Acorn Registers the Dallas Cowboys to Vote In Nevada

Every election cycle Acorn pops up with these sorts of shenanigans - voter fraud that is always for the benefit of liberal candidates.  McCain would be well served to hammer Obama on his close and long-term ties to this group.  There are isolated examples, but you’ll be hard pressed to find examples of systemic voter fraud benefiting conservatives.  Voter fraud almost always is for the benefit of left wing and Democrat candidates.  I’ll be looking out for  Tony Romo and Terrell Owens at my Atlanta voting precinct November 4^th.  If Michael Vick tries to vote, my suspicions will be raised, since the last time I checked, he was still locked up in Leavenworth.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/07/acorn-vegas-office-raided-voter-fraud-investigation/

 

Barney Frank Plays His Trump Card

I’ve been waiting for this and here it is.  For years Fannie and Freddie and their enablers, Frank and Dodd and the gang, would accuse as “hating poor people” and “not wanting affordable housing” anyone who tried to responsibly regulate, limit, or otherwise look into their activities.  Barney Frank now adds the unfortunate but predictable extension – some of these poor people are black, so people (read "Republicans") attacking the GSE’s are "racists".  This guy is so dirty with this stuff it is unbelievable - and now this despicable diversionary tactic. 

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93LAKT01&show_article=1

Democrat's GSE Denial or, "We didn't do it, nobody saw us!"

A liberal friend of mine recently sent me some material repeating the Democrat talking points that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, enabled by congressional Democrats, are not to blame for the finanical crisis, and that Republicans pointing at the GSE's are only trying to deflect blame from a failure of deregulation. The sources provided included a column from BusinessWeek, an op-ed by liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and a piece from The Huffington Post.

The problem with The Huffington Post, besides the anger and hate, is that stuff gets thrown out there un-cited or cited from dubious sources that is for the consumption of the left who mostly just shout “Amen” - with no critical thinking. It is actually quite amusing how many of the featured articles on The Huffington Post are from "political pundits" such as Barbara Streisand and Alec Baldwin. Unfortunately, the NYT’s is getting more like The Huffington Post every day, with Frank Rich (dubious and spurious "facts") and Bob Herbert (anger) leading the charge. No respectable journalist is going to look to The Huffington Post for a factual discourse. But I digress.

In The Huffington Host piece, written by a Mr. Abromowitz, he actually cites Wikipedia as a source for what Fannie and Freddie can and can’t do. You’ve got to be kidding me. As I’ve explained to my kids, Wikipedia is useful for quick access to information, but it is not a valid source for a school paper (or an op-ed in this case). Anyone can put something out on Wikipedia, or edit a piece that is already published. For all I know Abromowitz placed the entry there himself. Abromowitz writes:

“Now, as even Wikipedia will tell you, "the term 'subprime' refers to loans that do not meet Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac guidelines." So how can Republicans point to Fannie and Freddie to lay blame when asked about the current housing crisis?”

I looked at the author’s bio, and he is an attorney whose work focuses on “affordable housing”, So he has to know what he is writing is not true. Krugman repeats the falslehood that Fannie and Freddie can’t touch sub-prime paper (un-cited). Krugman should know better. In addition, Krugman writes:

“Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion that dwarfed the S.& L. fiasco.”

I don’t know anything about Aaron Pressman in BusinessWeek, so I don’t know if he should know better or not. He does cite a Federal Reserve study that recounts the causes of the crisis and does not mention the GSE's. The Fed study is accurate, but focuses only on the scope of the Fed’s mission, which does not include the GSE's, but does focus on what in my opinion is the other root cause – the incompetence (or worse) of the rating agencies. He goes on to state the following (un-cited), which is demonstrably false.

“All those no money down, no interest for a year, low teaser rate loans? All the loans made without checking a borrower’s income or employment history? All made in the private sector, without any support from Fannie and Freddie.”

The most in-depth and factual analysis I have found is an overview paper from the American Enterprise Institute written by Peter J. Wallison, the Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies at AEI, and Charles W. Calomiris, the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School. The were assisted by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae, who helped decipher the GSE's Enron-like disclosures. It is scrupulously cited and footnoted. Mr. Walllison testified before Congress yesterday as an expert on the subject.

