Tuesday, September 16, 2008
How Washington Failed to Rein In Fannie, Freddie
As policymakers now set out to decide what role government, and the two companies, should play in the mortgage business, the failures of the past two decades offer a cautionary tale.
Blessed with the advantages of a government agency and a private company at the same time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used their windfall profits to co-opt the politicians who were supposed to control them. The companies fought successfully against increased regulation by cultivating their friends and hounding their enemies. [snip]
But most of all, the companies were protected by the belief widespread in Washington -- and aggressively promoted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- that their success was inseparable from the expansion of homeownership in America...
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Obama blames Wall St. crisis on Republican policy
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Monday the upheaval on Wall Street was "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" and blamed it on policies that he said Republican rival John McCain supports.
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Whoops!
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac survived scrutiny by manipulating, cajoling, and lobbying politicians and hiring board members who were politicos (e.g. Jamie Gorelick) rather than mortgage gurus.
(Snip) Of the 354 lawmakers who received money from Freddie and Fannie between 1989 and 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd received the most. But next was . . . drumroll . . . Barack Obama.
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Gibson Advanced Obama 'Dishonesty'
Speaking of ''dishonesty'' in McCain's TV ads, on Fox News Sunday Brit Hume pointed out Barack
“Obama goes around claiming he's going to cut the taxes of 95 percent of the public, which is literally impossible” since ''40 percent of American taxpayers don't pay any income tax,''but that hasn't stopped ABC (directly) and CBS (implicitly) in recent days from advancing that Obama claim as fact...
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Straight From the Sources’ Mouths
To hear Obama supporters tell it, the media has been so delinquent in its duty to scrutinize the McCain campaign of late that the whole election should probably be protested in advance.
Funny, then, that Barack Obama has managed to create his new attack ad entirely out of quotes from press sources recently slamming McCain. Over a picture of the Republican nominee, we see quotes from Time, the Chicago Sun Times, the Washington Post, CBS News, and the New Republic attesting to the “truly vile” nature of McCain’s campaign.
Note that nothing in the ad explains to the viewer what there is about McCain’s bid for president that constitutes “a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign”; we are just told that it is such. The media is so thoroughly in the tank for Obama that he’s now able to hide exclusively behind their work...
[both camps are pulling their fair share of shenanigans - the difference is that McCain can't run a like ad because the media simply doesn't report on Obama's weaknesses (perceived and real) as it does the Republicans]
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Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin
Left-wing feminists have a hard time dealing with strong, successful conservative women in politics such as Margaret Thatcher. Sarah Palin seems to have truly unhinged more than a few, eliciting a stream of vicious, often misogynist invective.
On Salon.com last week, Cintra Wilson branded her a "Christian Stepford Wife" and a "Republican blow-up doll." Wendy Doniger, religion professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, added on the Washington Post blog, "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." [snip]
I disagree with Sarah Palin on a number of issues, including abortion rights. But when the feminist establishment treats not only pro-life feminism but small-government, individualist feminism as heresy, it writes off multitudes of women.
Of course, being a feminist role model is not part of the vice president's job description. And yet, like millions of American women -- and men -- I find her can-do feminism infinitely more liberated than the what-can-the-government-do-for-me brand espoused by the sisterhood.
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Salute for soldier who saved Iraq with brains and brawn
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During the darkest days of his command, General David Petraeus, the US military commander in Iraq, would ponder the words of Ulysses S Grant.
The Union Army general who won the American Civil War was approached by a fellow officer after the disastrous battle of Shiloh and told: ''Well, we had a tough day, today.''
Grant, chewing on his ubiquitous cigar replied: ''Yup. Lick 'em tomorrow, though.''
[Recommended > ]
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OBAMA TRIED TO STALL IRAQ WITHDRAWAL
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,"Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.
[party before country]
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Iran renews nuclear weapons development
Nuclear experts responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear programme have discovered that enough enriched uranium, which if processed to weapons grade level could be used to make up to six atom bombs, has disappeared from the main production facility at Isfahan.
American spy satellites have identified a number of suspicious sites, which the Iranians have not declared to nuclear inspectors, that intelligence officials believe are being used for covert research...
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Russia Aligns with Syria, Iran against the West
Moscow announced the Syrian port of Tartus would be renovated to provide Russia with its first Mediterranean naval base.
As the two naval chiefs talked in Moscow, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki in the Russian capital for talks on the completion of the Bushehr nuclear power plant by the end of the year.
Sources interpret Friday’s events as indicating that Russia’s leaders have determined to open a second anti-Western front in the Middle East...
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Blowback in Russia
Russia has a problem. Moscow’s recognition of Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a few weeks ago has already encouraged some of its own disgruntled minorities to push harder for independence from the Russian Federation. Russia’s semi-autonomous republics of Ingushetia and Tatarstan have both ratcheted up their demands to secede.
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Antarctic sea ice increasing
The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown in recent Septembers. In the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s...
