CA Gov. Brown is using CA's $410.5 million Mortgage Settlement to pay off CA's $15.7B deficit [View all]

[BlueCaliDem]

instead of using the money for what it was intended: to help prevent foreclosures with programs like down payment assistance, foreclosure counseling and financial literacy training.

State AG Kamala Harris is furious.

The settlement set aside more than $2 billion for the 49 participating states and the District of Columbia -- money that was supposed to help prevent foreclosures with programs like down payment assistance, foreclosure counseling and financial literacy training.

Unfortunately (perhaps predictably), as the money reached the states, the wheels went off the tracks. In California, Attorney General Kamala Harris exulted about the good the settlement would do for people in her state, hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis. "Hundreds of thousands of California homeowners will benefit," said Harris, as her office took steps to "ensure the settling banks deliver on their promises."

The state AG's gaveth and just like that, the state governors tooketh away! Over Harris's strenuous objections, California Governor Jerry Brown took every penny of the state's $410.5 million in settlement money -- even though applying that sum to California's hemorrhaging $15.7 billion budget deficit is like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-levin/mortgage-settlement-funds_b_2018307.html

WTF is Governor Brown doing?? He refuses to champion making oil companies pay for extracting our oil; he refuses to tax corporations; and finally, he refuses universal health care for CA (CA OneCare) . . . is he even a Democrat??