DISQUS

Lilytiger Hording and counting your money isn't the only way to leave a mark in this world.

But it is a smelly one.

Michelle S, I am still waiting for you to answer my specific questions below.

I'll restate them here:

S, sorry if I missed this (you may have said elsewhere), but I am very curious.

What is your profession, what training do you have in your profession, what region of the country do you live in and how much do you make annually right now?

Michelle S: Liar. Again. Is lying pathological for you or what?

Fact: that word does not mean what you think it means.

I mean please. You stated: Obama knocked on Joe's door. and aggie98 called that out as false. You then brushed off your obvious untruth and said conflicting reports then named your ideology as FACT. Guess what -- you're caught again.

This is how Joe Wurzelbacher himself describes what occurred

Couric: Could you just, Joe, explain quickly, and then we'll let you go, how you met both of the candidates?

Wurzelbacher: I've yet to meet John McCain. Obama came to my neighborhood and my son and I were outside tossing the football, and all of a sudden he showed up, and there went our football tossing for a while. And, you know, neighbors were outside asking him questions, and I didn't think they were asking him tough enough questions, so I thought, you know, I'll go over there. You know, I've always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question

Bolded emphasis mine just in case your selective non-factual approach have trouble seeing the actual reality described by the actual person you claim to identify with.

So s -- again a second time, you are a LIAR. Facts don't matter to you. Ideology alone does. When the facts don't fit your argument, you make them up. When you are called on that you make something else up.

Liar.

Also, "s": you have yet to answer my questions about your actual profession, income and training, posted in two places in responses to comments from you.

Michelle Oops! The italics in my comment just below this one should end after the sentence: You know, I've always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question

That is where the quoted description from Joe Wurzelbacher ends.

I neglected to close the italic tag.

The rest of the comment from there on is me writing.

aggie98 Um, no. Obama was out canvassing and this guy found out about it, and went up to Obama and challenged him. Obama did not seek him out.

Monie s, I'll educate you about one prominent company who is---a company that Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of before serving in office. Isn't it amazing how the VP's former company is profitting tremedously with the Iraq War ( that will be paid with taxpayer dollars)and still be able to avoid taxes. It is a prime example of the Rethug way.

An excerpt from online article from boston.com

Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore
Shell companies in Cayman Islands allow KBR to avoid Medicare, Social Security deductions
Globe Staff / March 6, 2008

CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

But the use of the loophole results in a significantly greater loss of revenue to the government as a whole, particularly to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And the creation of shell companies in places such as the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes has long been attacked by members of Congress.

A Globe survey found that the practice is unusual enough that only one other ma jor contractor in Iraq said it does something similar.

"Failing to contribute to Social Security and Medicare thousands of times over isn't shielding the taxpayers they claim to protect, it's costing our citizens in the name of short-term corporate greed," said Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who has introduced legislation to close loopholes for companies registering overseas.

With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, with eight times the work of its nearest competitor.

Lilytiger You replies twice today with "....me...me.." It isn't necessarily about you. You do take money off my back, I am a small business owner as well and I pay taxes. My taxes go for things I support, like head start or vets or national parks. I want to pay for things that are for our greater good. I don't want people who ship out jobs to other places, deplete the pensions of their former workers and create nothing. We can not sustain a nation that produces nothing tangible.

I applaud you, I think we the small business owners are some of the most fearless people on the planet. But we small business owners pay more percentagewise than the large corporations do. I cannot get discounted bus cards for me or my employees but large corporations like hospitals can. It is the goody bag for the rich mentality. The more you have the more perks you get.

Nate_Wesley Garbage, lies, and bullshit. That's what you're feeding here with your claim of keeping 39 cents. Go away.

rorysmomma News flash s, the bush war, and the bush economy have caused more of your paycheck to be confiscated. How in the hell do you think we are gonna pay for this mess? Let me guess you don't want obama to provide a healthcare plan you have to pay for right? well when the folks that can't get coverage get sick and spread diseases to you and your family, maybe you will care then. When china calls in their markers you will wish you paid the extra taxes. Another news flash for you...... People who work pay taxes.... period. Why should we bail out banks when we need help? Oh that's right let people pull themselves up by their bootstraps right...? well when the folks that can't do that resort to robbing and stealing, and when the crime goes up because you don't want to pay extra taxes... thus a smaller police force, when they have you your wife and kids hemmed up and they want to take what you have.... I want you to remember that the money you complained about could have helped keep you safe.

