Phony-in-chief

Thomas Sowell dispenses with Barak Obama, once in for all in this column..  Sowell is a well-known, highly respected economist/historian, author of over twenty scholarly books, who happens to be black.  He was born in the Jim Crow South over 80 years ago, and left for New York (Harlem) as a teenager.  He was introduced to the New York Public Library and began a learning journey that took him to several of the most prestigious universities in the country as both a student and tenured professor.  Thomas Sowell knows whereof he speaks.  He has been onto Barak Obama from the very beginning, much as many others, as an outright fraud who would do this country no good.  He, and all the others who were never fooled, have been proven right over the last four years, much to the misfortune of our country.  Last week's debate between Obama and Mitt Romney caused  the scales to fall from the eyes of many former supporters of Obama who began to see him as the empty suit he is in fact.  Obama and his enablers in the Congress and in the media have cost us four years of recovery time from the financial meltdown resulting from housing policies put in place by Carter, put on steroids by Clinton, and encouraged and enabled all along by the Black Congressional Caucus(BCC) which included Barak Obama among its members.  Thanks to Obama all these wrong-headed enablers it will take this country much longer to dig out from the wreckage of all their failed policies than would be the case had they not pulled then wool over the eyes of 53% of the American voters in 2007.  Should the incumbents win again next month, there's no telling what will happen to this country in the coming years, but whatever happens will not be pretty.

Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson

This post from Powerline contains a brief (less than 5 minutes) video of an interview by Sean Hannity with Gretchen Morgenson who wrote this book "Reckless Endangerment".  The book chronicles the events which led to the financial meltdown that has left our economy in shambles.  There are several other books out there on the meltdown but it appears this one is the most complete at least in terms of holding all the various players involved over many years to account.  A must read.

Acorn and Obama -- one more time yet again

Democracy is susceptible to highly organized and motivated minorities no matter how venal or destructive these groups may be.  Below is an example of how one such group, Acorn, can and did pervert the democratic process and made a highly destructive contribution to the downfall of our financial system from which we are still trying to recover.  The only way to prevent this kind of outcome is to rally the general public to the real danger these groups are to the general wellbeing of the democracy.  Herein lies the problem.  At this point in time we have in this country a media incapable, or worse yet, unwilling to fulfill its fourth estate role of informing the general public about threats presented by extralegal and even criminal organizations.  We are finding out what its like to live in a country in which the media is captive of one political party.  Until the American public wakes up to the destructive bias of the mainstream media, organizations like Acorn will have free reign to distort and corrupt our democracy.

By STANLEY KURTZ

Still pushing to protect junk mortgages at any cost: ACORN continues to march and rally to get Congress to support its radical agenda, as with this demonstration in Washington, DC, in March.

Posted: 4:09 am
October 13, 2008

TO discover the roots of to day's economic crisis, consider a tale from 1995.

That March, House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to address a meeting of county commissioners at the Washington Hilton. But, first, some 500 protesters from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) poured into the ballroom from both the kitchen and the main entrance.

Hotel staffers who tried to block them were quickly overwhelmed by demonstrators chanting, "Nuke Newt!" and "We want Newt!" Jamming the aisles, carrying bullhorns and taunting the assembled county commissioners, demonstrators swiftly took over the head table and commandeered the microphone, sending two members of Congress scurrying.

The demonstrators' target, Gingrich, hadn't yet arrived - and his speech was cancelled. When the cancellation was announced, ACORN's foot soldiers cheered.

Editorial writers from Little Rock to Buffalo condemned ACORN's action as an affront to both civility and freedom of speech. Editorialists also pointed out that the "spending cuts" the protesters railed against were imaginary - Gingrich proposed merely to slow the growth in some welfare programs and turn control back to the states.

Yet ACORN had only just begun. Two days later, 50 to 100 of the same protesters hit their main target - a House Banking subcommittee considering changes to the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that allows groups like ACORN to force banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers.

The CRA's ostensible purpose is to prevent banks from discriminating against minorities. But Rep. Marge Roukema (R-NJ), who chaired the subcommittee, was worried that charges of discrimination had become an excuse for lowering credit standards. She warned that new, Democrat-proposed CRA regulations could amount to an illegal quota system.

