posted September 19, 2008 09:22 PM            

Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn’t being spent on these radical activities?

Don’t bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a “community organizer” and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN’s political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who “best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about” — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money. Let’s take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.

Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter-registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including “Leon Spinks,” “Frekkie Magoal” and “Fruto Boy Crispila.” Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN’s criminal sabotage “an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls.”

The group’s vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter-fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio, and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: “In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.”

In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney’s office.

Under the guise of “consumer advocacy,” ACORN has received money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing “anti-poverty” groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing-counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since George W. Bush took office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza (“The Race”) scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.

As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new exposé, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters “no lobby” agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment

Republicans have largely looked the other way as ACORN has expanded its government-funded empire. But finally, a few conservative voices in Congress have called for investigation of the group’s apparent extortion schemes. This week, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney, Jeb Hensarling, and Ed Royce called on Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to convene a hearing to probe potential illegalities and abuse of taxpayer funds by ACORN’s management and minions alike.

posted September 19, 2008 11:02 PM            

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The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities
The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being.

The CRA's premise sounds unassailable: helping the poor buy and keep homes will stabilize and rebuild city neighborhoods. As enforced today, though, the law portends just the opposite, threatening to undermine the efforts of the upwardly mobile poor by saddling them with neighbors more than usually likely to depress property values by not maintaining their homes adequately or by losing them to foreclosure. The CRA's logic also helps to ensure that inner-city neighborhoods stay poor by discouraging the kinds of investment that might make them better off.

The Act, which Jimmy Carter signed in 1977, grew out of the complaint that urban banks were "redlining" inner-city neighborhoods, refusing to lend to their residents while using their deposits to finance suburban expansion. CRA decreed that banks have "an affirmative obligation" to meet the credit needs of the communities in which they are chartered, and that federal banking regulators should assess how well they do that when considering their requests to merge or to open branches. Implicit in the bill's rationale was a belief that CRA was needed to counter racial discrimination in lending, an assumption that later seemed to gain support from a widely publicized 1990 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston finding that blacks and Hispanics suffered higher mortgage-denial rates than whites, even at similar income levels.
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posted September 20, 2008 07:55 AM            

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BTW, Carter and Clintons have socialistic view of society they live in and their policies has failed. What historians will tell you in 50 years people are already discussing this amongst them. Marxism has failed in Europe. Historians have talked about it. And now America will soon learn the same with the current financial crisis.

The Clintons created regulations and forced financial institutions to give mortgage and car loans to people with bad credits. What we are experiencing now is outcome of such socialistic policies. Instead of punishing bad debtors the Clintons rewarded them. And the democrat cronies like Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines made millions of dollars as bonuses in these institutions. They are some of the same people behind Freddie Mac and Mae fallout and are now campaigning for Obama directly or indirectly. And The Feds are now using our tax money to pay for bad debts and bonuses of these managers.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

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posted September 24, 2008 05:30 PM            

Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 1999(Reuters) - President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and sell each other's products.

"This legislation is truly historic," President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. "We have done right by the American people."

The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.

Analysts and industry leaders say the measure will probably fuel a wave of mergers as companies compete to build financial supermarkets offering all the services customers need under one roof.

Financial stocks were winners on Wall Street today, with J.P. Morgan & Company, Citigroup, American Express and Merrill Lynch all posting big gains. That helped the Dow Jones industrial average end up 174.02 points, at 10,769.32.

The Senate approved the final bill by 90 to 8 on Nov. 4 and the House followed suit by a vote of 362 to 57. Congress had previously made almost a dozen unsuccessful attempts over the last 25 years to revise the statutes, which had increasingly come to be viewed as anachronisms.

"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it," said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, chairman of the Banking Committee and one of the bill's prime sponsors.

Supporters of the legislation say it will also benefit consumers, providing them with greater choice and convenience and spurring competition that will lead to lower prices.

