Last week, California legislators had a chance to take a small but crucial step toward improving transparency and accountability in California’s increasingly dysfunctional political process. They failed, but this fight is far from over: Results from The Greenlining Institute’s just-released voter survey show that voters demand action.

AB 1148, authored by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica), would have improved disclosure on political advertisements to more accurately reflect the top donors behind ballot measure and expenditure campaigns. It received a healthy 52-26 majority on the Assembly floor Jan. 31 – two votes shy of the two-thirds required for passage. Opponents made simply bizarre claims that the bill would somehow have stifled free speech.

Actually, it would have closed a huge loophole in our campaign finance disclosure laws. Currently, a campaign committee can saturate the airwaves with misleading ads while hiding behind a warm and fuzzy name that sounds great but tells voters nothing, like Californians for Responsible Government, or Californians for Apple Pie and Cute Puppies. If Californians for Apple Pie and Cute Puppies is actually a front for oil and chemical companies or some other special interest, voters want to know.

Last year, concerned about the degree to which ballot initiatives – theoretically a vehicle for citizen democracy – have become a tool for wealthy interests, The Greenlining Institute commissioned a two-wave public opinion survey of Californians. We also launched a statewide listening tour, convening 17 sessions in 14 California cities to talk with real people about their experiences and what they want to see reformed.

Among other things, voters overwhelmingly told us they want more and better information, clearer disclosure and more transparency. Fully 85 percent said it was important to know who funds initiative campaigns. Strong majorities wanted this information in campaign ads, as AB 1148 would have required, and in the state voter guide.

Perhaps most important for the legislators who didn’t support AB 1148, 59 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a legislator who opposed increasing disclosure of campaign funders on political advertisements. Fifty-seven percent of registered Democrats and 52 percent of registered Republicans said this.

Make no mistake: AB 1148 will be back in some form, and we look forward to working with other supporters like the California Clean Money Campaign to get it passed – and, if necessary, to make sure voters know who is standing in the way.

But disclosure of funders isn’t the only thing bothering voters. Seventy-three percent felt that the rights of various groups of people had often been attacked via ballot initiatives, with 41 percent feeling that their own rights had been under attack on the ballot.

Voters also told us they want “a fuller picture” of the potential impact of a ballot measure. The voter guide already provides a fiscal impact analysis, but strong majorities told us they’d also like to know about the social impacts – for example, the estimated impact of a proposal on the state’s unemployment and poverty rates, and on the environment. And – not surprising, given the number of initiatives that have ended up mired in legal challenges and conflicts over their meaning – 81 percent said they wanted an improved system of review to flag legal issues or drafting errors.

Who do they trust to do this? Not the legislature. A plurality (46 percent) preferred a citizen’s commission.

The question of who has access to the initiative process is another major concern. Presently, the costs and mechanics of signature-gathering stack the deck in favor of those with millions of dollars to throw around. We also need to think about access in other ways. For example, there are millions of California voters whose first language isn’t English and whose English proficiency is limited. Right now, these voters have no say about what gets on the ballot because petitions aren’t translated.

There is much to do, and when we decided to delve into this issue we knew it wouldn’t be easy. But Californians value our ballot initiative system for what it was intended to be: grassroots citizen democracy.  Now we as leaders need to get serious about bringing it back to that ideal and listen to what the people have to say.
–
Ed’s Note: Michelle Romero is Our Democracy program manager at The Greenlining Institute, www.greenlining.org.

You hardly hear anyone in the media — not to mention any of the presidential candidates — talking about it, but the foreclosure crisis isn’t even halfway over with. And a good portion of what you may have heard or read about it is wrong.

Those are the disturbing conclusions of a report from the Center for Responsible Lending that got far too little attention when it was released in November. It’s worth looking at as we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who recognized that legal equality doesn’t mean much if it isn’t linked to economic opportunity. CRL’s report, “Lost Ground, 2011,” paints a picture of devastation that has disproportionately affected America’s Asian American, Latino and African American communities.

