NRO 9/30/2008
The financial markets were teetering on the edge of an abyss last week. The secretary of the Treasury was literally on his knees begging the speaker of the House not to sabotage the bailout bill. The crash of falling banks made the earth tremble. The Republican presidential candidate suspended his campaign to deal with the crisis. And amid all this, the Democrats in Congress managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN.
ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a busy hive of left-wing agitation and “direct action” that claims chapters in 50 cities and 100,000 dues-paying members. ACORN is where Sixties leftovers who couldn’t get tenure at universities wound up. That the bill-writing Democrats remembered their pet clients during such an emergency speaks volumes. This attempted gift to ACORN (stripped out of the bill after outraged howls from Republicans) demonstrates how little Democrats understand about what caused the mess we’re in.
ACORN does many things under the umbrella of “community organizing.” They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course).
Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren’t especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the “worst case of election fraud in our state’s history.”
As Fox News reported: “The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms.”
ACORN explained that this was an “isolated” incident, yet similar stories have been reported in Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado — all swing states, by the way.
ACORN recognized very early the opportunity presented by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. As Stanley Kurtz has reported, ACORN proudly touted “affirmative action” lending and pressured banks to make subprime loans. Madeline Talbott, a Chicago ACORN leader, boasted of “dragging banks kicking and screaming” into dubious loans. And, as Sol Stern reported in City Journal, ACORN also found a remunerative niche as an “advisor” to banks seeking regulatory approval.
“Thus we have J.P. Morgan & Co., the legatee of the man who once symbolized for many all that was supposedly evil about American capitalism, suddenly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN.” Is this a great country or what? As conservative community activist Robert Woodson put it, “The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN.”
ACORN attracted Barack Obama in his youthful community organizing days. Madeline Talbott hired him to train her staff — the very people who would later descend on Chicago’s banks as CRA shakedown artists.
The Democratic nominee later funneled money to the group through the Woods Fund, on whose board he sat, and through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, ditto. Obama was not just sympathetic — he was an ACORN fellow traveler.
Now you could make the case that before 2008, well-intentioned people were simply unaware of what their agitation on behalf of non-credit-worthy borrowers could lead to.
But now? With the whole financial world and possibly the world economy trembling and cracking like a cement building in an earthquake, Democrats continue to try to fund their friends at ACORN? And, unashamed, they then trot out to the TV cameras to declare “the party is over” for Wall Street (Nancy Pelosi)? The party should be over for the Democrats who brought us to this pass.
It would seem Multi has posted the right thing in the wrong thread or verse visa.
__________________
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. O'Rourke
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. Shaw
Let history record that, for one fleeting moment perhaps this week, the most anti-establishment candidates for either major parties' presidential nominations this year - two who stirred a lot of emotion but attracted few votes -- were riding the wave of the victorious majority of the House of Representatives.
They balked at the bailout.
Paul, the Republican congressman from Texas, delivered a scowling speech against the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout of the banks and other financial institutions stuck with bad mortgage debt on Monday - when it failed on the House floor by a vote of 229-205. And Kucinich, the Democratic congressman from Ohio, stood alongside him. Until now, opposition to the war in Iraq was largely what united these two occasional hotspurs of the political debate.
"The beneficiaries of the corrupt monetary system of the last three decades are now desperately looking for victims to stick with the bill after they have reaped decades of profit and privilege,'' Paul argued on the House floor..
Kucinich calls this "a teachable moment'' in our times.
"Slowly, like the Titanic turning around, sentiments on the Hill shifted, and we heard congressmen capitulating and changing their tune a little, desperately trying to find ways to salvage the bailout without completely enraging their constituencies," Paul wrote on his Web site before the vote on the bailout, which he feared would succeed. "Inevitably, it appears Congress will call their constituents' bluff and the bailout will pass, because that is the habit Wall Street and Washington have fallen into.''
Inevitably, perhaps, the Bush administration will win some variant on the bailout, sweetened perhaps with some lures to make it more palatable to just a few holdouts in both parties.
"Lipstick on a bailout,'' Paul calls it.
But then, Paul and Kucinich will return to the vocal minority.
But for now, they are on top, and Kucinich's own explanation of the bailout, how the Treasury's purchase of $700 billion in bad mortgage debt - with money that ultimately the Treasury will have to borrow from the credit markets - is worth the reading, no matter what anyone thinks of the deal:
"Here is a very quick explanation of the $700 billion bailout within the context of the mechanics of our monetary and banking system,'' Kucinich wrote in an email today.
