best medical care, there are long-term consequences to removing healthy organs and injecting yourself with estrogen or testosterone.

In my youth, in the 1950s, I rebelled against a society that valued women only insofar as we measured up to the standard of beauty set by Hollywood and the advertising industry. We were expected to torture ourselves with extreme diets, girdles, nylons, spike heels, hair curlers that you had to wear throughout the night, eyebrow tweezers, razors, and deodorants. The ideal was to look and smell like a Barbie doll.

Women who could afford it tried to match their bodies to the cultural standard via plastic surgery. Jewish women of my generation were pressured to mutilate our noses so that we would look more like gentile women. Most of those who had nose jobs said they felt much better about themselves afterward.

Even more important than her appearance, a woman had to behave in certain ways:  don’t be too assertive, don’t be better at math than your brother, and don’t apply for an executive position.

In the 1950s, the concepts of male and female were grounded in a philosophical notion called essentialism. (I always hated philosophy in college, and I expect that some of you readers will, too. But please be patient with me here, because this turns out to be important.) Essentialism meant that you born with certain characteristics. A woman, for example, was naturally endowed with psychological passivity, and a preference for frilly pink blouses and secretarial work. If you didn’t express those characteristics in your behavior, you weren’t a real woman.

In the 1950s and for most of the 1960s, anyone who didn’t dress and behave in a gender-appropriate manner risked social ostracism, loss of employment, imprisonment, electroshock therapy, rape, and even murder. These days, people aren’t imprisoned or committed to psychiatric institutions for their sexuality, but gays are still vulnerable to all the other consequences. Transgender people suffer more than any other group from the cultural fear and hatred of sexual difference.

A generation ago, the child who was taken to the trans therapist might have turned out to be a butch lesbian. Now I expect that when she hits puberty, she will be considered for surgery and hormones. (I can’t bring myself to use the pronoun he in this situation.)

As a parent, I am frightened by this kind of early pigeonholing, and even more frightened by the medical consequences of early intervention. But I also remember the child that I was—a little girl who liked science. There were times when I wanted to be a boy, because I didn’t fit in with the girls, and because the options for women were so limited back then. Female relatives often said, “You should have been a boy.” If I were growing up now, I might feel pressured to accept a transgender designation. Instead, with the support of the women’s movement, I helped create space for women like me.

The feminist rebellion of the 60s and 70s was grounded in an opposing philosophical notion called constructionism. That is, all the characteristics society has attributed to women are constructed by the culture we live in. In plain English, feminist ideology said that someone born with a female body is a real woman no matter how she presents herself, who she does or doesn’t have sex with, or what she does for a living. The same is true for someone born in a male body.

The popular culture, though, is still wedded to essentialism. Liberal columnists—including female ones—went after the first female presidential candidate in language that reeked of sexism. For example, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times said that Hillary Clinton’s “message is unapologetically emasculating” and the Times news staff spent some time analyzing the “Clinton cackle.”

Despite the economic downturn, women are still paying doctors to “improve” their looks, whether by implanting silicone packets in their breasts or paralyzing their facial muscles with Botox. (Men also pay for cosmetic surgery, but in much smaller numbers.) Per the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 9.5 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2010. This is down from 11.7 million in 2007, but the Society expects these numbers to rebound if the economy improves. Please note that this does not include plastic surgery for birth defects or deformities resulting from accidents.

I have met transgender people who were much happier after surgery. From a psychological standpoint, they were better adjusted. Like the women who had nose jobs and breast augmentations, they felt better about themselves afterwards. Each of them has only one life, and I would not want to deny them their chance at happiness. The question remains, though: what kind of society are they adjusting to? An essentialist society—one that says some dress and behavior is inherently male and other dress and behavior is inherently female—is profoundly anti-feminist. And that’s the society we have, despite some superficial changes in the last forty years.

Essentialism says that if your personality doesn’t conform to the cultural norm for someone with genitals like yours, change your body.

Constructionism/feminism tells us to learn to be at home in the bodies we have, and demand the right to be the kind of persons we are. It means that we throw our energy into changing the cultural norms. And since nobody can accomplish these tasks alone, feminism also tells us we must organize to transform society rather than seek individual medical solutions to our discomfort in the world.

As Evanescent as a Cloud

Sometimes the Devil offers you a bargain.

Lately I’ve been seeing ads for cloud computing. At first I wondered if it was a new way to predict the weather, or maybe something really abstruse like quantum mechanics. My geek brother said it means that your data is “up in the clouds somewhere.” Finally I figured it out. Businesses and research institutions use it to get more computing power. It is the way your email works, if you use a web-based email program like Yahoo.

What happens is that all your data—and the fancy applications you use to manipulate them—are stored in a cluster of computers owned by somebody else. You pay the cloud computing company for this service. Your machine only stores a simple program that accesses their computers. You save a lot of money, because you purchase a very simple machine without much memory. A large organization doesn’t have to buy expensive computers for each employee and make sure their software is licensed to each computer. They don’t have to spend a wad to repair their computers and keep them up to date.

Kindle is very similar. You own the little machine, but the book is stored on someone else’s computer. You pay Amazon a fee for the right to read an author’s work on your Kindle. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a print copy and you don’t even need a bookshelf. My publisher and my local bookseller tell me that everything is going digital these days.

I didn’t think much about it until I read that Amazon had removed some books from Kindle because the publisher decided they no longer wanted to offer those items in e-book form. (Naturally enough, they were works by George Orwell.) So if you happened to be in the middle of such a book, all of a sudden your screen went blank. You got a refund—but that’s just the same as if your local bookseller came into your house, took a book they’d just sold you off your shelf, and gave you your money back.

Not only that, your payment to Amazon (or any other digital book company) only allows you to read a volume a certain number of times before you no longer have access to it. You’ve got to pay up again. That’s fine if it’s just another silly mystery, but I maintain a small research library that I refer to over and over again.

Now think about all this in the light of our vanishing civil liberties. Imagine a future where physical books have all but disappeared. Where people own computers that are just one step up from dumb terminals. All their personal correspondence, receipts for tax purposes, business records, and databases are kept by cloud computing companies. If the corporatocracy doesn’t want you to read a book, they don’t have to ban it or burn it—they just stop making it available on your digital reader. If they want to put you out of business or squelch your little community organizing group, they just have the cloud computing company refuse to carry you or “inadvertently” erase your data.

So be warned, dear reader. Don’t get sucked up into the world of cloud computing, even at bargain prices. If you think you might care about a book, buy the print version. Otherwise you’ll find that economists like John Maynard Keyes, historians like Howard Zinn, radicals like Emma Goldman, or even novelists like John Steinbeck—or me—have disappeared. And if you try to organize your neighbors into doing something about this “brave new world,” you’d better communicate by carrier pigeon, because if you try the phone or the computer:

Every move you make

Every step you take

They’ll be watching you.