Combining data reported to the federal government under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act with information from two private databases that cover details not collected by the feds, CRL found that, as of early last year, 2.7 million households had already lost their homes to foreclosure. Worse, 3.6 million more were at serious risk, either in some stage of the foreclosure process or 60 or more days delinquent. And while the data used in the report are nearly a year old, indications are that the landscape hasn’t changed much.

There has been much nonsense said and written in the media claiming that loans to supposedly unworthy borrowers — people who, in Rush Limbaugh’s words, “had no business having money lent to them” — were the cause of the crisis. But CRL’s data reveal something quite different: The problem wasn’t so much who got loans as what kind of loans they received.

Specifically, loans with risky features such as interest-only payments, negative amortization (meaning that even if the borrower makes all their payments as scheduled, the total loan balance actually goes up), prepayment penalties or interest rates that reset in less than five years had foreclosure rates three to four times that of conventional loans. Loans originating from mortgage brokers also had disproportionately high foreclosure and delinquency rates.

Ah, but weren’t those tricky loans created to accommodate borrowers who couldn’t qualify for conventional loans? Actually, CRL found that “as many as 61 percent of borrowers who received subprime loans had credit scores that would have enabled them to qualify for a prime loan.”

A major reason that nonwhite borrowers have had higher foreclosure rates than whites is that they were far more likely to receive these trick loans. And it wasn’t because they had bad credit. Among borrowers with rock-solid credit, FICO scores of 660 or above, African Americans were 30 percent more likely to get the high-risk loans known as hybrid or option ARMs, Asian Americans were 70 percent more likely, and Latinos were 80 percent more likely to get one of these risky loan products.

And it wasn’t necessarily low income borrowers getting these dubious mortgages. In areas experiencing rapid growth in home prices, borrowers with incomes 20 percent or more above the area median were actually more than twice as likely as lower-income borrowers to receive a hybrid or option ARM.

The report also debunks the thoroughly discredited but still oft-repeated claim that the federal Community Reinvestment Act caused the subprime meltdown. In fact, loans made by banks fulfilling their CRA obligations outperformed non-CRA loans, many of which originated outside the regulated banking system.

What emerged during the housing bubble was what CRL calls a “dual mortgage market,” in which “lower-income and minority borrowers and communities were served primarily by mortgage brokers and independent mortgage companies operating largely outside of existing consumer protections. These lenders had financial incentives to steer large numbers of borrowers into riskier mortgage products without regard for their ability to pay.”

The result has derailed progress toward Dr. King’s dream of equal opportunity — economic as well as legal and social — for all. As the report notes, there are plenty of neighborhoods where at least one in five homes has been foreclosed, shredding the fabric of community and devastating the tax base on which local services depend. This debacle has surely contributed to the alarming growth in the racial wealth gap, to the point where the median Latino household owns about six percent of the wealth of a white family, and median African American family has about five percent.

One thing is clear: A return to the bad old days of redlining — simply denying credit to whole groups of Americans on the basis of their income or skin color — is not the route to stability in the housing market or the rest of our economy. Instead, it will take a conscious effort to match sane and sustainable loans to the real-world situations of borrowers looking to own a home as a practical step toward building wealth. And, though anti-government zealots won’t want to hear it, it will take sensible, tough regulation to prevent abuses.

What’s less clear is whether any of our present or would-be leaders is truly ready to lead on this critical issue.

Follow Preeti Vissa on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Greenlining

The controversy President Barack Obama set off Wednesday when he made a “recess appointment” of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was as predictable as it was beside the point. What the Beltway talking heads missed, as usual, was how important this is for real people.

The pundit class and cable news shouting heads focused, as always, on the sniping between Republicans and Democrats over legal technicalities and the implications for the 2012 campaign.

A shocking number of news stories quoted only politicians and Capitol Hill staffers. Consumers got mostly left on the cutting-room floor.