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Aspen-DNC carbon partnership sputters
Results of a program using Aspen’s Canary Initiative to sell carbon offset credits to Democratic National Convention attendees are a little underwhelming. The program, set up by the DNC Host Committee through the Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau and rolled out about a week before the convention started, raised a total of $18.34 worth of Canary Tags.
[but it would be good for us...]
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Obstacles stunt Calif. offshore drilling
The Bush administration and oil companies say they want to open up the nation's coastal areas to new drilling, but in two cases - involving some of California's most promising oil fields - they are doing little to make that happen.
The U.S. Air Force is standing in the way of a project to tap into fields containing as much as 300 million barrels of crude - the biggest new oil find in California in 40 years - despite strenuous attempts to accommodate the military's concerns by oil companies seeking access to the offshore fields using a 25-acre parcel of land on Vandenberg Air Force Base.
"It's just mind-boggling. We have tried everything under the sun" to get the Air Force to approve the Vandenberg drilling project, said Bob Nunn, president of Sunset Exploration, a small California oil company that teamed up with Exxon Mobil to propose the innovative drilling plan.
"We are stopped at every turn." [snip]
Meanwhile, the major oil companies - including Exxon Mobil and Shell - have abandoned hopes of tapping into an even larger treasure trove of oil fields off the central California coast that could yield 200,000 barrels a day. Unmoved by this year's major shift in public opinion in favor of drilling, even in environmentally conscious California, they are demanding reimbursement of the more than $1 billion that they paid the federal government to lease the fields decades ago.
"We want our money back, clear and simple," said Edward Bruce, a Covington & Burling lawyer representing the oil companies in a long-running case against the Interior Department over the leases. "You need a tremendous change in the law" to consider drilling there again.
A federal appeals court upheld the oil companies' claim late last month.
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Illegal Immigrants' arrests anger S.F. supervisors
SAN FRANCISCO -- Two San Francisco supervisors expressed outrage Saturday at federal officers' handling of six illegal immigration arrests this past week at a Visitacion Valley residence.
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said authorities went to the home seeking three adults who were considered to be fugitives after being ordered deported by a federal judge.
When officers arrived, they found three other adults who are undocumented and living in the country illegally and arrested them as well, Kice said. The girl has an application to stay in the country legally and so she was not apprehended, Kice said.
Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Visitacion Valley, said City Hall aides told her the 15-year-old girl was left by herself after federal officers took all the adults from the residence, a claim Kice strongly denied.
"We're still investigating," Maxwell said, "but as far as I know, the child was left. That's my concern."READ MORE
UPPER W. (BANK) SIDE
SOME students think of one ritzy Manhat tan private school as Jihad Prep. It's where the Gaza Strip meets the Upper West Side, bisecting a classroom at exclusive York Prep - where some 340 students, grades six through 12, pay annual tuition up to a staggering $32,100.
Students also are asked to define "Bedouin, caravan, Mecca, Ka'aba, Koraish, revelation, Koran, Allah and Islam. There will be a brief quiz."
One boy grew upset when he heard the teacher say the Koran was the "word of God." Schlesinger, however, insisted to me that those words don't reflect her personal beliefs. "Muslims believe it," she told me.
But the course does not include the study of other religions, such as Christianity and Judaism. Nor does it contain the Old and New Testaments.
"I'm teaching that we should all get along," Schlesinger said. "History is about trying to understand and live in the world,"
I thought history was about learning the facts. Silly me.
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F.A.S.H.I.S.T!
I just got an email from our new Provost telling me that I – like everyone else working at the university – must start attending mandatory sexual harassment awareness training sessions every two years. The good news is that I’m going. The bad news is that I’ve gotten some other angry men together to help me completely disrupt the training sessions.
On October 20th, there will be a meeting of a new campus group called “Faculty Against Sexual Harassment Initiatives and Sensitivity Training” - or FASHIST. I’m the founder of the new group. And the reason I’ve chosen the name FASHIST is twofold:
1. Our university is moving rapidly in the direction of fascism and we need to turn things around as quickly as possible, and
2. We need to go ahead and call ourselves FASCIST because that’s what the feminists – who don’t actually know what fascism is - will call us when we try to oppose a government-mandated thought control program...
[not completely comical: here in the land of fruits and nuts (CA), the state literally tries to hold people accountable not for what they say, or what they mean, but how others - could - chose to interpret your words. Insane - hence the botanical reference.]
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9/11 COWARDICE: SIMPLE AS ABC
THE suits at Disney-owned ABC are too chicken to re-air or release on DVD their $40 million docudrama that accused Bill Clinton of squandering many chances to capture Osama bin Laden before the Twin Towers attacks.
"Disney caved and committed perhaps the most blatant, underreported and significant act of censorship in modern American history,"says Ziegler.
