Today, across the country, mortgage mediation programs aimed at helping struggling homeowners stay in their homes are getting underway. Programs are launching in Maryland, as well as Florida’s 6th and 10th judicial circuits — encompassing Pasco, Pinellas, Hardee, Highlands, and Polk counties — while Cook County, Illinois is beginning a huge round of outreach for its burgeoning program.

In all, “the number of jurisdictions with foreclosure mediation programs is nearly double the number a year ago, with jurisdictions in 21 states now offering foreclosure mediation or negotiation programs.” Not on this list, however, is Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) saw fit to veto a program last year.

The Minnesota state senate recently passed the bill again, sending it to the state House, so Pawlenty could very well get a second shot soon. And there’s simply no reason for him to oppose the program, as mediation — during which a bank meets face-to-face with a borrower, often in the presence of a judge and housing advocates, to try and forge a mortgage modification or other arrangement that prevents a foreclosure — is one of the most successful methods of helping struggling borrowers stay in their homes.

Connecticut’s mediation program, for instance, has kept 60 percent of its borrowers out of foreclosure. Philadelphia’s success rate is also 60 percent, while Nevada claims an 85 percent success rate:

About 80 percent of homeowners at risk of losing their homes don’t engage in any efforts to negotiate with their lender. And those who do so on their own often run into a bureaucratic mess, including hours on hold, lost records, and customer service representatives who know nothing about the borrower’s situation. Mediation helps to ensure that situations like that don’t happen.

“These new protections empower our fellow Marylanders, putting them on a more equal footing with mortgage companies that too often can’t be bothered to pick up the phone before beginning a foreclosure proceeding against a Maryland family,” said Governor Martin O’Malley (D). And lest Pawlenty think this is a purely partisan issue, it has also won the praise of Gov. Jodi Rell (R-CT). “Clearly, mediation is an effective tool homeowners can use to ward off foreclosure,” she said. “This program is a beacon of hope for hard-pressed homeowners and a real alternative for lenders.”

In mediation, there’s no requirement for a lender to accommodate a borrower, but it’s often the case that preventing a foreclosure is in the best financial interest of both the borrower and the lender. As CAP’s Andrew Jakabovics and Alon Cohen wrote, “the simple act of participating in mediation consistently yields solutions short of foreclosure that are acceptable to both sides.” Hopefully, should the Minnesota legislature do the right thing and create a program, Pawlenty will allow it to stand.

A favorite talking point for conservatives since the beginning of BP’s ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is that the Jones Act — a law from 1920 that requires all goods carried between U.S. ports to be on U.S. built ships — is hindering the clean-up effort, and that the Obama administration won’t waive it because it’s pandering to labor unions. “It’s a little shocking to me that a president that has such a multinational orientation as this president didn’t immediately see the benefits of waiving the Jones Act and allowing all of these resources to come in,” said former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

Even current GOP lawmakers have gotten in on the act, with Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), John Cornyn (R-TX) and George LeMieux (R-FL) introducing a bill to repeal the Jones Act entirely. “The Jones Act is currently preventing resources from being used in the monumental cleanup effort, and is hindering the ability of foreign vessels to assist Gulf communities,” Hutchison said. “In this time of crisis, we need to cut through the red tape and get all available assets on scene as quickly as possible.”

However, as McClatchy reported today, according to maritime law experts and independent researchers, these conservatives really don’t know what they’re talking about:

Maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn’t an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn’t blocked anything. “Totally not true,” said Mark Ruge, counsel to the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a coalition of U.S. shipbuilders, operators and labor unions. “It is simply an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem.”

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is running the cleanup effort, said he’d received “no requests for Jones Act waivers” from foreign vessels or countries. And as Steve Benen noted, “there are currently 24 foreign vessels from nine foreign countries in the Gulf, helping with the response effort.”

Of course, none of these facts stopped Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) from releasing a report today claiming that “an apparent refusal to waive the union-backed Jones Act, will stifle economic recovery in the [Gulf] region for years to come.”

This argument over the Jones Act isn’t actually about the GOP making substantive criticisms of the Obama administration’s oil spill response, but dreaming up nonsense in order to attack labor unions. And that’s really nothing new, considering that Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) blamed the entire spill on the fact that some government rig inspectors are unionized. However, it simply has no basis in reality.