Those of us who represent vulnerable communities know better. We’ve met the victims of the practices CFPB was created to protect.

I’m talking about people like Karina Orocio. Karina’s parents, who live in Northern California, had a perfectly good, fixed-rate mortgage.

But a fast-talking salesman, taking advantage of their limited knowledge of English, convinced them they could lower their monthly payments by refinancing. What he left out — buried in fine print that they could not read — was that after a few years the payments would explode far beyond what they had been paying or could afford. As a result, they lost the house.

During the housing bubble, such dishonest actions weren’t rare.

Millions were victimized, and in many cases vulnerable communities – low-income Americans, people who don’t read English well and others — were deliberately targeted. Predatory lending didn’t just hurt the direct victims; it played a big role in tanking our whole economy.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law wasn’t perfect. But one thing lawmakers got right was creation of CFPB as a strong, independent watchdog capable of protecting consumers – without interference from politicians dependent on campaign contributions from Wall Street.

But under the law, CFPB’s authority in key areas was unclear until it got a director. For example, it was uncertain whether it had authority over non-bank mortgage lenders and servicers, which played a huge role in the subprime debacle.

The same was true of many other types of financial firms, including payday lenders, prepaid debit card companies, private student loan companies, credit bureaus, money-transfer companies, check cashers, and debt-relief services.

These industries have grown massively in recent decades without meaningful oversight, and abuses have been widely reported. Now they will have a consumer watchdog keeping an eye on them.

What is astonishing is that the Republicans who blocked Cordray’s approval through the normal process never claimed he was unqualified or otherwise a bad nominee. They simply didn’t like the law that created his job.

So even though a majority of the Senate was ready to confirm him, a minority was able to block a vote, for the sole purpose of thwarting a law duly passed by Congress and signed by the president. That’s outrageous, and in blatant defiance of the spirit of our constitution.

The president did the right thing, and consumers will be better off.

Orson Aguilar is executive director of The Greenlining Institute, www.greenlining.org.

Just days after Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 131, known as the California Dream Act, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, filed a referendum to overturn the law. If you’re asked to sign a petition to place this measure on the ballot, you might want to think carefully about its implications before you do.

Starting in 2013, A.B. 131 will extend eligibility for state financial aid programs to undocumented students who meet certain criteria. Under A.B. 131, students who have attended a California high school for three or more years, earned their diploma or equivalent degree, and who meet minimum GPA and household income guidelines can be considered for college financial aid such as Cal Grants and the Board of Governors’ Community College Fee Waiver.

This law’s provisions have been extensively vetted, amended and negotiated during a legislative process that went on for several years. It has received broad public support.

Assemblyman Donnelly seems to have forgotten some important history. In 1911, California voters established the ballot initiative system in response to the undue influence of wealthy special interests in Sacramento, allowing voters to act when government failed to work in the people’s interests. It includes the initiative, which allows voters to directly make laws, the recall, which lets voters remove officeholders, and the referendum, which lets voters repeal laws made by the Legislature.

The referendum is, in essence, a people’s veto. It was designed to be used by voters, not special interests seeking to undermine the legislative process. And it most certainly wasn’t meant to let the losers in every legislative debate re-fight that debate on the ballot. That would mean a ballot 100 pages long, and there would be no point in having a Legislature.

Donnelly is making a mockery of our representative government.

Meanwhile, misinformation runs amuck. Signature gatherers are telling voters that overturning A.B. 131 will “put money back in the taxpayers’ pockets,” a claim that is simply false. The California Dream Act does not take any additional money from taxpayers, nor would overturning it return money to taxpayers. Unfortunately, a lack of oversight of the initiative process makes misinformation commonplace.

What supporters are not telling voters is that A.B. 131 is good for our economy. It will give talented students the education necessary to start their own businesses and be prepared for when their federal immigration status does change. The Public Policy Institute of California projects a deficit of one million college-educated workers in California by 2025 unless the state is able to substantially increase rates of college enrollment and graduation. A.B. 131 will help California fill this gap and remain one of the top economies in the world.