And another damn thing. You republicans/ conservatives claim that you all are soooo christian. Remember to love thy neighbor as well as thyself ... Think of the other people in this world. If Jesus just saved himself, there would be no salvation for any of us.

TRW False equivalency alert. Are you telling me that by Obama having a meaningful exchange with a voter, and explaining his tax policy ideas even though they disagree, is the same thing as a Republican candidate carelessly using an ethnic slur in reference to a voter?

Yeah. I think I'm done.

And don't say you aren't defending JMac, because you are. You want to know the litmus test? Conservatives are falling all over themselves with the "spread the wealth around" comment--but where is your criticism/analysis of McCain's idea to use taxpayer money to buy up people's bad mortgages?

Did you already discuss this? Or am I missing something.

Justice58 Keep on dreaming! lol

Nate_Wesley Except, you AREN'T being punished for your success. Obama's tax plan mostly lets the 2001 Bush Tax cuts expire for everyone, minus those making $250k or less. Your maximum tax rates might go up a few percentage points, but you aren't going to in anyway be struggling like those at the bottom of the totem pole. None of your money is being taken away and doled out in some phony baloney scheme, so you and your ill-educated minions on the other side can stop moronic claims of socialism and communism, too.

Go take your fake 'class warfare' outrage and kick some gold plated rocks, troll.

Michelle S, sorry if I missed this (you may have said elsewhere), but I am very curious.

What is your profession, what training do you have in your profession, what region of the country do you live in and how much do you make annually right now?

Monie s, Now if you want to start talking about involvement and entanglements with the financial industries, then you may want to educate yourself starting with President Bush and his family. PLEASE do not get it twisted, there are plenty of Rethugs all up in this mess----and be assured I could write a 10-page essay on Republicans involvement in much of it, like Phil Gramm/USB and Wendy Gramm/ Enron for starters--so don't go there.

But lemme educate you a little on failed institution Lehman Brothers for starters---because I know you won't find this info on Fox News and Hot Air--enjoy!!!



Portrait of a Republican President's family and their ties to Lehman Brothers

From the Wall Street Journal 8/27/2007
Jeb Bush: Lehman’s Secret Weapon
Posted by Dana Cimilluca

In the arms race by private-equity firms to line up ever-higher profile “advisers,” Lehman Brothers may have just taken the lead.

According to a small handful of reports Friday, including this one in Investment Dealers’ Digest and another in Private Equity Hub, the investment bank has hired former Florida Governor and presidential son and brother Jeb Bush for its in-house investing arm.

No sign of an announcement from Lehman on the hire.

Private-equity firms hire politicos and former corporate honchos all the time to help them open doors to deals, as well as to manage government relations and the companies in their portfolios. Carlye Group chief David Rubenstein, in fact, discussed the increasing value of such moves in this Q&A published in The Wall Street Journal today.

No family these days has better door-opening skills in Washington or corporate America than the Bushes. The family of the 41st and 43rd presidents is no stranger to Wall Street either. Jeb’s father, George H.W., used to serve as an adviser to Carlyle, and his grandfather was a partner at Wall Street firm Brown Brothers Harriman.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush Cousin Heads to Lehman
05/18/06 - 04:05 PM EDT

Lehman Brothers( has nabbed George H. Walker, the CEO of Goldman Sachs to be the global head of its $188 billion Investment Management Division, Lehman Brothers announced today.

Walker has already resigned from Goldman Sachs and could not be reached for comment. A spokesman at Goldman Sachs did not return a call. .
Walker, who is President George W. Bush's second cousin, had joined the merger and acquisition group of Goldman Sachs in 1991 and became a partner in 1998. He soon grew to be one of the principal architects of Goldman Sachs' investment management strategy and was overseeing a $70 billion group of alternative investments, including hedge funds of funds and private equity investments.

At Lehman, Walker will oversee two and a half times the amount of assets under his belt at Goldman, as he will run a global group that includes not just alternative investments but also traditional assets, including mutual funds. He succeeds Theodore Janulis, who recently became global head of the firm's mortgage capital business.