"The taxpayers loan money to the banks. But the taxpayers do not have the money. So we have to borrow it from the banks to give it back to the banks. But the banks do not have the money to loan to the government. So they create it into existence (through a mechanism called fractional reserve) and then loan it to us, at interest, so we can then give it back to them.
"Confused?
"This is the system. This is the standard mechanism used to expand the money supply on a daily basis not a special one designed only for the "$700 billion" transaction. People will explain this to you in many different ways, but this is what it comes down to.
"The banks needed Congress' approval. Of course in this topsy turvy world, it is the banks which set the terms of the money they are borrowing from the taxpayers. And what do we get for this transaction? Long term debt enslavement of our country. We get to pay back to the banks trillions of dollars ($700 billion with compounded interest) and the banks give us their bad debt which they cull from everywhere in the world.
"Who could turn down a deal like this? I did.
"The globalization of the debt puts the United States in the position that in order to repay the money that we borrow from the banks (for the banks) we could be forced to accept International Monetary Fund dictates which involve cutting health, social security benefits and all other social spending in addition to reducing wages and exploiting our natural resources. This inevitably leads to a loss of economic, social and political freedom.
"Under the failed $700 billion bailout plan, Wall Street's profits are Wall Street's profits and Wall Street's losses are the taxpayers' losses. Profits are capitalized. Losses are socialized.
"We are at a teachable moment on matters of money and finance. In the coming days and weeks, I will share with you thoughts about what can be done to take us not just in a new direction, but in a new direction which is just.''
As Fox News reported: “The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms.”
Let's look at this paragraph. The worker might get paid a quarter per registration [I assume there is SOME incentive]. But this does ZERO to impact votes. This simply impacts the registrars office, requiring some extra work.
Unless someone comes in to a poll, with a fake ID with that fake registered name/address the registration is moot. The last two election cycles where Acorn was brought up, and the same questions raised, there were no such ghost voters. All the "fraud" was in the registration, no voter fraud.
But that seems to get lost since it is part of the Fear, Uncertainty and Dread Campaign.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Congress is looking at playing with mark-to-market accounting rules as part of the now-stalled $700 billion-dollar bailout plan for the U.S. financial system.
A provision in the bill, whose adoption was in doubt after the House of Representatives rejected it Monday, gives the Securities and Exchange Commission the right to suspend -- by rule or order -- mark-to-market accounting under Statement Number 157 of the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
Ireland insures top bank deposits
Ireland insures top bank deposits
Stocks Leap 28%
Alia McMullen, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, October 01, 2008
The government of Ireland yesterday took decisive action to prevent a crisis of confidence in its banking sector by immediately insuring as much as $600-billion worth of debt and deposits at its six largest banks.
...
The move, which is estimated to be worth more than twice Ireland's GDP in liabilities, resurrected confidence in the country's financial sector ...
The announcement appeared to have also triggered a flood of funds out of the U. K. and into the Irish banking system in a flight to safety, Reuters reported yesterday, citing a senior Irish stockbroker who declined to be named.
Under the guarantee, which went into immediate effect, the government will insure all retail, commercial, institutional and interbank deposits as well as covered bonds, senior debt and dated subordinated debt at these six Irish banks: Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent, Irish Nationwide Building Society and the Educational Building Society.
The government said the guarantee would cover all existing and new debt and deposits over the next two years and would be provided at a charge to the six banks concerned to protect taxpayers from incurring any costs.
ACORN, the ACLU, Moveon.org, man, whatever the right can do to attack these organizations - when the GOP itself is the most corrupt, murderous organization on the planet.
ACORN scares the shit out of these guys. They work to help the poor, the old and the uneducated to vote. That's the GOP's real problem with them. For the Republicans, Democracy is something to be gamed, rigged, manipulated - their winning depends on low turnout. ACORN is taking it back to what it was originnally intended to be - an arena where everyone is heard. The GOP is caught doing phone attacks in New Hampshire that keep them from getting the poor to the polls, roadblocks and other shenanigans in Florida to keep black people from voting, they have made war on the voting rights of the underprivileged at every opportunity, culminating with the looming indictment of their crooked Attorney General and his plan to bring nationwide phony "voter fraud" cases against all of these organizations. Yeah, ACORN has a few bad apples, while the GOP is a fucking criminal conspiracy.
__________________
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
-President Barack Obama, 1st Inaugural address
Last edited by FeelTheLove : 10-01-2008 at 02:40 PM.
The AutoGuide.com network consists of the largest network of enthusiast-owned enthusiast-operated automotive communities.
AutoGuide.com provides the latest car reviews, auto show coverage, new car prices, and automotive news. The AutoGuide network operates more than 100 automotive forums where our users consult peers for shopping information and advice, and share opinions as a community.
Linear Mode
