Jonathan Kantrowitz

Sponsored by Governor Dannel P. Malloy,
Attorney General George Jepsen
and the Connecticut Department of Banking

Thursday, March 29, 2012
10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Webster Bank Arena
600 Main Street, Bridgeport, CT

Meet one-on-one with your mortgage lender or a HUD-approved housing counselor!

Documents to Bring
printable version (pdf, 40 KB); en español (pdf, 13 KB)

• Most recently filed and signed federal tax return with all schedules, and attachments including W2s
• Three most recent statements (all pages) for every bank, investment, and retirement account
• Most recent statement for every department store/credit card, auto/student loan, and other mortgages/liens
• A form of state-issued identification, such as a driver’s license
• A recent utility bill with your name and property address to show proof of residency
• Signed and dated Hardship Letter detailing why it is difficult for you to make your mortgage payments
• List of all household monthly income and expenses (actual expense monthly statement)
• A copy of your Homeowners Insurance Declaration Page and Real Estate Property Tax Certification (tax bill)
   
• For each salaried borrower:
  A month’s worth of the most recent paystubs (within 30 days of the event)
• For each self-employed borrower:
  Most recent quarterly or year-to-date profit/loss statement stating three months of business bank statements
• For each borrower with income such as Social Security, disability or death benefits, pension, adoption assistance, public assistance, food stamps, or unemployment:
  Benefits statement or Award Letter from provider, proof that you receive unemployment wages for a minimum of 12 months
• For each borrower relying on alimony or child support as qualifying income:
  Divorce or other court decree, or separation agreement or other written agreement filed with the court stating amount and period of time it will be received, and three most recent bank statements showing receipt of such payment
• For borrowers relying on rental income: 
  A complete schedule of real estate that you own, including the monthly payment amount for principle and interest, the amount of taxes and insurance/escrowed), and any homeowner association dues, current Lease Agreement(s) in its entirety, signed and dated, and three months of bank statements showing deposit of payment or cancelled checks showing receipt of payment
• For borrowers with income from other source(s) that amount to more than 20% of your total yearly income (this could include bonuses, tips or investment income, and letters regarding contribution to mortgage payments):
  A copy of documentation describing the nature of the income (employment contract or tip income)
• For borrowers that belong to a Homeowners Association: 
  A copy of a current bill or assessment.

• The Request for Modification and Affidavit (RMA) Form  (pdf)
  - includes an income/expense/asset form
• IRS Forms 4506-T (pdf) and 4506-EZ (pdf)
• The Dodd-Frank Certification Form (pdf)

Last October:

I bet he has never met, talked to, or visited a very poor person.

Mitt Romney’s statement that he is focused solely on the problems of middle class Americans, not the poor, may not sit well with lower-income voters within his own party. Roughly a quarter of Republican voters have annual family incomes under $30,000, and most of them say that the government does not do enough for poor people in this country.

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early October, 57% of lower-income Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the government does too little for poor people. Just 18% said it does too much. By contrast, higher-income Republicans took the opposite view; by roughly two-to-one (44% to 21%) Republicans with incomes of $75,000 or more said the government does too much, not too little, for poor people.

The truth is, especially since “welfare reform” the government’s safety net for the very poor has been full of holes. (read this link for may specific example

Sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health, according to a team of UCSF researchers, who maintain in a new report that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Non-communicable diseases now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations. In the United States, 75 percent of health care dollars are spent treating these diseases and their associated disabilities.

In the Feb. 2 issue of Nature, Robert Lustig MD, Laura Schmidt PhD, MSW, MPH, and Claire Brindis, DPH, colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), argue that sugar’s potential for abuse, coupled with its toxicity and pervasiveness in the Western diet make it a primary culprit of this worldwide health crisis.

This partnership of scientists trained in endocrinology, sociology and public health took a new look at the accumulating scientific evidence on sugar. Such interdisciplinary liaisons underscore the power of academic health sciences institutions like UCSF.

Sugar, they argue, is far from just “empty calories” that make people fat. At the levels consumed by most Americans, sugar changes metabolism, raises blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to the liver – the least understood of sugar’s damages. These health hazards largely mirror the effects of drinking too much alcohol, which they point out in their commentary is the distillation of sugar.

Worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic. But obesity, Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis argue, may just be a marker for the damage caused by the toxic effects of too much sugar. This would help explain why 40 percent of people with metabolic syndrome—the key metabolic changes that lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer—are not clinically obese.

“As long as the public thinks that sugar is just ‘empty calories,’ we have no chance in solving this,” said Lustig, a professor of pediatrics, in the division of endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.

“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates,” Lustig said. “But sugar is toxic beyond its calories.