Some may be surprised to learn that most undocumented families do pay taxes. They pay sales tax, property tax and income tax just like citizens.

Ironically, undocumented persons are currently unauthorized to work in the United States, but the IRS continues to issue ITIN – taxpayer identification numbers – so those who do find work or own their own businesses can file taxes.

In the long run, the initiative system needs reform to make sure voters get all the facts. Meanwhile, voters need to pay attention. We must ensure that special interests do not abuse the people’s right to hold government accountable.

Misinformation and misplaced trust in signature-gatherers often mean we do not take the time to read the petitions for ourselves and do our research before signing. Next time you see a signature-gatherer on your neighborhood corner, ask yourself, “Do I really understand what I am signing?”

Blanca Hernandez is Our Democracy program coordinator and Michelle Romero is Our Democracy program manager at The Greenlining Institute, a public policy and research institute headquartered in Berkeley; www.greenlining.org.

CEOs of wealthy Silicon Valley companies and other hugely profitable businesses that have avoided billions in federal taxes by hiding profits in offshore tax havens now want us to reward this tax evasion by cutting their tax rate by more than 85 percent (“Lower the tax on foreign earnings,” Open Forum, Dec. 22).

Really? Is this some sort of sick joke?

As we showed in our July report, “Corporate America Untaxed,” not only has use of offshore havens like the Cayman Islands increased since the Government Accountability Office looked at the issue in 2008, huge corporations use such dodges to avoid between $60 billion and $100 billion in taxes per year.

While average Americans pay more than 20 percent of their income in federal taxes, we found that IBM pays 3.8 percent and DuPont and General Electric pay virtually nothing, just to pick a few examples. Rather than rewarding tax evasion, Congress should pass legislation introduced earlier this year to shut down these offshore tax havens and make wealthy, U.S.-based companies pay their fair share. To even consider cutting Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that aid the elderly and vulnerable before making corporate America pay its share is simply unconscionable.

I’m about to become a mom. If all goes as expected, I’ll be bringing a baby boy into the world sometime in the first week of January. To say it’s an overwhelming experience is both completely obvious and a pretty severe understatement.

In practical terms, it probably means I’ll be posting here a bit less often, as I’ll be taking some time off from my work at The Greenlining Institute. But I’ll still be sounding off from time to time — albeit on a schedule dictated by the newest and undoubtedly most vocal member of my family.

And there’s nothing like impending motherhood to get you thinking about what kind of world your child is coming into — and what sort of world you wish for. I don’t think I’m being naïve to hope for a world in which he can pursue his dreams and has a fair shot at going wherever his imagination, talents and dedication can take him.

That is the essence of the American Dream, but it’s a far cry from the American reality.

My little boy will have a lot of advantages, but I hope he’ll be in a school where he can interact with kids from all sorts of backgrounds and circumstances and learn about those differences, a school where he’ll be guided by dedicated teachers who have the resources they need to do their jobs well. Here in California, with yet another round of state budget cuts imminent, that’s far from guaranteed. The fact that this is even in doubt is a mark of eternal shame on our society.

And I hope he’ll be in a school where none of his classmates live in terror that their family will be broken up because their parents don’t have the proper immigration papers.

If he chooses to go to college, I’d like him to be able to graduate without a mountain of debt that constricts his horizons and narrows his options before he even lands his first job. Back in the 1960s, California was a pioneer in guaranteeing access to higher education at minimal cost to any student who qualified. Those days are long gone, here and in many other states, and we are all poorer for it.

In the course of my son’s life, he will deal with businesses of all shapes and sizes. I want them to treat him fairly. That may seem like an odd thing for a mom to be thinking about, but I spend every day addressing how businesses — particularly in the banking and financial sector — interact with their customers and their communities. I’ve seen the good they can do as well as the harm, and the role government can play.

