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Entrance to Trott Center, home of the McCain-Palin campaign in Farmington Hills, Mich. (Photo: Alexa Stanard)

The headquarters of the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket in Michigan, located at 31330 Northwestern Highway in Farmington Hills in suburban Detroit, is owned by a law firm called Trott & Trott that specializes in housing foreclosures.

As the Republican nominee makes his first post-convention appearance in Sterling Heights, Mich., today, the livelihood of his local host has not yet attracted much notice. But if the Trott name rings no bells among the national press corps, it is all too familiar to the record number of Michigan residents facing foreclosures on their homes in this election year.

McCain’s landlord boasts of providing “comprehensive foreclosure, bankruptcy litigation and related services for the real estate finance industry.”

That means that as the Michigan housing market goes south, the Trott & Trott firm is prospering. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, is also donating generously to the McCain campaign.

Trott and his wife Kathleen have given $23,000 to the McCain campaign in 2007-08, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They gave another $52,400 to the Republican National Committee in May of this year.

Court records show that Trott & Trott works closely with Countrywide, the notorious southern California subprime lender. Countrywide’s lending polices have, by all accounts, played a significant role in the national housing market’s boom and bust cycle of the last two years.

When Countrywide’s borrowers find themselves unable to meet their payments, Trott’s firm helps the lender extract advantage from those who cannot pay the unreasonable terms that they, wittingly or unwittingly, signed up for. There’s nothing illegal about Trott & Trott’s business but the firm has faced scores of lawsuits over its handling of foreclosure cases, according to court records.

Consider the story of 72-year-old Ruby Curl-Pinkins, a disabled senior in Detroit who had paid off her home for 45 years when she succumbed to a too-good-to-be-true loan from Countrywide, according to WDIV, the NBC station in Detroit.

Unable to keep up with the 10 percent mortgage payments and her medical bills, Curl obtained a reverse mortgage to pay off the subprime loan in full. Countrywide, represented by Trott & Trott, refused to take the reverse mortgage money, according to the Michigan Citizen, an African-American weekly in Detroit.

“They acted like the situation was personal,” Curl-Pinkins daughter said. “At one point they told me, ‘You better quit filing stuff or you’ll be paying our attorney fees,’ and demanded $900 for that day from us. They tried to bully [Wayne County Circuit Court] Judge Susan Borman, objecting to giving us any more time before the eviction. They wanted my mother out in 24 hours. They told the judge they didn’t even have a buyer, they just wanted the house back.”

Rick Simon, a spokesman for the Countrywide and Trott & Trott, said Curl-Pinkins had been given two extensions.

“Our first priority is to preserve homeownership,” Simon said. “Unfortunately, in some cases, continued homeownership is not an option, due to the state of the economy or personal circumstances … ”

Then there’s the story of a Michigan property owner named Robb. He recounted his experience with T&T on Ripoffreport.com, a Web site devoted to consumer complaints.

Without warning or cause, Countrywide Home Mortgage Finance through their attorney, Trott & Trott, ordered the Kent County Sheriff to sell my home (condo) at the Kent County, Michigan Sheriff’s Property Sale.

It was sold on March 22nd, 2006. At the same time, Countrywide reported to the three biggest Credit Reporting Agencies in the USA (Trans_Union, Experian and EquiFax) that my home mortgage had been foreclosed and the property was sold at the Sheriff’s Property Sale. Well, they didn’t lie. The property WAS foreclosed and sold. The problem was that Countrywide had ordered this foreclosure and sale BY MISTAKE . . . Countrywide’s MISTAKE!

Robb said he called Trott & Trott to tell them that there had been “a big screw up.”

“Sir,” said the ‘processor’ matter-of-factly, “Countrywide gives us the properties they want sold and we see to it that they get sold. We don’t control which properties are sold and which are not. You’ll have to call Countrywide and ask them. Good-bye.”

When Robb called Countrywide, he says he was told to call Trott & Trott.

“One Circuit Court Injunction and $4,500 in attorney fees later, an agreement was signed by Countrywide and myself, the sale was undone, I paid the back payments without interest, late charges and attorney fees,” Robb wrote.

What’s a debtor to do?

Michigan Messenger spoke with Abayomi Azikywe, a spokesman for Moratorium Now!, a coalition of community groups seeking to stop foreclosures and evictions. The group’s primary goal is passage of Senate Bill 1306, introduced by state Sen. Hansen Clarke, which would require courts to prohibit the foreclosure of a residential mortgage or land contract for two years if the borrower requests it, notwithstanding the provisions of any contract between the lender and borrower.

Moratorium Now! has begun looking into the possibility of a class action lawsuit against, but not limited to, Countrywide and Trott & Trott.