Town So will AIG give their handout back?

Monie John McCain VIGOROUSLY opposed the Bush tax cuts he now trumpets---going as far as saying he could not "in good conscience" support them. Of course he sold his soul to run as the Republican candidate--- just like he uses the same campaign people who smeared him and his family in 2000, even using the same "robocall" strategy that he once railed against as "hate calls."

Let's look at John Mccain's position before he sold his soul:

From a Washington Times article Feb. 27, 2006

Sen. John McCain, who has consistently opposed President Bush's tax cuts, recently voted to extend some of them, a move conservatives say is a political flip-flop intended to further his White House ambitions.

The Arizona Republican, who is the early front-runner for his party's presidential nomination in 2008, surprised tax-cut proponents last week when he voted to continue Mr. Bush's tax cuts on capital gains and dividends and other tax breaks in a $70 billion Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act.

His vote was a sharp departure from his anti-tax-cut posture. However, he has been aggressively reaching out to the Republican Party's conservative base, particularly economic conservatives who fear that as president, he would oppose further tax reductions and might even roll back some of the Bush cuts to shrink budget deficits.

While supply-side tax cutters say they welcomed his latest vote, they thought it was solely for political reasons.

"It's a big flip-flop, but I'm happy he's flopped," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

"It looks like a further morphing of McCain into George W. Bush. He's mailing to his list of campaign contributors, and now he's supporting the tax cuts," said economist Larry Hunter, a longtime Republican tax-cut strategist.

"It looks political to me. It runs counter to his whole past behavior. He's got to appeal to the base of the party. I don't think there is a Republican in the land who can get the nomination who voted against the tax cuts," said Mr. Hunter, now a senior fellow at the Policy Institute for Innovation.

"He's certainly not a supply-sider. He doesn't subscribe to the Reagan economic approach that tax cuts stimulate increased growth," he said

But when Mr. Bush's $1.35 trillion tax-cut bill, the centerpiece of his economic agenda, came up for a final vote in May 2001, Mr. McCain was one of two Senate Republicans to vote "no."

"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief," he said at the time.

When the president's $350 billion tax-cut bill that accelerated his earlier tax cuts came up for a vote in May 2003, Mr. McCain voted against that, too, saying he was "very concerned about the deficit."

"He voted against tax cuts in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005, and this year he's for the tax cuts in the reconciliation bill. It looks like he did it for political reasons," Mr. Norquist said. "He's got two years to convince people that this is not a political ploy but a 'Road to Damascus' realization that tax cuts are a good idea."

TRW Unlike others, I actually watched the full exchange between him and Joe the plumber, and his quote was part of a longer conversation--but I get that context doesn't matter.

McCain is going to cut wasteful spending? Yeah right. I'll believe that when I see it. Do we need to reexamine and reevaluate pork barrel projects? Absolutely. But the truth of the matter is they make up close to 1-3% of the budget, so cutting the pork--as your candidate continually talks about--is not going to be enough. Heck, he keeps saying he is going to name the names of people who request pork funding, but he has consistently dodged the fact that his running mate requested large sums of pork money for her sparsely populated state. He has consistently talked out of both sides of his mouth about this issue---and has oversimplified a complex problem.

What about his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term? Really? I highly doubt it.

And I noticed that you said that these were anxious, and troubled times, and I completely agree, which is why I don't want JMac to steer this ship. He has flitted from one tactic to another, contradicting himself in a matter of hours, and has completely shed his deregulator skin for political expediency. I don't agree with all of BHO's economic policy, but at least I can count on it being reliable and well thought out. The same cannot be said of JMac.

GreenLadyHere What TRW said.

indie-ed You're darned right I am Joe.

I don’t want nor do I need some handout from the Magic Government Fairy. I know better what to do with my money than any bureaucrat in Washington or any socialist goon who believes he was born to “change the world”. I’m sick and tired of people looking down their noses at me and mine because I don’t live the kind of life they believe I should be living. I’m proud to live in a country that threw off that threw off the old class system and says, even today, that you can live your dream if you’re willing to put in the work. I have no intention of letting Barack Obama’s Thugocracy or the media green rooms full of elitist snobs put an end to that “for the common good”.