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.28704/pub_detail.asp

It is a very long piece, but I’ll highlight a few points.

• In 1994, Fannie Mae Initiated a $1 trillion affordable housing initiative, and both Fannie and Freddie announced new $2 trillion initiatives in 2001.
• In the early ‘90’s the Democrat-controlled Congress lowered the capital requirement for the GSE's from 10% to 2.5%% in order to increase funding for “affordable housing”.
• In 1995, the Clinton administration approved the GSE's purchase of sub-prime loans in order to meet their affordable housing targets (pre-OFEHO, there was no GSE egulatory agency at the time), but did not provide any rules about lending practices that needed to be followed for these loans.
• In 2004, the House Financial Services Committee developed a GSE oversight reform bill that was so badly weakened by GSE lobbying that the Bush administration refused to support it. The Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control, adopted much stronger legislation in 2005, but unanimous Democratic opposition to the bill in the committee doomed it when it reached the floor, including opposition from Barack Obama.
• On June 30, 2008, Fannie held or had guaranteed subprime and Alt-A loans with an unpaid principal balance of $553B, plus $25B of Alt-A and $36.3B of subprime loans purchased as private label securities That’s a grand total of $619B – or 23% of its single-family mortgage book.
• In August of this year, Freddie reported that 52% of its entire single-family credit guarantee portfolio was from the problematic book years 2005-2007. It further reported that these mortgages had the following subprime characteristics: option ARM - 72%, interest only - 90%, credit scores fo less than 620 - 61%, loan to value greater than 90 - 58%, Alt-A - 78%.
• Freddie’s total junk, Alt-A and subprime loan exposure in August was $392B, or 20 percent of its entire single-family mortgage book.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the biggest buyers of the AAA tranches of subprime pools in 2005–07. Without their commitment to purchase the AAA tranches of these securitizations, it is unlikely that the pools could have been formed and marketed around the world.
• The AEI paper also dissects what it charitably calls Krugman's "confusion” about his misstatements that the GSE's were prohibited by law from purchasing sub-prime loans, and that the GSE's exposure to sub-prime loans was zero, neither of which is true.
  
• On September 23, in Congressional testimony, regulator James Lockhart said the following as reported in the Washington Post:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased and guaranteed "many more low-documentation, low-verification and non-standard" mortgages in 2006 and 2007 "than they had in the past." He said the companies increased their exposure to risks in 2006 and 2007 despite the regulator's warnings.

Roughly 33 percent of the companies' business involved buying or guaranteeing these risky mortgages, compared with 14 percent in 2005. Those bad debts on mortgages led to billions of dollars in losses at the firms. "The capacity to raise capital to absorb further losses without Treasury Department support vanished," Lockhart said.

The Obama Policy Challenge

It is very possible that the current economic crisis will lead to Barack Obama winning the presidency. Ironically, Obama's policies, if enacted, will further damage the economy. When I ask Obama supporters why they think he is the best candidate to lead our country, I invariably hear that Obama has superior judgment, is thoughtful, and is eloquent. But here is the problem. Whenever I ask for an example of Obama’s superior judgment other than the fact he opposed the Iraq war from the safe confines of the Illinois statehouse I draw a blank.

Likewise, it is hard to get specifics from supporters on actual policy proposals that they think are better than McCain's. Or they'll say something like, "Obama will provide health care to every American". Well, McCain's plan will too. Can they tell me why Obama's heath care plan is superior to McCain's in any factual sense? They cannot.

To take the Obama Policy Challenge you have to come up with several Obama policies that are materially different from McCain’s position on the same subject. For example, both Obama and McCain agree that we need a few more troops in Afghanistan. Both agree we need to concentrate our efforts on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region. Both agree that torture is unacceptable. Both agree (finally) that the surge “succeeded beyond our wildest expectations”. They both support the wiretapping FISA program. Both support campaign finance reform (as soon as Obama is done with his campaign). In fact, I think Obama hurt himself in the first debate by starting off many of his rebuttals by agreeing with McCain on many of the issues.