“There are a lot of bad feelings toward Trott & Trott as they’ve developed a reputation of being ruthless, and unwilling to work with Michigan citizens, particularly seniors, disabled or the unemployed,” Azikywe explained.

But there are no such bad feelings between Trott & Trott and the Republican presidential nominee. John McCain can afford to pay his bills on time.

Michigan Messenger’s Todd A. Heywood and Diane Sweet contributed to this report.

(Graphic courtesy Pyzam.com)

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The ideals of “country first,” and “service” won lavish praise at the Republican National Convention last night. The realities of the Republican party and President George W. Bush got rather less respect.

A parade of speakers in St. Paul, including Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, an Hispanic businessman, an Arizona educator, and President Bush (speaking from the White House via video link) hailed the prospective nominee John McCain for his courage as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, his 26 years in Congress, even his decision to adopt a child from Bangladesh.

Partisan rhetoric was, for the most part, muted. “John McCain doesn’t speak the language of service. He has lived a life of service,” said Bachmann, presumably in reference to the too-eloquent Democratic nominee Barack Obama. In a clumsier swipe, President Bush averred that if McCain’s North Vietnamese captors could not break his resolve, the “angry left” could not either.

The crowd of 20,000 people responded with rapt attention and the occasional standing ovation, even as the last two speakers of the evening worked hard–Bush loyalists might say too hard–to distinguish the nominee from the man he hopes to succeed.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson noted with a hint of admiration that the party’s new standard bearer once dated a stripper. (The TV cameras mercifully spared us Cindy McCain’s reaction to her husband’s taste in female company.) Thompson reminded the Republican faithful that young Congressman McCain bucked Ronald Reagan on the wisdom of sending U.S. troops to the Middle East, an observation that seemed to send a ripple of unease through the crowd. And Thompson described the federal government, run for the last eight years by the already-forgotten incumbent, as “wasteful and too often incompetent.” No one was heard to object.

The solution to the “nightmare” of contemporary Washington, said lapsed Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman, was John McCain. Among the Arizona Senators’ many accomplishments, Lieberman explained, was his hostility to “corrupt Republican lobbyists” — some of whom were no doubt itching to exit the premises in search of strippers unfamiliar with public service. Lieberman added kind words for the various legislative accomplishments of Bill Clinton, the former Democratic president who warmly endorsed Obama just a week ago — and the confused crowd responded with applause.

To be fair, it has not been an easy convention for the GOP rank and file. On Monday, Republicans who pride themselves on traditional family values had to learn to scratch the phrase “illegitimate child” from their vocabularies, lest they be taken as less than loyal to prospective vice president (and grandmother) Gov. Sarah Palin. Last night, they began to learn another lesson: that McCain’s campaign slogan, “Country First,” also means “We got no brand.”

Jefferson Morley, national editorial director of our parent organization The Center for Independent Media, reports from the Republican National Convention.

Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech at Invesco Field, Mile High Stadium, Denver Colo. (photo: zenobia_joy via Flickr.com)

DENVER — Up until Thursday night it had been a crowded week for the Democratic National Convention. There were too many delegates and reporters jammed into the too-small Pepsi Center.

The conversations of the faithful were crowded with anxieties about slipping poll numbers, soft messaging, elusive unity, and the omnipresent Clintons. Memories of disastrous Augusts (John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000 and Michael Dukakis in 1988) pinched the party’s imagination.

Tonight those hemmed-in feelings dispersed into the breezes of mammoth Invesco Field where an adoring throng of 84,000 cheered Barack Obama as he accepted his party nomination with a speech — none too lofty and none too soft — that reinfused his historic campaign with sense of history and horizon that had seemed lacking in recent weeks.

Early on Obama declared “enough,” and that word resonated throughout his 48-minute speech. So did the phrase “Now is the time.” Those simple sentiments bookended a comprehensive indictment of the Republican presumptive nominee as honorable but clueless (“It’s not that John McCain doesn’t care. It’s that he doesn’t get it.”) and a challenge to his own party (“Democrats, Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America’s promise will require more than just money.”)

Tough talk on Afghanistan (“we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.”) was combined with tender feelings toward his grandmother (“She poured everything she had into me.”)

After delivering a laundry list of specific policy proposals, Obama returned to the post-partisan message that enabled him to prevail over the more traditional style of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. “These — these are the policies I will pursue,” he declared. “And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.”

“But what I will not do,” he went on, “is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and each other’s patriotism.”

“I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he finished. “We all put our country first.”

Obama thus put a partisan edge on his post-partisanship. He both sharpened the choice facing voters 68 days from now without closing off his ability appeal to Republicans and independents. He again demonstrated the political agility that brought him to this historic occasion and almost certainly restored his supporters’ confidence that was a little shaky just a few hours earlier.