by Frank James
ACORN continues to fight back against Republican charges that it's the cause of, among other evils, the housing meltdown which contributed to the global financial crisis.
We're heroes, McCain's a zero on the foreclosure crisis, is the community organizing group's essential message. It issued a report today to that effect.
Here's a summary from ACORN's release:
Senator John McCain's recent campaign ad, released October 10, 2008, bizarrely claimed,"ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans, the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today." Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is, ACORN has worked successfully to help tens of thousands of working class families get good home loans on fair terms from legitimate banks. Over a ten‐year period, ACORN helped families build an estimated $6 billion of wealth through homeownership, and helped save another $6.2 billion in fees and interest by escaping subprime mortgages. At the same time, ACORN has led the fight against predatory lenders. For more than a decade, ACORN members have advocated for regulations to protect homeowners, and ACORN organizers and volunteers have been working day and night to help victims of the GOP economic meltdown to save their homes from foreclosure.
ACORN has a real record on the economy. ACORN organized major class action lawsuits against subrpime lenders (such as Household Finance Corporation and Wells Financial Corporation), winning millions back for consumers. ACORN campaigned nationwide against predatory lenders like New Century and Ameriquest. ACORN community leaders met directly with the head of the Federal Reserve and federal regulators and testified before Congress to warn about subprime lending and urge regulation.
In comparison, John McCain's record on this is so limited that it is an embarrassment. There is not a single mention of predatory lending on documents from his senate website which date back to 1988. There is only 1 mention of foreclosure, coming recently from a speech he made in March of this year. This is an extremely deficient record from the Senator whose state has the third highest rate of foreclosure in the country. As a point of contrast, a search on acorn.org yields 479 hits about foreclosure, and 737 hits about predatory lending.
A couple of points that jump out from the report:
McCain has barely talked about the serious foreclosure crisis in his own state. As the report states:
Arizona ranks 3rd in the nation in its foreclosure rate, with one in every 182 households currently in foreclosure1. Yet a search of his entire Senate website only shows one throw-away line in a floor speech in which the foreclosure crisis makes an appearance as part of an acknowledgement that Americans were hurting economically. The speech was about earmarks.
Another goes to the heart of questions about McCain's knowledge about the economy and economics. (McCain himself has famously said that he didn't know a lot about the economy.)
The housing and financial crises emerged from a complicated combination of factors -- the bursting of the tech bubble which led to investors seeking new investments, financial engineering of new and poorly understood financial instruments, home lenders ignoring long-held safe lending practices and very low interest rates over a several years, among other factors.
But McCain has pointed to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently taken over by the government, and ACORN as playing major roles in the meltdown.
Experts by and large don't lay the genesis of the current problems with Fannie, Freddie and ACORN although the mortgage giants certainly contributed to the problem and some of the efforts to expand home ownership obviously went too far.
As ACORN says, and justifiably so:
... In casting blame on ACORN, Senator McCain demonstrated a true misunderstanding of the cause of the financial crisis and in so doing belied the notion that he is qualified to solve it. Indeed, in looking at the totality of their work, the only available conclusion is that ACORN fought with all its might for a decade to prevent this crisis while Senator McCain sat on the sidelines and cheered on the deregulation of the financial services industry that paved the way for the nation's economic collapse.
Comments
Great points ACORN. McCain is going to lose and lose bad.
Posted by: MR FACE | October 16, 2008 5:06 PM
Is the Tribune news bureau going to fact check these statements from ACORN or just put their rubber stamp of approval on them?
"while Senator McCain sat on the sidelines and cheered on the deregulation of the financial services industry that paved the way for the nation's economic collapse"
"working day and night to help victims of the GOP economic meltdown to save their homes from foreclosure."
These are statements from a "non-partisan" organization that ACORN claims to be.
Posted by: Gabriel Sutherland | October 16, 2008 5:47 PM
HAHAHA!
MCCAIN HEADLINES ACORN EVENT IN 2006:
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"Miami, Florida – February 20, 2006 ― Leaders from a diverse array of sectors will hold a rally in Miami on Thursday, February 23, 2006, in support of comprehensive immigration reform in an effort to keep immigration reform at the forefront of the public debate. Leaders from both political parties, immigrant communities, labor, business, and religious organizations will gather to call on Washington to enact workable reform."
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"The rally will feature Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as the headline speaker along with elected officials, immigrants and key local and national leaders. Sen. McCain is one of the chief sponsors of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act; bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform legislation introduced last Congress and scheduled for consideration by the Senate in the coming weeks. A similar rally with Sen. McCain is planned for New York City on February 27."
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"The rally in Miami is being sponsored by the New American Opportunity campaign (NAOC) in partnership with ACORN, Catholic Legal Services - Archdiocese of Miami, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Miami Dade College, People for the American Way/Mi Familia Vota en Acción, Service Employees International Union, and UNITE HERE."
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http://www.mdc.edu/Home/Press/rally.htm
That was a great event that McCain headlined. But it does make it a bit more difficult for his campaign to press this line of attack, doesn't it? They even have a picture of McCain attending:
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http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Acorn_pushes_back_hugs_McCain.html?showall
And a video of McCain attending:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ9wy2MI1NI
The McCain campaign is one of a kind. Every time they settle on a line of attack, they always undermine it days later.