FOR years, ACORN had combined manipulation of the CRA with intimidation-protest tactics to force banks to lower credit standards. Its crusade, with help from Democrats in Congress, to push these high-risk "subprime" loans on banks is at the root of today's economic meltdown.

When the role of ACORN and congressional Democrats in the mortgage crisis is pointed out, Democrats reply that banks subject to the CRA represent only about a quarter of the loans that led to our current troubles. In fact, the problem goes way beyond the CRA.

As ACORN ran its campaigns against local banks, it quickly hit a roadblock. Banks would tell ACORN they could afford to reduce their credit standards by only a little - since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage giants, refused to buy up those risky loans for sale on the "secondary market."

That is, the CRA wasn't enough. Unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks would never make home loans to customers with bad credit histories or with too little money for a downpayment.

That is, the CRA wasn't enough. Unless Fannie and Freddie were willing to relax their credit standards as well, local banks would never make home loans to customers with bad credit histories or with too little money for a downpayment.

So ACORN's Democratic friends in Congress moved to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dispense with normal credit standards. Throughout the early '90s, they imposed ever-increasing subprime-lending quotas on Fannie and Freddie.

But then the Republicans won control of Congress - and Rep. Roukema scheduled her hearing. ACORN went into action to protect its golden goose.

IT struck as Roukema aired her concerns at that hearing. Pro testers, led by ACORN President Maud Hurd, stood up and began chanting, "CRA has got to stay!" and "Banks for greed, not for need!" The protesters then demanded the microphone.

With the hearing interrupted and the demonstrators refusing to leave, Roukema called the Capital Police, who arrested Hurd and four others for "disorderly conduct in a Capital building" - a charge carrying a penalty of a $500 fine, six months in prison or both. As the police arrived, two of the protesters menacingly approached Roukema's desk, still demanding the hearing microphone.

Requests to the Capital Police to release the activists from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass,) failed. Then Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) showed up at the jail and refused to leave until the protesters were released; the Capital Police relented.

Meanwhile, instead of repudiating ACORN's intimidation tactics, Rep. Kennedy berated Roukema for arresting one of his constituents and accused the Republicans of preparing for "an all-out attack on CRA." He also promised to introduce legislation to expand the CRA's coverage to mortgage bankers and large credit unions.

THIS little slice of political life from 1995 had a variety of ripple effects. Above all, ACORN's intimidation tactics, and its alliance with Democrats in Congress, triumphed. Despite their 1994 takeover of Congress, Republicans' attempts to pare back the CRA were stymied.

Instead, Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Reps. Kennedy and Waters allied with the Clinton administration to broaden the acceptability of risky subprime loans throughout the financial system, thus precipitating our current crisis.

ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond. By steamrolling the GOP that March, it had crushed the last potential barrier to "change."

Three months later, the Clinton administration announced a comprehensive strategy to push homeownership in America to new heights - regardless of the compromise in credit standards that the task would require. Fannie and Freddie were assigned massive subprime lending quotas, which would rise to about half of their total business by the end of the decade.

WHEN the ACORN-Democrat alliance finally succeeded in blocking Republicans from restoring fiscal sanity in 1995, the way was open to virtually unlimited lending quotas - and to a whole new way of thinking about credit standards.

Urged on by ACORN, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration helped push tolerance for high-risk loans through every sector of the banking system - far beyond the sort of banks originally subject to the CRA.

So it was the efforts of ACORN and its Democratic allies that first spread the subprime virus from the CRA to Fannie and Freddie and thence to the entire financial system.

Soon, Democratic politicians and regulators actually began to take pride in lowered credit standards as a sign of "fairness" - and the contagion spread.

And when financial institutions across the board saw that they could make money by trading what would once have been considered junk loans, the profit motive kicked in. But the bad seed that started it all was ACORN.

HOW does Barack Obama fit into all of this? Obama has been a key ally of Chicago ACORN going back to his days as a community organizer.

Later, as a young lawyer, he offered leadership training to the activists who were forcing Chicago banks into high-risk subprime loans. And when he made it on to the boards of Chicago's Woods Fund and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he channeled money ACORN's way.

Obama was perfectly aware of ACORN's intimidation tactics - indeed, he oversaw a Woods Fund report that boasted of managing to fund the radical group despite its shocking behavior.

And as a lawmaker, in Illinois and in Washington, he has continued to back ACORN's leglislative agenda.