Come November, I’m thinking that we’re going to find out that there are a lot more Joes out there. They’ve riled us up and, to quote Mal Reynolds, we aim to misbehave.

Town "America creates opportunities for the 'average Joe' to rise above his circumstances with nothing more than his own imagination and initiative...not a government handout."



So will AIG give their handout back?

heartsandflowers Have you heard of a calculator?! Do you know how to add and subtract? My taxes would go up nearly 5% and I don't make anywhere near $250K. Under the McCain plan his piddly little health insurance tax credit doesn't cover the costs of my insurance AND doesn't consider the additional taxable amount he'd be adding on. It's a lie and a sham.

actsoffaithinloveandlife.blogspot.com/2008/10/about-that-joe-plumber-guy-and-real-tax.html

TruthSeeker I think you should save this genius advice for your candidate. Why waste it on his opponent?

It turns out Joe's name is connected to someone from the Keating 5 scandal.

Sigh...

Lilytiger Pssst..Keating Five.
That One.

Val Pssst...Keating Five.
That One.

Rhondacoca S, you are very lonely, I could tell. If you were supporting Obama, you would actually have something to do right now. He has an exciting and vibrant campaign going on unlike your candidate.

evita And on Fox they declared McCain the winner 86% to 14%. However EVERY other media outlet called it for Obama...

Keep your racism to yourself. Fox News, McCain, Palin, and you exist in a parallel universe- feel free to stay there.

Rhondacoca S, can you spare us the copy and paste posts that you get from those creepy conservative sites. You are wack and I have to keep scrolling past your comments and quite frankly, it bothers me.

Nardwilly The values you list to be considered a small business are gross receipts. Thevalues for taxes are income. I fail to see why small businesses or employees who make over 250,000 a year should not pay the same amount in taxes. The income is being taxed not the business.

The small business owner does have an opportunity to decrease income by investing in his business. The small business owner that earned over 250,00 has benefited form the exorbitant Bush tax cuts. The country is in deep debt and has some serious responsibilities in the future. The people who have benefited the most should begin to pay their fair share of taxes.

Admiral_Komack This isn't law, it's a debate.
McCain's people agreed to Ifill as moderator, I assume; if not, then Mc Cain would make sure another person would be picked as moderator.
McCain can't vet a VP, and he can't vet a moderator.

GreenLadyHere s: That would be NEGATIVE 210?

Monie Well, provide us with the facts from a reputable source .......

RobM Your ignorance is showing. the President can not by executive order suspend the SarbannesOxley law. It's unconsititutional.
OOOPs I forgot you are writing from Dick Cheney's office

RobM Damn I wasn't expecting anything out of you. I'll second but I promise you after you see the names starting w/ John McCain's campaign you're going to be sick. You better have a big willow in your back yard because by the time you're finished sending them out to get a switch you are going to need a new tree.

Monie s, you tend to want to only focus on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae because of their GSE status and role as a buyer of secondary mortgages and the accounting scandal that occurred in 2004. And i, by no means is excusing the financial mess they are in now. But we also need to address the fall of INVESTMENT banks like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and so on-----and primarily their downfall came from toxic securities that were rampant due to deregulation. Investment Banks were never in the business of giving out mortgages....Bear Stearns like many other investment banks bought unregulated financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) and engaged in credit default swaps.

Here's an excerpt from a NY Times article from April 2008 discussing Bear Stearns collapse, one of the first financial institutions to go under in this financial crisis:

The Regulatory Failure Behind the Bear Stearns Debacle

Bear Stearns never ran short of capital. It just could not meet its obligation.
At least that is the view from Washington, where regulators never stepped in to force the investment bank to reduce its high leverage even after it became clear Bear was struggling last summer. Instead, the regulators issued repeated reassurances that all was well.....

The S.E.C. assumed that Bear, or any other investment bank, could always borrow against securities it owned. It assumed that lenders would put up at least 93 percent of the value of those securities, and as much as 97 percent for the safer ones......

....some of the blame for the current credit crisis to international regulatory competition, in which national regulators, fearful of seeing business go overseas, dared not be too tough.

Instead, regulators from around the world agreed on common capital standards, the latest version of which is known as Basel II. That standard has loopholes that allowed banks to add lots of leverage, some of it pushed off balance sheets in ways that obscured the risks that remained and minimized the apparent need for capital. The job of determining the risk of various assets, and thus the amount of capital needed, was largely subcontracted to bond rating agencies and to the banks themselves. ...

