If I (and the bank) sign a 15/20/30 year Loan contract for a home with a BANK, if down the road, I decide that for reasons such as......I can no longer AFFORD the monthly payment, do I have the legal right to abrogate said contract, and pay ONLY what I can afford ?
If the bank objects, do they have legal standing because I'm not living up to my obligation/responsibility because of documents with my signature on them ?
If municipalities, one day decide that they, WITHOUT RAISING TAXES, cannot AFFORD to HONOR legal contracts that they signed with the town Police/Fire Fighters/Teacher UNIONS have legal standing to ABROGATE said contracts ?
And if the town does illegally abrogate the union contracts, do the cops/FFers/teachers have legal standing to WITHOLD thier services ?
After the Walker recall victory, I'm hearing a LOT of talk radio bragging about how " We have showed those COP-FFers-Teachers-Municipal employees UNIONS" (Garbage men/snow plow drivers etc.)
If a national "groundswell" support for Muni-Unions takes hold, I then say......" Be CAREFUL for what you wish for " !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bears.... not sure where you've been for the past three years, but with regard to your first question... Absolutely. That's what the whole loan modification program championed by no other than the Chocolate Jesus was all about -- under Obama's program, mortgage servicers were required to reduce monthly payments to no more than 38 percent of the borrower's gross monthly income, and the Feds subsidized the rest so that the monthly payment was no more than 31 percent of the borrower's monthly income. Not a bad deal for those who qualified, but the downside to that program is that it didn't eliminate principal. It just deferred payments.
Now there's a program out by which FHA is working to reduce principal payments... That's a permanent fix to the issue of underwater property.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/06/fha_announcement.html
Outside those programs, there's nothing else mainstream that would help someone stay in a house they can't afford. Short sales have existed for decades to help someone get out of an underwater loan, but you have to work closely with the mortgage servicer to sell your house for as much as you can. They verify the market comps, and typically write off the difference between the purchase price and what you owe. They even pay realtors a full commission in most cases. The mortgage holders far prefer that to a foreclosure, since the property remains occupied and (in theory) maintained. In most cases, the loss is written off with no obligation to the debtor. In some cases, the difference remains an outstanding debt.
I suspect over the next 10 years, you're going to see county and municipal workers screwed as towns and even entire counties go bankrupt.
As for a nationwide groundswell of support for the unions... Are you nucking futts?
Maybe out east you might see it, but I'd say that the nation's patience for the SEIU and AFSCME is at an all time low...
I've read that >65% of the nation's fire departments is still covered by volunteer fire departments, including large parts of the area where I live. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if the remainder went out on a nationwide strike. The 65% of us in flyover country presumably figured out it's just as efficient to do it the old fashioned way -- trained volunteers looking out for their neighbors... Paramedic services are already outsourced to private industry, and if we had to go to deputized private citizens for law enforcement, so be it.
If liberals in the socialist states and cities were left to fend for yourselves, instead of relying on good union folk to do it for you, I suspect you'd learn to better appreciate the second amendment...