Speaking of judgement, Governor Palin is making a strong case on the campaign trail that Obama’s long relationship with Bill Ayers is a problem. It is interesting that the 5 years Obama spent on Ayres’ board, which is really the only executive experience he has, is the one period Obama will not talk about. Ayers’ Annenberg Challenge raised and distributed money to leftist groups with the goal of supporting Ayers’ educational philosophy – the radicalization of young students. Obama was in charge of distributing the money each year to groups like Acorn in order to turn school children in to little Bill Ayres. This is the man who would be president.

The explanations from the Obama campaign regarding the Ayres relationship have been a dog’s breakfast of shifting spin. Bill Ayers was “just a guy in Obama’s neighborhood”. When Obama met Ayers he was a respectable professor – Obama did not know about his radical background as a terrorist. Obama was only 8 when Ayers was bombing the Pentagon (I have no idea why this excuses Ayers’ actions and makes it OK to be his pal). At one point Obama’s campaign manager said their kids went to the same school. That may be the best one, as Ayers’ kids are 20 years older than Obama’s. I think it was just last year when a Chicago magazine featured Bill Ayers and published a picture of him proudly grinding an American flag into the ground in a back alley.

The Obama campaign believes the Ayers issue is damaging, because they have counterattacked hard by misrepresenting McCain’s days with the “Keating 5”. McCain did show some bad judgment getting anywhere near this guy, and was investigated by the Democrat-led Senate. But he was cleared 100%. In addition, the attorney hired by the Democrats to investigate McCain said that the senator was the most squeaky clean politician he’d ever seen. In a battle of associations, Keating is of course a legitimate topic, but only if you don’t lie about it.

I frankly don’t understand why the McCain campaign is so reluctant to make a big issue out of the other ghosts of Obama’s past. He sat in the church pew of America hater and racist Reverend Wright for 20 years, but claims to have never heard anything divisive. I get the sense that McCain thinks Wright is off-limits because of the racial overtones of attacking him. But since the only black votes McCain will probably get are Thomas Sowell and Condi Rice I’m not sure why that matters.

Obama’s mentor getting started in the Illinois senate was state legislator Alice Palmer, who prior to the fall of the Soviet Union travelled frequently to communist party meetings there. She was a vocal proponent that everything the Soviet Union was did was good and everything the U.S. did was bad (sound familiar?). I haven’t heard a peep out of the McCain campaign about her.

I think that if the great uninformed majority who are going to vote for Obama might be given pause if they truly knew how comfortable he is with these radical America haters – and how he sought them out as mentors and advocates for his political gain. What if the reciprocal was true and McCain had maintained a 20 year relationship with a white supremacist, distributed millions of dollars to radical fascist activist groups, and been pals with someone who had bombed abortion clinics and black churches back in the day and said he “didn’t do enough” and was “unrepentant”, all along claiming to usher in post-partisan politics? McCain wouldn’t even be able to run for county commissioner. Can anyone explain perhaps the most extreme double standard in the history of politics in our country? Please post a response and let me know. It truly eludes me.

Remember, to play the Obama Policy Challenge you have to be able to come up with several examples of Obama’s superior judgment, and several policy proposals that are materially different from McCain that you agree with. I’d really like to know. You can’t claim superior judgment without evidence of such, and thoughtfulness without policy as a lone credential for the presidency is insufficient.

The Roots of the Financial Crisis - A Sketchy Analysis By the NYT's

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05fannie.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Although seemingly in-depth on the surface, this article is typical of the NYT’s when their agenda is culpable.

There is only a brief mention of Barney Frank.  No mention the #1 and #2 largest recipients of GSE money – Dodd and Obama.  No mention of the constant attempts by the GOP over the last decade to strengthen oversight and reform the GSE’s – reforms viciously attacked by Barney Frank and his posse.  No mention of congress overlooking the GSE’s creating what amounted to a MBS hedge fund to increase earnings – which had nothing to do with their charter but greatly increased risk.

The comment about charging higher fees for riskier loans to offset risk doesn’t make sense.  If the capital ratio doesn’t change then these fees aren’t retained to offset losses.  They just goose earnings that lead to larger bonuses for the executives and the investors. 

The Countrywides of the world would never have generated all the questionable loans if the GSE’s weren’t being pushed by Congress to aggressively expand “affordable housing”.