It is no coincidence that the crisis of 2007 and 2008 had its origin in unregulated financial products traded in unregulated markets. Ever since the Great Depression, the government has tried to limit the leverage available to the public in the American stock market. But regulators, led by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, thought innovation would be hampered, and financial activity driven overseas, if there were any attempts to impose limits on leverage in the unregulated markets.

The Treasury Department regulatory overhaul proposal introduced this week had its genesis in a move to relax regulation to make American markets more competitive.

The proposal took for granted the benefits of financial innovation, but unfortunately was released just when that innovation was shown to have failed in ways that left the American credit system largely dependent on government guarantees to function at all. Few mortgage loans are now being made without some kind of guarantee from the government or from government-sponsored enterprises, and investment banks now have the assurance they can borrow from the Federal Reserve.

From the BBC website on September 16

.....Why did Lehman fail?

Lehman Brothers was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States.

It was considered one of Wall Street's biggest dealers in fixed-interest trading and was heavily invested in securities linked to the US sub-prime mortgage market.

With these investments now shunned as high risk, analysts say it was inevitable that confidence in Lehman Brothers would likely be hit - particularly after the collapse of Bear Stearns earlier this year.

In its June to August period last year, the bank said it would make write downs of $700m as it adjusted the value of its investments in residential mortgages and commercial property.

One year on this figure soared to $7.8bn, which last week resulted in Lehman reporting the largest net loss in its history. The bank also admitted that it still had $54bn of exposure to hard-to-value mortgage-backed securities.

As a result, Lehman saw its share price plummet more than 95%.

Despite having access to cash reserves, worried investors pummelled the firm's shares last week after talks to raise billions of dollars from outside investors ran into a brick wall.......

The fail of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers and others come from a systemic failure of deregulation.

NO ID It sounds to me that both sides are equally to blame. It sounds to me that that the bipartisanship which makes everything a Republican does wrong and everything a Democrat does right, and vice versa depending on what side you're on, is what's fucking up the country. Apparently there are right wing R's and left wing D's that agreed on one thing - this bailout is ridiculous. My vote for Obama has become a vote against McCain as a result. Anyone on either side, trying to ram this ridiculous bill down our throats is suspect. And sorry, Obama's going to have to do more than come up with ridiculous analogies about neighbor's houses on fire to convince me that this bill is worth fighting for. I'm appalled at everyone in this mess.

s Here's a suggestion:

Attach a provision to the bailout plan to make Fannie and Freddie’s documents public. Expose the government corruption as the root cause of the scandal, shifting blame away from the shibboleths that the media and Democrats have latched on to — namely, that the free market failed and deregulation is to blame.

The 2004 hearing revealed Democrats as the more vocal Fannie and Freddie defenders, the corruption runs deep and is likely bipartisan in nature. So be it. Let the chips fall where they may. If Congress is eventually going to demand that taxpayers cough up nearly a trillion dollars to prop up irresponsible actors in the financial sector, it’s only fair we know who in Congress was getting paid to look the other way.

Val In March 2007, Obama Called on Paulson, Bernanke to Address Economic Crisis


Long before the Wall Street banks imploded in a wave of subprime mortgage defaults and home foreclosures, congressional lawmakers had called upon Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to swiftly rein in predatory lenders whose unorthodox practices in the subprime industry threatened to derail the global economy.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was one of those lawmakers. In a March 22, 2007 letter, Obama urged Paulson and Bernanke to convene a “a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses” to the wave of foreclosures.

http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/348.html?t...

RobM Your ignorance is appalling. I will say it and I know it for a fact both parties are so guilty in regard to arriving at this point it is ridiculous. What you fail to understand is that the Republican party insists that no regulation is the best and has done every thing possible to faclilitate a policy of no regulation. This is why we are in crisis not the laws but the failure to police them.

It is time to follow Colin Powell's advice: get mad and get over it. It time to move forward. If you don't have a suggestion to help get out the way.

Town http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14110...

And yet a story was filed at 6:38 am saying that Obama had this very idea.

