Well, I got the brakes changed. The e-brake design is pretty dumb, but oh well.

I did a new caliper bracket and pins on the drivers side, and it seems to be fine.

Oh, and I removed the parking brake from the drivers side... It was making noise, and we never use it anyway.

 

I was thinking about your steering problem and I remembered a psimilar problem that I once had.
I had a broken rear leaf spring and also the bolt that goes thru the springs to keep the axle centered .
My steering wheel would be straight til I turned a corner, then after the corner it was about 1/4 turn off center, and the steering was super sloppy.