If some financial institution lends my son money, I want to know that there won’t be hidden traps and time bombs buried in the fine print that will maximize the company’s profit while torching his future. I’d prefer that those financial institutions behave honestly and ethically just because it’s the right thing to do and ultimately good for business, but if they’re inclined to cheat, I want someone to be able to stop them.

And I want that someone to be part of the government that I and my fellow voters have chosen to act on our behalf, as part of our collective responsibility to ensure that our society treats all fairly. And I want those decisions protected from the corrupting influence of special-interest money, in a system that recognizes that corporations are not people and that the market is a mechanism, not a god. We’re actually very close to achieving some of this little piece of my dream, but a group of Republicans in the Senate are doing their best to stop it. It’s infuriating.

What I want more than anything is a nation with a sense of community, a nation that recognizes that we’re all in this together, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation, and that celebrates our diversity and individuality while understanding that we can’t be completely on our own. We have responsibilities to each other, to our community.

In practical terms, that means businesses that look out their windows and see communities that they belong to, not just profits to be reaped. It means understanding that while in the short run a company may make money by simply taking as much as it can get, in the long run, healthy, thriving communities are good for everyone, including the businesses that serve them.

It means that as citizens participating in our government and our society, “I’ve got mine and you’re on your own” is an attitude that ultimately hurts us all. There are things that we all need, from good schools to clean air to opportunities for education and advancement, that individuals can’t create by themselves. We must do them together.

That’s what I’d like for the little boy I’m about to bring into the world: A nation that lives up to the motto on the Great Seal of the United States: e pluribus unum — “out of many, one.”

Follow Preeti Vissa on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Greenlining

After Barack Obama’s election as president, a number of pundits rushed to declare that America had entered a “post-racial” era, and issues of race could go on the historical scrap heap next to the Cold War and typewriters. They were, it turns out, spectacularly wrong.

To assess attitudes toward race as we approach Obama’s reelection campaign, we analyzed data from one of the most highly regarded academic surveys of political opinion, the American National Election Survey, led by researchers at Stanford and the University of Michigan. We found a racial divide with serious implications for a nation well on its way to having a nonwhite majority.

Differences in perception between blacks and whites are so stark that these two groups might be living on separate planets. For example, while a solid majority of African Americans believe there is “a lot” of racial discrimination in America today, just 16 percent of whites think so.

An equally large racial chasm exists on issues that are easily measured, such as income. All the official statistics point in the same direction: U.S. blacks, on average, have markedly lower incomes than whites. They also have less wealth and significantly higher rates of unemployment. The reasons for these gaps can be debated, but their existence cannot.

Except that a majority of white Americans have no clue, believing that whites’ and blacks’ incomes are “about the same.” Only 37 percent of whites answered this question correctly, compared to two thirds of  blacks and 52 percent of Latinos.

One of the most striking gaps was in answers to the question, “How does the U.S. government treat blacks now compared to whites?” Just over 56 percent of blacks said that the government treats whites better than blacks, while 43 percent said it treated whites and blacks about equally and only about one percent thought the government treats blacks better than whites.

Whites saw a very different picture, with 63 percent saying the government treats blacks and whites the same and 28 percent believing that it treats blacks better than whites. Just nine percent of whites thought that black Americans get treated worse than whites by their government.

Some misconceptions coincide to a disturbing degree with right-wing media narratives that have become prevalent in recent years. For example, it has become almost an article of faith among some on the right that government programs that assist people of color, such as the Community Reinvestment Act, triggered the financial crisis. The fact that this has been repeatedly debunked hasn’t stopped pundits like Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby from blaming the crisis on “pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: borrowers with weak credit histories),” as he did in a 2008 column.

We believe that this growing racial divide imperils efforts to revive our country’s economy and build a strong future. It’s serious enough that opinion leaders in and out of government need to do something.

The media must make a much more serious effort to inform the public about racial issues. Including the voices and experiences of African Americans and other communities of color when addressing subjects like the foreclosure crisis isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.