Limiting the consumption of sugar has challenges beyond educating people about its potential toxicity. “We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar,” said Brindis, director of UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. “Changing these patterns is very complicated”

According to Brindis, effective interventions can’t rely solely on individual change, but instead on environmental and community-wide solutions, similar to what has occurred with alcohol and tobacco, that increase the likelihood of success.

The authors argue for society to shift away from high sugar consumption, the public must be better informed about the emerging science on sugar.

“There is an enormous gap between what we know from science and what we practice in reality,” said Schmidt, professor of health policy at UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) and co-chair of UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, which focuses on alcohol and addiction research.

“In order to move the health needle, this issue needs to be recognized as a fundamental concern at the global level,” she said.

The paper was made possible with funding from UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, UCSF’s National Institutes of Health-funded program that helps accelerate clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary work.

Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.

“We’re not talking prohibition,” Schmidt said. “We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

The Secretary of the State of Connecticut, Denise Merrill, and State Comptroller of Connecticut, Kevin Lembo, today announced their endorsement of Chris Donovan for the Fifth Congressional District seat.

“We need a proven leader like Chris Donovan to go to Washington and break the gridlock,” said Merrill. “Chris has a history of standing up for the issues that matter most to the hard-working families of Connecticut – issues like raising the minimum wage, paid sick leave, protecting our seniors, and expanding access to quality education and affordable health care. Chris has proven time and time again that he takes on the important fights – and wins.”

“We can trust Chris Donovan to go to Congress and fight for Connecticut’s middle class and working families,” said Lembo. “In Congress, I know Chris will fight to grow good jobs with strong benefits, to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and to ensure that every child has access to a world-class education, and every senior can afford to retire with dignity and respect.”

“Denise and Kevin are devoted public servants who work hard for the people of Connecticut, and I am honored to have their support and endorsement,” said Donovan. “I will work closely with Secretary of the State Merrill and Comptroller Lembo and other state leaders to fight for the families of the towns and cities of the Fifth Congressional District, for well-paying jobs with solid benefits, and against Republican attacks on Medicare and Social Security.”

Video of the endorsement can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQt2CAG4ntw

More Than $200,000 Raised From More Than 1,800 Donors in Fourth Quarter; Average Contribution of Just $66

Total Raised From More Than 4,500 Individual Contributors in Just Over 2 Quarters in 2011

Democratic candidate for the 5th congressional district seat Chris Donovan announced today that he raised more than $200,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011. In roughly seven months of fundraising, Donovan has raised more than $700,000 from more than 4,500 individual donors.

In the fourth quarter, Donovan again displayed the grassroots enthusiasm of his campaign by collecting donations from more than 1,800 individual donors. With an average individual donation of just $66, Donovan’s campaign is powered by small-dollar grassroots donors. More than 80% of the money raised this quarter was raised in Connecticut.

“People across Connecticut continue to join this grassroots campaign for the future of the middle-class,” said Donovan campaign manager Josh Nassi. “Working people know that Chris Donovan is the one fighting to give them a fair shake, standing with them in an effort to bring new jobs and economic fairness to Connecticut. Their broad support demonstrates that Chris is the best candidate to ensure the 5th district seat remains Democratic in November.”

A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement is a comprehensive education reform plan developed by teachers that includes changing the teacher evaluation process and replacing tenure with a streamlined dismissal process for underperforming teachers.

Without question, there’s no greater asset to improving public schools than high-quality teachers. Teachers are in the classroom every day; they know what is needed to prepare students for the economic challenges ahead. Prepared by teachers, A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement proposes specific ideas that can make a real difference to improve education for Connecticut students.

The plan focuses on shared accountability including teachers and the larger community to close the achievement gap by

* Preparing Students to Achieve
* Reforming Teacher Accountability through Development and Evaluation
* Creating a Positive Learning Environment
* Encouraging Parental and Community Participation
* Ensuring the Fair Distribution of Resources

Connecticut cannot build a strong local economy unless it provides high-quality education, and the state cannot have high-quality schools without adequate funding, small class sizes, and the involvement of parents and communities to transform local schools that need help. Teachers will do their part, as this plan proposes creating an evaluation system for educators that uses multiple indicators of quality teaching and developing a streamlined dismissal process to remove underperforming teachers.

Teachers lead classrooms, and their voice is necessary to ensure meaningful education reform. Please read this document carefully as educators look forward to engaging in a positive, collaborative dialogue with lawmakers, parents, and everyone who’s interested in improving the quality of our public schools and preparing our students for tomorrow’s challenges.

The teacher evaluation process proposed here has pretty much been approved by a task force of representatives of teacher unions, superintendents and school boards:

Evaluations will be made based on:

- 45 percent tied to “multiple student learning indicators,” with one-half of that tied to student test scores;

- 40 percent to observation of teacher performance and practices;

- 10 percent feedback from peers and parents;

- 5 percent on either student feedback or a statewide student indicator.

Sounds good to me.