"What Disney actually did here was to take a dive on their own movie . . . They preferred the scenario of unilateral disarmament, not to mention throwing away $40 million, to rebutting and embarrassing the Clintons."he adds,
"it's disgracing the memories of those who died on 9/11 and setting ourselves up for making the same mistakes again."
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Voting Greene - Criminal politics.
Almost everyone expects that this year’s elections will be close, but few realize that the margin of victory could be affected by fraudulently cast absentee ballots. With increasing numbers of voters casting ballots by mail, the threat of fraud is real and growing. It’s important that voters understand the risk and why this problem has gone under the radar for so long. The short answer: Blame crooked candidates aided and abetted by left-wing civil-rights groups that have lost their way.
According to some “civil-rights” groups, practically every effort to legislate against or prosecute voter fraud is intended to keep minorities and the poor from voting at all. Indeed, they argue that racism and intimidation are the sole motivation for voter-fraud prosecutions and dismiss voter fraud as virtually nonexistent. As a result, many prosecutors ignore serious evidence of vote fraud for fear of the political consequences, and elections continue to be stolen.
Greene County shows that these groups have it backwards. Voter-fraud prosecutions do not intimidate voters — turnout increased in the county after the successful prosecutions. What does intimidate voters is the knowledge that voter fraud is routine and goes unpunished...
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ChiTrib Debunks Media's 'McCain Will Die Soon' Anti-Palin Attack
Folks in the media are either ignorant of how mortality is calculated, or intentionally trying to scare the electorate.
As such, the Tribune is spot on, for according to the Social Security Administration, a man aged 72 is currently expected to live to 84.
Yet, in McCain's case, this could be understated, for white male life expectancy is about six years greater than for blacks.
Beyond this, SSA doesn't account for differing lifestyles, wealth, health care history, diet, exercise, etc. Instead, its life expectancy is a one size fits all for each gender.
With this in mind, the media scare tactic that Palin is likely to become president as a result of McCain's untimely death is even more factually inaccurate.
Kudos to the Tribune for expressing some honesty in this regard.
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Biden tells disabled politician to 'stand up' Bungling Joe Biden could wreck Barak Obama’s chances of victory in November’s presidential election, senior Democrats feared last night. (Snip) Just a day after musing that Mrs Clinton ‘might have been a better pick than me’, Mr Biden left an audience cringing in Columbia, Missouri, when he urged a paraplegic state official to stand up and be recognised.
‘Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,’ he shouted to State Senator Chuck Graham...
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Policy Positions Re: ECONOMIC PLANS
OBAMA ON THE ECONOMY
Bush tax cuts:
- Obama wants to make permanent the 2001 and 2003 income-tax cuts for about 94 percent of tax filers -- those making less than $200,000 a year.
- He will either repeal the Bush cuts for the top one percent of taxpayers, or allow the cuts for those taxpayers to expire in 2010.
- He will let the tax cuts on income from capital gains and dividends expire in 2010 -- raising the rate from 15 percent to 28 percent.
- He will restore most of Bush's temporary estate tax cut to a 45 percent rate for estates valued at $3.5 million or more.
- Obama would grant a yearly tax credit of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for married couples that would apply to all workers who pay Social Security.
- Also, those 65 and older earning less than $50,000 a year would be exempt from income tax.
- The price tag: $280 million over 10 years.
- Obama has rhetorically committed to "pay-as-you-go."
- Some revenue -- but not much in the short term -- would come from a proposed 2 percent to 4 percent surcharge on high earners to reduce Social Security's projected shortfall after 2017.
- Obama would empower the Federal Reserve to regulate investment banks and any other institutions to which it lends.
- His 2007 bill would expand federal regulation of mortgage lending and toughen criminal penalties for fraud.
- Proposes a $10 billion fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure and $10 billion to help state and local governments.
For text:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php
MCCAIN ON THE ECONOMY
Bush tax cuts:
- McCain plans to make permanent the 2001 and 2003 income-tax cuts that expire at the end of 2010, including those that set the tax rate for most dividend and capital-gains income at 15 percent.
- He would preserve most of Bush's temporary cut in estate taxes, establishing a 15 percent rate for estates worth $10 million or more.
- McCain has pledged to eliminate the alternative minimum tax.
- He wants to double the personal exemption for dependents from $3,500 to $7,000, a move that benefits larger families.
- He wants to cut the corporate income-tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
- McCain has committed to a "pay-as-you-go" approach to budgeting, but has not explained how his tax cuts would be financed.
- McCain contends that hundreds of million of dollars can be saved each year by eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse," but he has not provided examples.
- McCain's tax cuts would cost as much as $400 billion a year, or about 40 percent of all discretionary spending.
- McCain supports a larger, but unspecified, role for the Federal Reserve in regulating financial institutions but encourages -- rather than requires -- larger capital reserves by banks.
- Opposes large increases in government spending to help renegotiate existing mortgages, and proposes programs that would exclude people who borrow too much to buy their homes or are currently unlikely to meet the terms of a new mortgage.
For text:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php
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