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, 15 million Americans have lost their jobs. Almost half of them have been out of work for six months or more, and there are currently nearly five workers actively seeking work for every available job, compared to just 1.5 workers per opening before the recession.

In fact, so many jobs were lost during the recession that even if we added 218,000 private-sector jobs each month from now on, which is the highest monthly payroll increase seen in the private sector so far this year, it would still take almost five years to get to normal.

Despite these miserable statistics, the Senate has been unable to extend job benefits because of a Republican filibuster, which was joined by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE). On three separate occasions, Democrats tried to break the filibuster but were unsuccessful. Last night, they came within one vote, as Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) finally signed on, but still the extension failed to pass.

Though no senator voting to continue the filibuster should be allowed to escape culpability, many senators voting to sustain it are from states that have been hit particularly hard by the unemployment crisis and have a particular responsibility to get relief to those who, through no fault of their own, are now out of work. Here are the 17 senators from states with double-digit unemployment who are willing to leave their constituents without a safety net:

Senator(s)	State	Unemployment Rate	Votes Against Cloture (Out Of Three)
Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby (R)	Alabama	10.8%	Three each
Sen. George LeMieux (R)	Florida	10.4%	Three
Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson (R)	Georgia	10.2%	Three each
Sen. Richard Lugar (R)	Indiana	10.0%	Three
Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning (R)	Kentucky	10.4%	Three each
Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran (R)	Mississippi	11.4%	Three each
Sen. John Ensign (R)	Nevada	14.0%	Three
Sen. Richard Burr (R)	North Carolina	10.3%	Three
Sen. George Voinivich	Ohio	10.7%	Three
Sen. Lindsey Graham	South Carolina	11.0%	Two (Missed vote on 6/17)
Sen. Jim DeMint	South Carolina	11.0%	Two (Missed vote on 6/30)
Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander (R)	Tennessee	10.4%	Three each

1.3 million people have lost their benefits this month alone, and this is actually an historic step on the part of the Senate, as “never before has Congress cut off benefits when unemployment was so high.” In fact, “the highest unemployment rate at which these extensions were allowed to expire was 7.2 percent, following the 1983 recession — substantially lower than our current rate of 9.7 percent.” But perhaps Republicans in the Senate agree with Sharron Angle that unemployed people are simply “spoiled” and “afraid to get a job”?

As BP continues to fumble the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, many Americans have decided to protest BP by boycotting gas stations around the country. Business owners responded by arguing that such moves were hurting their profits while not affecting the parent company, since the vast majority of the 10,000 BP stations in the country and independently owned and operated.

Some BP station owners are now trying to get this message out by putting up signs saying they are “part of the community.” However, these don’t appear to be homemade signs; the exact same ones have been spotted in multiple locations. A ThinkProgress reader sent in the first picture below, taken at a gas station in DC’s Logan Circle neighborhood. The one on the right was posted on the blog Energy Tomorrow — run by the American Petroleum Institute — and is located in northern Virginia:

ThinkProgress contacted an employee at the gas station in northern Virginia, who confirmed that BP sent them the sign to use. So ironically, in an attempt to distance itself from the parent company, these BP stations are using corporate signs.

BP needs to do more than offer pieces of paper to its local gas stations, which are bearing the brunt of a national boycott launched in response to the actions of the parent corporation. According to the AP, BP gas station owners are getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of support they’re receiving:

Station owners and BP gas distributors told BP officials last week they need a break on the cost of the gas they buy, and they want help paying for more advertising aimed at motorists, according to John Kleine, executive director of the independent BP Amoco Marketers Association. The station owners, who earn more from sales of soda and snacks than on gasoline, also want more frequent meetings with BP officials.

“They have got to be more competitive on their fuel costs to the retailers so we can be competitive on the street…and bring back customers that we’ve lost,” says Bob Juckniess, who has seen sales drop 20 percent at some of his 10 BP-branded stations in the Chicago area.

Many people have begun questioning how much of an effect a boycott of BP gas stations will really have on the parent corporation. Boycotts certainly heavily hurt small business owners — many of whom have very few ties to BP and make most of their money from convenience store items — but they can also influence investors and convince them to sell their shares or put pressure on the company to clean up its act.

Are you seeing signs like these at your local BP station? If so, send photos of them to us.