"With this bill," Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said, "the American financial system takes a major step forward toward the 21st Century -- one that will benefit American consumers, business and the national economy." Opponents said it would have the opposite effect, creating behemoths that will raise fees, violate customers' privacy by sharing and selling their personal data, and put the stability of the financial system at risk.

The privacy issue was a key focus in the long and often heated negotiations that produced a compromise bill, and President Clinton made clear he still wanted to see more done to safeguard consumers' personal financial information.

posted September 24, 2008 05:50 PM            

Mannu, did you notice:

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"The world changes, and Congress and the laws have to change with it," said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, chairman of the Banking Committee and one of the bill's prime sponsors.

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I told you to look into him.

posted September 24, 2008 05:57 PM            

Remember I said not all republicans are conservatives. He seems to be one of them.
Reagan was a true conservative and he happened to be in the Republican party.

And thats why I requested McCain: If you are right stand by it.

Socialism is meant for doom.

This is caused mostly by liberals in either party.

posted September 24, 2008 06:24 PM            

I notice you're not posting anything about McCain campaign manager Rich Davis either.

Notice that the banks were fine for a number of years before the high foreclosure rate forced this situation. It was a matter of the banks getting too involved in this questionable type of lending. Don't think for a second that these banks and their decision-makers are all Democrats, or that this has to do with Socialism. It has to do with accumulating assets, and not caring about whether they're viable.

posted September 24, 2008 06:24 PM            

Infact Bush alerted 17 times this year alone about Freddie Mae.

posted September 24, 2008 06:27 PM            

We need majority conservatives in the congress to prevent /fix this the economy mess.

posted September 24, 2008 06:29 PM            

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Infact Bush alerted 17 times this year alone about Freddie Mae.

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You should really stop and listen to yourself sometime. This foreclosure crisis has been going on for some time now, so for Bush to warn about it while and after it's been happening is no surprise. Any person in his office would do the same regardless of party.

posted September 24, 2008 06:30 PM            

The only objective way to prevent such debacles.

Just having two parties is confusing to voters.

I have various ideas actually.

posted September 24, 2008 06:31 PM            

And you suffer from comprehension.

And lack of being purely objective. Leave your human heart aside for some time. You are a leftist and it comes often in dealing with problems of the mind.

Define "some time"? You can go as far as Carter (1977).

Did you check this post, going as far as 2003?

When the stocks are doing great , no one is ready to listen. Only when the Fanni mae went down people listen
Do this exercise check the stock prices of Fannie Mae over the years. I haven't checked it. Being honest

posted September 24, 2008 06:37 PM            

Be fiscally conservative in accord with the constitution laws. Go figure.

Check this out:

http://www.ratical.org/corporations/WCWtC.html

And Ayn Rand again. Read her non-fiction books. I am no fan of fiction books.

posted September 24, 2008 06:43 PM            

Yes only a government backed(sponsored/Whatever) institution thinks that way. Why is Morgan stanley, Goldman sachs still doing good with minor writeoffs. Even citibank? A rich man will lose business but not take risks by giving away to the poor who can't return.

Think about it. The government could have handheld the 'loans for poor' very differently. But they didn't.

posted September 24, 2008 07:05 PM            

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We have to separate economics from state.

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You realize you're contradicting yourself, right? The government including Frank, who you try to criticize in the other thread, were trying to stay out of it. Your statement that government should fix it contradicts this new notion of yours.

They were separate from the state. Regardless of that, it didn't stop the issue happening at Lehman Brothers or AIG, did it?

posted September 24, 2008 08:59 PM            

And even I could say about you, that its you who is judging my posts as spam and nonsense with your blue lens. It seems to me that you are motivated. But let me tell you I am not. I am having fun actually.

posted September 24, 2008 09:27 PM            

Cuz as much as he drives us all nuts, he is the first person to provide more intellectual and informed information..

...continue...

AG,

posted September 25, 2008 12:07 AM            

But wait, that's such utter bullshiit only the totally brain dead could possibly believe it...the perfect description of O'Bomber's Kool-Aid drinkers.