It's almost like McCain hired the Three Stooges to run his campaign strategy.
Posted by: McCain is a LIAR! | October 16, 2008 8:27 PM
McCain and Phil Gramm (McCains "right hand man") and the RNC are throwing up a smokescreen:
The Center for American Progress points out that Gramm played a key role in gutting many of the institutions designed to keep the economy sound and that financial maneuvers enabled by Gramm's legislative measures became "the heart of the subprime meltdown."
the Commodity Futures Modernization Act -- (Phill Gramm's bill) prohibited federal agencies from regulating financial products called SWAPS, which have been used to back up the risky mortgaged-based securities that caused the subprime crisis.
Michael Greenberger, who directed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's division of trading and markets in the 1990s, says these unregulated SWAPS have been at "the heart of the subprime meltdown." He and others point to Gramm as being chiefly culpable for their deregulation. ...
it also contained a provision - lobbied for by Enron, a generous contributor to Gramm - that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight, allowing Enron to run rampant, wreck the California electricity market, and cost consumers billions before it collapsed.
If Washington does not put on the brakes with re-instituted regulations and controls, then this crises will not be over.
Blaming the banks and etc. is of no value if Washington Republicans are un-willing to set up and maintain any rules!
Furthermore, it is the Republicans, not Democrats, who were caught "throwing" the last presidential election - in 2004 ... the RNC was guilty of illegally denying a MILLION voters their right to vote.
BBC reporter Greg Palast published a copy of a confidential Bush-Cheney campaign email, dated August 26, 2004, when Karl Rove was chief political advisor to President Bush, in which Timothy Griffin, a member of Karl Rove's team directs Republican operatives to use illegal `caging` lists to disenfranchise over a million [Democratic] voters. It was one of the emails subpoenaed by Congress but supposedly "lost" by Rove`s office. Palast obtained 500 of these, fifty with `caging` lists attached.
A Republican spokeswoman, while admitting the lists could be used to challenge soldiers` votes, said that was `not the purpose` for gathering the lists -- though that is exactly what happened.
Posted by: g.Smith | October 16, 2008 8:30 PM
Our economy is hurting as a direct result of our dependence of foreign oil and it's exorbitant cost. Every area of consumer spending is taking a hit as production and shipping costs reflect the exorbitant cost of gas. Jobs and homes are being lost at a record rate as families have to cut back. There is little left over after filling the family car for work and spending more on groceries, electric bills.We need to utilize natural energy sources such as wind and solar and expand our knowledge and use of technologies such as hybrid and plug in cars. We need a Manhattan Project of 2009 and author Jeff Wilson has written one in his newly released book.
Posted by: Sherry | October 16, 2008 8:47 PM
CROWN POINT | New voter registrations closed Monday in Lake County with possible record-breaking numbers and simmering allegations of fraud and racial discrimination.........
LaSota said Monday representatives of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a grassroots activist group conducting registration drives, dropped off 2,000 new voter applications last week in Lake County.
"About 1,100 are no good," she said.
http://nwi.com/articles/2008/10/07/news/top_news/doc775d398de8488399862574da008320af.txt
Posted by: PROBLEMS ARE POPPING UP EVERYWHERE | October 17, 2008 11:14 AM
Why is it that Conservatives refuse to understand how the voter registration drives work. They hire UNEMPLOYED folks to go get names - and pay them by the name. These folks pad the rolls - to get paid. The names are submited and placed into 3 piles - good, ok, bad. Good names are determined by the follow-up call from the board of registration. You have to call and verify the information. The ok names are the folks that don't return calls. NOBODY is registered without confirming the info. Thats the system. There is NO fraud with Acorn.
Posted by: The Truth | October 17, 2008 2:36 PM
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Posted by: g.Smith | October 16, 2008 8:30 PM
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What you have written is all very interesting, but a pile of rubbish all the same. Neither you, nor Greenberger, nor anyone else has ever been able to point to a single regulation or law regarding swaps that has been swept away, the absence of which is responsible for the current financial crisis. People have pointed fingers at all kinds of deregulation, but none have been able to establish or explain a clear line of causation from any particular unregulated or deregulated activity to the root of the crisis.
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To be sure: The absence of regulation on credit swaps or MBSs or CDO did NOT cause the current economic meltdown. The problem was caused by predatory subprime lending, and subprime lending alone. Were it not for risky, predatory lending practices (occasioned by an overabundance of money to lend), there would have been no high risk loans later sold, pooled and bundled into derivative contracts. Without the shaky loans, derivative paper would have kept its value because there would have been vastly fewer defaults on the mortgages in the swap pools. Furthermore, aside from the bad mortgages in the swap pools, there were no other practices involved in derivative trades that added to investor's risks. Hence, it was the poisoned mortgages in the swap pools that created the problem, and only those poisoned mortgages.
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Banks are initially responsible for the loans they make and the mortgages they take back for them. Over the counter traders have to rely on the bona fides of the banks and the credit rating agencies who rate the resulting securities. Since the banks are responsible for making mortgages under toxic terms, they must likewise take the greatest share of the blame for the poison that spread.
Posted by: John W. | October 17, 2008 4:23 PM