Monie Well, first of all let us take a look at President George W. Bush's aggressive
"America's Homeownership Challenge" since so many of you Rethugs want to perpetuate these talking points by pushing off blame on minorites while ignoring the risky business behavior of financial institutions, some that have been in business for more than 150+ years. I will not stand by and let people like you pass thies shit off on the CRA which was enacted in 1977(how ludicrous) and blame it on today's crisis and you should be ashamed for doing so.

A White House press release from 6/17/2002 on President Bush's "America's Homeownership Challenge"

Today, President Bush announced a new goal to help increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million before the end of the decade. The President's aggressive housing agenda will help dismantle the barriers to homeownership by providing down payment assistance, increasing the supply of affordable homes, increasing support for self-help homeownership programs, and simplifying the home buying process & increasing education. The President also issued "America's Homeownership Challenge" to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to join in his effort to increase the number of minority homeowners by taking concrete steps to tear down the barriers to homeownership that face minority families.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06...

--------------------------------------------------------
And then in 2004 President Bush further touting his plans for this aggressive Homeownership initiative with the following press release in March of that year.

Background on The President's Homeownership Initiative

President Bush is making a difference in the lives of American home buyers. The President's aggressive housing agenda includes providing down payment assistance through the American Dream Downpayment Initiative; increasing the supply of affordable homes through the Single-Family Affordable Housing Tax Credit; making a difference in the lives of low-income homebuyers with the Zero-Downpayment Initiative; and increasing home-buying education and counseling. President Bush also issued America's Homeownership Challenge to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to encourage them to join the effort to close the gap that exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and non-minorities.

President Bush signed the American Dream Downpayment Act into law in December 2003. This fund will help approximately 40,000 families a year with their down payment and closing costs and is set to begin helping families early this spring.
Since 2001, President Bush has doubled the funding for housing counseling for families.
President Bush proposed the Zero-Downpayment Initiative for Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured single-family mortgages for first-time homebuyers in his FY 2005 budget. FHA projections indicate that this new mortgage product would generate about 150,000 new homeowners in the first year alone.
Through America's Homeownership Challenge, more than 2 dozen companies have made commitments to increase minority homeownership, including pledges to provide more than $1.1 trillion in mortgage purchases for minority homebuyers this decade.
President Bush's FY 2005 budget supports dismantling the barriers to homeownership by:
Requesting $200 million for the American Dream Downpayment Initiative -- making a difference in the lives of low-income homebuyers.
Providing $2.5 billion over five years to enact a permanent single-family housing tax credit to increase the supply of affordable single-family homes.
Providing $45 million for housing counseling to support agencies counseling families on home-buying -- more than double the amount since 2001.
Supporting rural homeownership through the Department of Agriculture with $2.7 billion in home loan guarantees for low- to moderate-income rural residents and $1.1 billion in direct loans for very low to low-income borrowers who are unable to secure a mortgage through a conventional lender. These loans are expected to provide 42,800 homeownership opportunities to rural families across America.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nes/releases/2004/03/...

Make sure you note that George W. Bush PUSHED FOR $1.1 BILLION in direct loans for very low to low-income borrowers who could not get conventional loans---which of course opened the doorway to subprime mortgages and his Zero-down payment initiative.

And when lawmakers and attorney generals became worried about the pervasive use of sub-prime mortgages, George W.Bush stood by and turned a blind eye and allowed a federal agency, the OCC to trump state laws from putting an end to this risky and dangerous lending practice.


Former New York Governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer wrote about it earler this year in the Wahington Post.


....Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl...
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So please do not insult the intelligence of JJP readers with these lame ass Republican underlying racist talking points. There is no way the Carter Administration, CRA or ACORN is even tied to this mess. You might want to start researching Phil Gramm, Enron loophole, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and then maybe you will be able to have an intelligent conversation on this---because right now that is nonsense. But of course, Republicans almost never take responsibility for their actions--look at what happened yesterday.

Micheline Pelosi and the Dems to have all Dems vote for an unpopular bill to clean up a Republican mess. The Repubs thought the Dems would vote for the bill so they can demagogue against the Dems.

Micheline Nothing wrong with saying your opponent is right about few things even if he is wrong 90% of the time. We have been brainwashed by Bush and Fox that we have to see people either as with us or against us.

Jay "....BUT here's where we disagree.