In 2003 Bush attempted to get additional oversight and a clamp down on lending regulations on Freddie and Fannie loans being made to those marginally able to repay...or unable to repay at all when their adjustable rate mortgage interest rates went up.

Bush was bashed by demoscats who accused him of depriving the poor and lower middle class of homes.

In 2006, McCain co-sponsored legislation to provide congressional oversight for Freddie and Fannie whom he said was skating on the edge financially and were placing American taxpayers in jeopardy since both institutions were created and supposedly overseen by Congress. There was also discussion of the accounting malpractices going on at both institutions to inflate the values of their outstanding loans...to qualify executives...demoscats...for huge bonuses. Franklin Raines took almost 100 million dollars out of Fannie Mae over only 6 years...just for instance. Demoscats treated Freddie and Fannie as demoscat piggy banks which contributed to their election campaigns and made large grants of money to demoscat endorsed fringe leftist groups. The very last thing demoscats wanted was regulatory oversight of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They have their grubbly little fingerprints all over this financial collapse, especially Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.

Again, demoscats voted against the bill in a straight party line vote and again accused Republicans of being heartless bast@rds who were holding the less fortunate down with their boot heels on their necks.

So now, what Bush warned about and what McCain warned about...not to mention a hell of a lot of economists and other financial experts warned about happened and suddenly, Bush and McCain did it.

One must wonder if there's a leftist rule which prohibits leftists or penalizes them for ever telling the truth about anything at all. The line...."if their lips are moving, they're lying" was coined for demoscats.

The only saving grace in this whole stinking mess is that the loans were backed by mortgages on real property. The trick is going to be how to value the loans to be bought in today's real estate market and not overpay. Certainly, nothing near the loan amounts carried on the books should even be considered.

posted September 25, 2008 12:17 AM            

On MSNBC this week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter tried to connect John McCain to the current financial disaster, saying: "If you remember the Keating Five scandal that (McCain) was a part of ... He's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country."

McCain was "in the middle of" the Keating Five case in the sense that he was "exonerated." The lawyer for the Senate Ethics Committee wanted McCain removed from the investigation altogether, but, as the New York Times reported: "Sen. McCain was the only Republican embroiled in the affair, and Democrats on the panel would not release him."

So John McCain has been held hostage by both the Viet Cong and the Democrats.

Alter couldn't be expected to know that: As usual, he was lifting material directly from Kausfiles. What is unusual was that he was stealing a random thought sent in by Kausfiles' mother, who, the day before, had e-mailed: "It's time to bring up the Keating Five. Let McCain explain that scandal away."

The Senate Ethics Committee lawyer who investigated McCain already had explained that scandal away – repeatedly. It was celebrated lawyer Robert Bennett, most famous for defending a certain horny hick president a few years ago.

In February this year, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," Bennett said, for the eight billionth time:

"First, I should tell your listeners I'm a registered Democrat, so I'm not on (McCain's) side of a lot of issues. But I investigated John McCain for a year and a half, at least, when I was special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee in the Keating Five. ... And if there is one thing I am absolutely confident of, it is John McCain is an honest man. I recommended to the Senate Ethics Committee that he be cut out of the case, that there was no evidence against him."

It's bad enough for Alter to be constantly ripping off Kausfiles. Now he's so devoid of his own ideas, he's ripping off the idle musings of Kausfiles' mother.

Even if McCain had been implicated in the Keating Five scandal – and he wasn't – that would still have absolutely nothing to do with the sub-prime mortgage crisis currently roiling the financial markets. This crisis was caused by political correctness being forced on the mortgage lending industry in the Clinton era.

Before the Democrats' affirmative-action lending policies became an embarrassment, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains."

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."

Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke – it's a fact.

When Democrats controlled both the executive and legislative branches, political correctness was given a veto over sound business practices.

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative-action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."

Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn't get out of their loans by selling their houses.

A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative-action time bomb, and now it's gone off.

In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.