The Binary Circumstance

Prosecutors had wanted a much longer sentence but Kimberly Forder got off with just 27 months under a plea deal. With credit for time served she will soon be released from jail.

She had been charged in the death by abuse of one of her foster children, Christopher. (Abuse allegations were detailed here.)

She was given a short sentence largely because another adult son in jail for the rape of a family member recanted previous sworn testimony against her.

A 24-year-old Seabeck man who’d agreed to testify in the homicide by abuse trial of his mother in exchange for a shorter sentence in his own criminal case has recanted on previous statements, according to Kitsap County prosecutors.

As a result, Michael V. Forder, 24, was given an 8 1/2-year sentence for second-degree rape of a family member Feb. 26 in Judge M. Karlynn Haberly’s court — instead of the 36-month reduced sentence prosecutors had recommended in exchange for his testimony at his mother’s trial.

His mother, Kimberly Ann Forder, 44, is charged with the homicide by abuse of her 8-year-old adopted son Christopher Forder in 2002 — in incidents Sheriff Steve Boyer called “torture” — and is slated to go on trial in April.

The Forders worked as Christian missionaries in Africa and had several adopted children.

The Atlantic explains how newer suburban housing developments and an oversupply of McMansions may produce the slums of tomorrow as cities thrive.

In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge—many once sold for well over $500,000—but the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residents’ association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, “There’s been gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years.”

[...]

The experience of cities during the 1950s through the ’80s suggests that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families—and in all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments.

In a related article Bloomberg.com reports that the number of vacant homes is at an all-time high.

Almost 200,000 newly constructed single-family homes are sitting empty in the U.S., the most since Commerce Department statistics began in 1973. Partially completed developments reduce revenue for cities and towns and hurt businesses, said Nicolas Retsinas, the director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Rising foreclosures and falling property values may cut tax revenue by more than $6.6 billion for 10 states, including New York, California and Florida, the U.S. Conference of Mayors said in a November report.

“Half-filled developments are an advertisement for a failing housing market,” said Retsinas, a former assistant secretary for housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “It also has a spillover effect on the surrounding community.”

As I write this, the stock market is up today as it has been for the past three days. I read that it’s because Fed Chief Ben Bernanke told Congress that he’s prepared to lower interest rates again if needed.

Recent economic numbers have not been good with housing prices falling in much of the country, consumer confident lower, and inflation on the rise.

Two recent articles suggest that the problem is worse than the government is letting on and that the Fed is getting desperate and perhaps seeing the limits of its power to contain a pending meltdown.
Guardian.co.uk suggests that we should be talking about a depression rather than a recession:

[Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University] says that the Fed is, belatedly, alive to the danger. “To understand the Fed actions one has to realise that there is now a rising probability of a ‘catastrophic’ financial and economic outcome, ie, a vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe. The Fed is seriously worried about this vicious circle and about the risks of a systemic financial meltdown.

“That is the reason the Fed had thrown all caution to the wind - after a year in which it was behind the curve and under-playing the economic and financial risks - and has taken a very aggressive approach to risk management; this is a much more aggressive approach than the Greenspan one in spite of the initial views that the Bernanke-led Fed would be more cautious than Greenspan’s in reacting to economic and financial vulnerabilities.”

Bernanke clearly feels that the clock has turned back 78 years to the early months of 1930. He is slashing interest rates because he fears that the Great Depression is just around the corner.

Paul B. Farrell, writing for MarketWatch, gives 11 reasons the economy won’t recover soon. Here’s just one of them:

4. Toxic derivatives: World’s $516 trillion ticking time bomb
Derivatives are great for deal-by-deal risk management in a $48 trillion GDP world. But leverage them 10 times over across the globe and we got a financial “weapon of mass economic destruction.”
Bill Gross warns that the world’s new unregulated “shadow banking system” is printing new money, now at $516 trillion, out of thin air, with no “central banks of last resort” backing up the “Frankenstein” monsters they’ve created.

In another development today, the government lifted restrictions on the portfolio size of Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two GSEs that buy up home mortgages and sell them as securities. Both were major players in the creation of the housing mortgage bubble.

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — U.S. regulators for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac removed limits on the companies’ $1.5 trillion mortgage portfolios, bringing an end to a restriction that stifled their ability to provide financing for the housing market.

The caps, imposed in 2006 after the two largest mortgage finance companies uncovered $11.3 billion of accounting errors, will end on March 1, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said in a statement today. Ofheo kept in place a requirement for the companies to hold extra capital.

Ayn Rand repeated pointed out that marrying government and business is just as bad as marrying government and religion. The last seven years have seen increased efforts to march both couples down the aisle. They’ve been heading in that direction for a much longer time, but the Bush administration gave them a big push and many of the vows have already been exchanged.

Now we will pay the price for these marriages of political convenience.

Both the Seattle Times and the Seattle-PI reported today that Ric Weiland, who was one of the first five employees at Microsoft, left millions to nonprofit organizations focused on gay rights and HIV/AIDS. For many of the organizations, the donations he gave them were the largest donations they have ever received.

Weiland committed suicide last year at the age of 53 after a long battle with depression.

I had never heard of him before today but have certainly used products he wrote or developed. I found his story fascinating. He was obviously a brilliant, remarkable gay man who lived a full, rich life.

I find it interesting that he was unable to find happiness even though he was in a long-term relationship, had strong family connections and was active and respected in his community. We are constantly being told that those things are protective against unhappiness. But in his case those things and the fact that he was in great physical shape and very wealth were not enough. Depression is a puzzling problem.

I’d certainly like to know a lot more about his important life. It sounds like his depression was being managed until he suffered so many deaths in his family. Personally I find it depressing that a gay man of such enormous accomplishments felt he had leave much of his fortune to support the battle for basic human rights for gays and lesbians in our culture. I wonder if that got to him as well. If he had been straight his life would have been different just because of the political climate in our country.