And political leaders must refrain from using racially inflammatory appeals. Thinly coded race-baiting (like one GOP presidential candidate’s recent branding of Obama as “the food stamp president”) may get applause from hardcore partisans, but poisons the public dialogue.

The voices leading our national conversation must do better.

It’s hard to pin down precise numbers, but anecdotal reports in news outlets across the country suggest that hundreds of thousands of Americans responded to “National Transfer Day” campaign by switching their deposits from major banks to credit unions.

But did those consumers accomplish what the campaign’s supporters wanted — to vote with their dollars for institutions with more concern and responsibility for their communities?

It’s always a good thing for consumers to hold financial institutions and other businesses accountable, but moving one’s money alone doesn’t lead to a just and equitable society. It may be comforting to view the world in black and white (e.g. big banks = bad, credit unions = good), but reality usually comes in shades of gray. In this case, large credit unions need to be held accountable every bit as much as banks.

Banks and credit unions both have a moral responsibility to serve low and moderate income communities. And there are many “low income credit unions” — designated as such by the National Credit Union Administration — that are doing amazing work, for which they deserve acknowledgement. But the awkward truth is that we don’t know nearly enough about the extent to which credit unions overall serve low- and moderate-income consumers. They aren’t required to collect and report details on the incomes or other characteristics of members, and because they aren’t covered by the Community Reinvestment Act, they do not have to report much of the information that is required from banks.

Congress made an effort to nudge credit unions in that direction with the 1998 Credit Union Membership Access Act. The law did successfully encourage credit unions to add offices in underserved areas, but it remains unclear to what degree, if any, this actually increased the number of disadvantaged people who became members.

Under CRA, banks have to report small business lending, small farm lending, and community development loans, investments, and services. That includes things like loans for affordable housing construction and lending to nonprofit organizations serving low- and moderate-income community development needs, community development financial institutions, community development corporations, and minority- and women-owned financial institutions.

Because of all this data, we have a reasonably good idea of what the banks are doing or not doing to promote development in underserved communities. We don’t know this about credit unions because they are exempt from CRA.

The limited data we do have on credit unions all predate the recent economic difficulties, but suggest areas of concern. A 2003 General Accounting Office study of large credit unions, for example, found lower-income Americans make up 36 percent of those who primarily use credit unions, while the figure for banks is 42 percent. Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, the GAO also found that credit unions made a lower proportion of their mortgage loans to low- and moderate-income households than did banks — 27 percent vs. 34 percent.

The GAO recommended that the NCUA gather information from its members to determine whether credit unions are providing greater access to services in underserved areas, similar to what banks are required to report under CRA. But NCUA rejected the recommendation on the grounds that it would impose “substantial expanded record-keeping and reporting burdens on federally insured credit unions” and that such burdens were not “cost-justified.”

Indeed, credit unions have consistently resisted participating in CRA or anything like it. For example, National Association of Federal Credit Unions president Fred Becker wrote in a February 2010 letter to Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, then chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, that NAFCU, “does not support credit unions being subject to any type of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) type requirements.” Credit unions, he added, “should not be shackled with regulatory requirements and arbitrary benchmarks that detract from the services that they provide to their members.”

There is a tendency to think of credit unions as small, local institutions, but many are quite large. According the most recent figures available, at least 10 credit unions have assets over $5 billion — sometimes way over $5 billion — a figure that might well have grown due to the “Move Your Money” campaign. It appears that none of the top 25 credit unions in California are designated as low income credit unions, meaning they have no explicit commitment to low-income communities.

None of this is to say that banks are saints or that the “Move Your Money” folks don’t have legitimate criticisms of the industry. And the positive contributions of low income credit unions are real. But all financial institutions should be accountable to the communities they serve, and that should include credit unions.

Why are top executives at government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac getting millions in bonuses while struggling homeowners get little or no help?

