Recently, I had the chance to look through the online videos available at FedFlix. For those of you unfamiliar with FedFlix, it’s a joint venture between the folks at Public.Resource.Org and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), a bureau within the Department of Commerce. Pursuant to their agreement, NTIS and other agencies, such as the National Archives, send public domain videotapes to Public.Resource.Org, which in turns digitizes the videos and uploads them to the Internet Archive, YouTube , and the Public.Resource.Org public domain stock footage video library. Public.Resource.Org then sends the videotapes back to the government along with a disc of the digitized video. At this point, the collection includes more than 1,500 videos from over 100 federal and state agencies and covers a wide-range of topics. For purposes of this post, I thought it might be interesting to browse through the available videos related to law, in particular the offerings from the Department of Justice, the Federal Judicial Center and the National Archives. What follows are just a few of the highlights from my search – check out more for yourself when you have time!
Articles Tagged with President
Hi Friends,
As most of us know, Nolo.com is the best Website for consumer and small business USA legal information. Nolo’s lawyers-writers-editors are the best. Nolo.com covers everything from starting a business, employment, real estate, intellectual property, immigration, family law, tax, estate planning, bankruptcy, credit law and foreclosures.
Well… as our country slowly quickly moves into economic tough times, I thought I would blog on a new book, The Foreclosure Survival Guide written by my friend Steve Elias.
Steve Elias has been writing about legal and consumer financial issues for Nolo.com for nearly thirty years. He has been covering the recent legal and ecomomic changes that folks face, including credit, bankruptcy and foreclosure issues. Steve is currently blogging (with Albin Renauer – Go Blue!) on Nolo’s Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Blog, covering the latest issues, as well as legislation on bankruptcy and foreclosure. He also blogs on The Law Reform Soapbox.
Nolo.com also has put together the Property & Money Resource Center with loads of legal and consumer content from Steve and the other Nolo editors. This resource center includes specific sections with articles & FAQs on Foreclosure, Credit Repair & Debt, Bankruptcy and Social Security & Retirement. The Property & Money Resource Center is constantly being updated with the latest information.
Steve has written a new book on foreclosures, appropriately called the The Foreclosure Survival Guide (on Nolo.com the book costs $14.99, and the immediately downloadable ebook pdf costs $12.99, you can also get the book on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com). The Foreclosure Survival Guide has information on mortgages, including adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, judicial and non-judicial foreclosure, credit counseling, liens, and using bankruptcy to deal with foreclosure.
Steve goes into much more detail in his book, but here is some information from his book about nonprofit counselors that may be able to help:
Nonprofit Housing Counselors (from Chapter 10 – Resources Beyond the Book)
I strongly suggest that you find a nonprofit housing counseling agency. The counselors there can help you assess your mortgage situation and, if possible, negotiate a solution with your lender that will keep you in your house. Lenders–which suffer economically from foreclosures and benefit if something can be worked out–are the main source of funds for these agencies. (see Ch. 4 [of The Foreclosure Survival Guide] for an in-depth discussion of finding and working with a nonprofit housing counselor.)
- The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a list of approved counselors. You can find a hud-approved agency at www.hud.gov/foreclosure/index.cfm or by calling 800-569-4287.
- The Homeownership Preservation Foundation website, www.995hope.org, offers free online counseling, among other things. or you can call 888-995-HOPE and talk with someone.
- The Homeownership Crisis Resource Center, www.housinghelpnow.org, will link you up with a local nonprofit foreclosure prevention specialist who may or may not be hud approved.
- The National Foundation for Credit Counseling will get you to a nonprofit counselor (typically HUD approved) through its toll-free hotline, 866-557-2227.
The foreclosure problems have been going on for a while and could get much worse if something is not done by the lenders and government (who will soon own large stakes in the lenders). As it is in the best interest of the lenders and the neighborhoods to try to keep people in their homes to reduce the number of foreclosures and vacant units, there needs to be something done to revalue some of these loans. We will see what Congress, President Bush and then President ??? do. And then there is the US and world economy as a whole… we will see.
For those facing credit issues, foreclosure or possible bankruptcy, check out Nolo’s Property & Money Resource Center for very helpful consumer information. For those facing foreclosure, falling behind on their payments, or just need help with paying their mortgages, check out The Foreclosure Survival Guide. The table of contents of The Foreclosure Survival Guide is in the extended entry of this post.
Peace,
Tim
Hi Friends,
Oregon’s Legislative Counsel Committee had a meeting this morning to discuss the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes. After taking legal counsel from Dexter Johnson, talking with Karl Olson, Carl Malamud, three Oregon citizens and myself, they unanimously voted to not to enforce any copyright claims on the Oregon Revised Statutes. This is great!!!
Carl Malamud presents Oregon Senate President Courtney the “Seal of Approval”
Hi Friends,
Cicely and I made a presentation to the Stanford Law School Advanced Legal Research class today. There was a law librarian Liza MacMorris from Wilson Sonsini who gave students the reality of research working at a large law firm and a guy from Bloomberg who gave details on Bloomberg’s plan to run for President and showed their docket search (which seemed kind of like Justia’s Free Federal Court Civil Filings Search + a Pacer account for the documents, but Bloomberg also has runners who will get dockets that are not in the system and is tied into other investor and legal information and of course it costs money). Well he certainly hinted that Bloomberg might run, although like most New York Republicans, he more suited to run as a Democrat.
We covered the free part of alternatives to paid Lexis and West. California is in pretty good shape for free information. We focused on free sources like LexisOne and Cornell, as well as some inexpensive alternatives like FastCase and VersusLaw. And of course quite a bit of focus on blogs.
In H.P. Tries to Create Printers That Love the Web, the New York Times reported on this comment by Vyomesh I. Joshi, the Executive Vice President of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group:
“Reluctantly, I am doing blogs,” he told the employees at the companywide coffee talk. He said he needed to understand how they work. “Otherwise, we will be irrelevant.”
So, how might blogs make HP irrelevant?
Well, the first Monday of October has finally arrived and changes are already afoot. The US Supreme Court returned from its summer recess and welcomed a new Chief Justice to the helm. With the nation’s air waves abuzz this morning over President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers, it seems that the Washington’s attention has been focused on the Supreme Court as of late. Our focus has been on the US Supreme Court as well, but for entirely different reasons.
Today, Justia, Oyez and US Court Forms are proud to release the first beta version of our new US Supreme Court Center. Many features are still under development, but the center does include all US Supreme Court decisions since volume one (1).
You can visit the new center at http://www.Justia.us
Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, I have been absolutely shocked by the magnitude of destruction left in her wake. In California, we’ve experienced our share of natural disasters, including the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. While the damage from that earthquake was extensive, it did not force the evacuation of a major American city or disperse countless families into neighboring states away from their homes, possessions and careers. The manpower, resources and infrastructure needed to handle such a mass migration is unfathomable.
Hurricane Katrina also demonstrated the limitations of our current technologies. Once the power shuts down, the cellular phones go down as well. And, without a communication system in place, the process of contacting family members or coordinating relief efforts proves to be exponentially more challenging.
Fortunately, many Web sites have emerged in the past few days to help survivors reconnect with their family members. Let me share with you some Web sites that I’ve visited to keep up with Hurricane Katrina news.