ACORN's high-pressure tactics live on. And congressional Democrats are still covering for ACORN, funneling it money and doing its legislative bidding. ACORN also continues its shady ways, using a vast network of technically separate but in fact quite interconnected organizations to evade federal laws on the politicized use of government money.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, the Obama campaign appears to have little more regard for freedom of speech than Reps. Kennedy or Waters did when they backed up ACORN's thugs in 1995. The campaign actually practices ACORN-style tactics, sending out "action wires" that call on supporters to block Obama critics from radio appearances (a tactic once applied to me) and demanding legal actions against unfriendly political advertisers.

As a presidential candidate, Obama promises a massive national-service program closely allied with the nonprofit sector. He wants to remove "barriers for smaller nonprofits to participate in government programs."

In other words, he plans a massive effort to funnel America's youth into volunteer work alongside the likes of ACORN. So Obama's favorite community organizers may soon be training your child.

ACORN's alliance with the Democratic Party is at the root of the current financial meltdown. And Barack Obama has stayed true to ACORN's ways.

Pretty soon, the folks who poured into the Washington Hilton to shut down Speaker Gingrich in 1995 may no longer need to take over the microphone. They'll be in charge of it.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_2apJAuC2tslB4no8AK15iO#ixzz1SIOEJUuV

Acorn and Obama -- one more time

Stanley Kurtz, a careful and thorough reporter/writer, has tracked Acorn back to its sources and through all its machinations during the Clinton Administration and written numerous articles on what he has discovered in the past.  What occurred over the years is shocking, alarming and discouraging.  Most of what Acorn does and has been doing tracks back to the community organizer of all community organizers, Saul Alinsky.  Alinsky was the senior thesis subject of none other than Hillary Clinton, who greatly admired his work and thoughts.  Another disciple of Alinsky's is Barack Obama, whose close ties to Acorn date to the days before he attended Harvard Law school.  Kurtz has written two books on this subject and along with a few others like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, really understands what happened to cause the financial meltdown that cost millions of people billions of dollars in home, 401k, IRA, and stock values.  This mother of all bubbles and devastating aftermath needs to be understood by all who are interested in righting the ship and putting it back on a safe course.  To date, the word is hardly out at all.  This is largely because the liberals in Congress and in the media were complicit in causing the collapse and are simply not interested in getting at the bottom of what actually happened.  The whole thing is a national disgrace and unless the corruption that caused it is exposed, it will happen again and it's hard to imagine how this country could survive two such catastrophes back to back.  Kurtz's articlein the NYPost (naturally no liberal publications would give this coverage the light of day) is a reasonably good summary of events.

An early (and accurate) summary of the financial meltdown causes

In February of 2009, Peter Wallison carefully presented the real reasons for the financial meltdown in this article in American Spectator Magazine.  Much has been written since about the cause and reason this meltdown occurred, however Wallison's piece has stood the test of time as a definitive explication of the whole sorry event.  Cutting to the chase, the politicization of the housing market and its financing institutions (Fannie/Freddie, etc) clearly was the overriding cause.  As for whom to blame start with all the "progressives" (Barney Frank, et al), in the Congress, Carter and Clinton in the WH, and above all others Andrew Cuomo Secretary of HUD in the Clinton administration, as the prime movers.  Naturally the socialist groups (SEIU, Rainbow Coalition, etc) played major roles, particularly SEIU, Obama's favored grass roots organizing and lobbying pals.  This sorry collection of losers managed to infect the system with their collectivist philosophy, intimidating the normally more conservative bankers into playing along with them to some extent.  The Bush administration tried on numerous occasions to reign in Freddie and Fannie but were stiffed repeatedly by the likes of Frank and friends.  While assessing blame for the disaster,  Greenspan (for his loose monetary policy) and the rating agencies for their failure to properly assess and publicize the risk involved in all the paper (dirivitives and the like) that were issued and passed on by Wall Street, deserve their share.  And while we're at it let's note the complicity of the Wall Street banks who were coining it by producing and selling shabby mortgage backed securities and the rest all over the world. Lotsa guilty parties including all those people who bought in over their heads and the real estate industry that pushed those folks to buy when they surely must have known better.  It was the classic greed driven tulip bubble event of the 21st century.  We never learn.