I’ve written before about the need for principal reduction to help homeowners fighting to keep their homes. Not only would this aid millions of Americans caught in difficult circumstances they didn’t create, it would shore up the weak housing market and boost the whole economy. I’m hardly alone: a large collection of financial experts and officials, including California Attorney General Kamala Harris and a large group of members of Congress have called for principal reduction.

Fannie and Freddie — bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $169 billion — back a large percentage of those troubled mortgages and would need to sign off. But the federal agency that oversees them, the Federal Housing Finance Administration, has refused to go along.

This festering problem got renewed attention recently when the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill by a vote of 52 to 4 that would cap executive pay at Fannie and Freddie — a rare bit of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill.

How big are the paychecks going to top Fannie and Freddie executives? Big. Really, really big. Since the agencies went into conservatorship, Fannie and Freddie’s top six executives have received $35 million in compensation, including millions in bonuses, even as borrowers struggled to keep their homes and got no meaningful relief.

At the Financial Services Committee hearing, acting FHFA honcho Edward DeMarco stoutly defended both the seven-figure executive pay and his agency’s refusal to recognize financial reality and write down the principal of troubled loans to values that are realistic. Amazingly, he did this just days after Fannie and Freddie asked for another $7.8 billion from taxpayers to cover last quarter’s losses.

A message to Director Ed DeMarco: look out your window. This is exactly the sort of thing the Occupy Wall Street protesters are upset about, and they’re right. That’s why Kamala Harris recently called for DeMarco to “step aside” if he refuses to rethink his policies, saying, “It has become clear to me that the only way to keep distressed California homeowners in their homes is through meaningful principal reduction.”

What Harris said applies in every state where recession-battered homeowners, many of whom owe more than they will ever be able to sell their homes for, are trying to keep a roof over their heads. We know what needs to be done, and FHFA should lead, follow, or at least get out of the way.

And, if only for PR purposes, they might want to rethink those salaries and bonuses before the full Congress does it for them.

I wish all Americans could have seen firsthand the amazing crowd at the Occupy Oakland general strike Nov. 2. Contrary to media stereotypes, this was America — young, old, professional, working-class, black, white, Latino, Asian, gay, straight, lawyers, Ph.D.s, people who barely made it through high school, you name it — and they came for a purpose.

These Occupy protests really have come to embody the 99 percent for whom they speak. This group is us. It looks like America, while the wealthy and powerful 1 percent doesn’t.

And we know what we want: a society that lives up to its promise of equal opportunity and fair treatment for all.

So how do we get there? Here are a few places to start:

A fair tax system: A study we did over the summer at The Greenlining Institute found that America’s wealthiest corporations avoid some $60 billion a year in taxes by hiding profits overseas. This nonsense must end.

And as Warren Buffett has so eloquently said, let’s end the insane system that lets millionaires and billionaires pay less of their income in taxes than their secretaries. We can begin by taxing capital gains at the same rate as wages and salaries. Why should someone who makes their income by moving money around pay a lower tax rate than someone who builds things, teaches our kids or puts out fires?

Bail out the 99 percent: It’s time to rescue the real America. Reduce the principal on underwater loans, establish a system of credit repair for good people who were caught in bad circumstances and forgive student loans so that our young people don’t start life already crushed by debt.

Stop blaming the victims, and start giving them a voice: When even people who should know better, like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, spout nonsense about the economic meltdown being caused by loans to poor people made under government pressure, we have a problem. It’s well documented that predatory practices and inadequate regulation tanked the economy, not responsible lending to low-income Americans. The solution to our economic problems lies with the 99 percent who were victims, not the elites who collected multimillion-dollar bonuses selling dubious financial instruments.

Regulate Wall Street. Really: The best thing to come out of the meltdown was the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a desperately needed “cop on the beat.” But Congress and President Obama should think beyond just this bureau and look at systemic reforms like reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept banks separate from investment houses and insurance companies.

Ultimately, this is about fairness, something that used to be a fundamental American value. It must be so again.