A casual reader of this story would largely be led to believe that they were rouge agencies and that Congress had a limited role in our financial crisis.

The other root cause of the crisis rests with the ratings agencies.  They’re rating of MBS’s as ‘AAA’ that clearly were not, combined with Greenspan’s and Japan’s ‘free’ money meant that financial institutions and investment banks were comfortable in taking on leverage levels that otherwise would have been insane.  I am actually quite surprised the S&P’s of the world have not been driven out of business by massive class action suits.

Almost everything of consequence in the financial crisis can be traced back to these two root causes.

Our Financial Crisis - The Facts Don't Seem to Matter

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGRjODM1MTJlOGZiZDk2ODI4NTUzMWMxYjgwMjliMGQ=

I think Thomas Sowell probably has it right.  Facts don’t matter when it comes to the financial crisis.  The McCain campaign seems strangely reticent when it comes to connecting the dots for the American people about the cause and the principals in the financial crisis.  The republicans are not doing a good job explaining their economic policies and are doing even worse at showing how misguided Obama’s economic policies are.  How many times did Palin talk about Wall Street greed during the debate instead of democratic intransigence? 

In fact they are not really economic policies at all - they are class-warfare social policies.  Although I believe McCain/Palin will close the gap and make it a close election, I fear that Obama will be elected by a majority of Americans that don’t understand the issues, and perhaps don’t care.  Combined with Acorn voter fraud the democrats will be tough to beat in the key battleground states. 

McCain is pulling out of Michigan because the campaign doesn’t think they can turn a heavily democratic state.  This is the frustration of us conservatives.  Michigan’s voters would rather stay with the party that helped get them into the mess they’re in instead of trying something different.

The real tragedy is that Obama’s “economic/social” policies will not help the economy and will most likely hurt badly, not just not the U.S., but the world.  But he’ll be thoughtful and articulate throughout it all.

The Democrat's Deregulation Red Herring

The last weeks have reached the height of incredulity with the likes of Barney Frank denying any responsibility for our current financial crisis. Perhaps a look at the root causes is in order.

It all started with Jimmy Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, mandating that banks increase leading to low income families in the name of “affordable housing”. More pressure to expand sub-prime lending was put on the banks by the democratic congress in the 1990’s by expanding the 1977 legislation. Along the way the GSE's spent millions lobbying congress and contributing campaign money to the GSE's supporters. Over time, the GSE's became a sort of slush fund for liberal causes, contributing money to all sorts of liberal organizations and causes.

President Clinton’s administration pushed to reform the GSE’s Alan Greenspan made it his personal mission for years - warning over and over again against the size and activities of the GSE's. The Bush administration took up the task along with republicans in Congress. After it came to light that the GSE’s had committed accounting fraud to maximize bonus payouts to executives, the GOP tried to use this as leverage to finally increase oversight and put a regulator in place with real teeth. It was blocked by Barney Frank and his “posse”, the apologists for the GSE’s. I love the video clip circulating on the Internet with Fannie Mae CEO Raines stating that Fannie purchased mortgages were so “riskless” that their capital requirement should be lowered to 2%. He pulled $90M in compensation out of Fannie and is now an advisor to the Obama campaign.

Anyone who challenged the out of control GSE’s was labeled a hater of poor people, an opponent of affordable housing. Congress encouraged and enabled the GSE's to dramatically expand it's purchase of sub-prime loans. With the implicit backing of the government, and the desire to buy this questionable paper, the market rushed to generate as much of it as possible, without much regard to the particulars.

The current Democrat regime holds the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, an effort partly architected by McCain advisor Phil Graham, as a catalyst in creating the financial crisis. The Democrats shout out that the reckless obsession with laissez faire financial markets by the GOP are to blame. But as Bill Clinton has recently pointed out, the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 actually increased the stability of the financial sector in this current crisis. Obama accuses McCain of supporting irresponsible deregulation, but the truth is more about allowing consumers to use ATM’s across state line and the like.

This all is a great example of how members of congress should be barred from accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists who represent the industry or companies that the members oversee on their respective committees.

It is quite amazing the way the democrats have convinced the uninformed majority that the problem is everyone’s fault but their own.