Boehner still tries to crack ACORN

Excellant-
Acorn is rotten to th core.

There never seems to be a day that goes by where "Spray-on Tan" Boehner isn't crying about something:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir1UABBe1v4
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We do not need Congressional hearings regarding the activities of ACORN. The hearings would be a sham because they would be chaired by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, two of the biggest benefactors of Freddie and Frannie's misconduct.

What is needed is Grand Jury investigations into what was going on at ACORN!

If Boner wants to get to the root of the problem...let's ban money. Really, money is the reason greedy Boner is in congress....Money is the reaons the greedy banks made the loans to underqualified applicants.....money was the reason the greedy ACORN workers filed false registration cards, which ACORN rightly flagged when handing them over to the government.

So there Boner, I just saved you all kinds of time in figuring out the problems. We can either stop being greedy or ban money...anything short of that is just plain stupid talk.

"It's a theory of the cause of the problem that's not accepted by most reputable experts on the crisis."

That summarizes pretty much every Republican idea these days.

John Bonner and ACORNS....kinda a match set!

Well ... this just goes to so that reality-based policy making will continue to take a back seat to truthiness and passion plays in the GOP for the foreseeable future.

Boehner clearly has decided that this a neat way to distract people and create a counter-narrative, which will excuse the GOP's role in creating the current economic mess. This ACORN deal is slight-of-hand that turns the GOP and the Bush Administration into passive victims of a dark, vicious conspiracy by the Democrats. And it tries to redirect the public's rage away from their own malfeasance onto Obama.

Very cute. Very clever.

Will it work? Who knows? Maybe it only needs to work well enough and rally the GOP's base. Trafficking in made-up facts, conspiracy theories and bogus investigations worked just fine back in the 1990's.

And look where it took us as a nation.

"Boehner still tries to crack ACORN."

In the interest of accuracy and Trib cost savings, shouldn't that be:

"Boner tries crack."

Kenny,

That was the funniest thing I saw all week long!

Yes, we need to save the trib as much $$ as we can these days. Does anyone know if this SWAMP website is part of their consolidation process? This is going to sound very nieve of me, but I did not realize it was even part of the "chicago tribune" for many months after I started using this site.

"Rear guard action".

Boner has no program, no solutions to offer.

He's only a mouthpiece/apologist for the moribund Republican party.

The Acorn gambit didn't prevent Obama's election, but he's still putting it out there as a talking point.

He needs a scapegoat, a Limbaughian meme, a "stab in the back" sort of explanation for the train wrecks we're being forced to watch.

Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, Bear, AIG, Wachovia, GM--
all brought down by the shennanigans of Acorn, Frank Raines, and Wm. Ayers.

What Bin Laden only dreamed of, Acorn Raines and Ayers have accomplished: demolition of US economy.

It is all Acorn, Raines and Ayers, behind it all!
Plus, they supported Obama.
So it must be Obama's fault as well!
You're going to hear this "explanation" of the current downward spiral from now until Nov. 2012.

Like the "stab in the back" theory of why Germany lost WW I.

It never ceases to amaze how the rightwing absolutely refuses to deal with reality. There has been absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anyone voted illegally because Mickey Mouse was registered by ACORN. Not only is there no evidence for ACORN having anything to do with the subprime mortgages, but the people who were actually issuing subprime mortgages were not the banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or anyone else subject to the antiredlining laws. They were issued by the big Republican funders on Wall Street. But the facts were never something that the rightwing was comfortable with and this episode is no different.

What Bonehead is trying to do is prevent anyone from registering people to vote because most people today are going to vote Democratic. For that reason he is trying to eviscerate an organization that has been working for the human rights of the poor and working class. Since these two groups are not exactly in the Republican party, Bonehead wants to make sure they are kept under heel.

Yes Kenny, can't we just see it.....a party of 5 savage pugs and inky running around the burning remains of the big tent, singing "Johny cracked ACORN, and no body cared, Johny cracked ACORN, and no body cared!" Ha ha ha!

Since the Repugs have no ideas, they define themselves by their boogymen. ACORN is just one in a long list:

Scientists
Environmentalist
Unions
NAACP
ACLU
Trial Lawyers (unless they need one)
Socialist
Illegals
Liberals
PBS
NFA
NPR
Activist Judges (unless they're Republican)
MSM
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reed
Ted Kennedy
Keith Olberman
Anti-gun lobby

Acorn has a long history of which whose founders goes back to those who built up an army of poor folk to deliberately destroy the welfare system years ago, and they have done this again along with govt and the CRA by using the poor to destroy our banking system by forcing fannie and freddie to hold port folio's carry a large % of NINJA loans (no income, no job, no asset) and high pressure tactics on banks forcing them to give donations and loans to those including illegals who could never pay them back in an attempt to topple the entire system.

Acorn and those like them along with CRA should be removed entirely along with Fannie and Freddie insured be restored to insuring safely to only those who can afford loans as they had before and banks will go back to making loans to those who can afford loans.

Yeah, let's have that investigation of ACORN and of the lenders, in the mortgage game. Stats were cited from a 2006 analysis of the lending practices and what it showed was 55 percent of loans to African Americans, 40 percent loans to Hispanics and 35 percent of loans to American Indians fell into high-cost category, as opposed to the 23 percent for whites. Also, women fared worse, than men. How was this able to pass mustered. The lenders, in reporting the loans, failed to include in the information, the credit-worthiness of the borrower. So, the most vital information was not supplied, which allowed them to avoid the " race tax " charge and any other charge, they were guilty of perpetrating. For more details, the New York Times, in today's edition, has an insightful editorial on this subject.
So, you can get goofy, with your attempts at distractions, but it wasn't ACORN that caused the Mortgage Scandal, but the greedy ones, and corrupt ones, in the branches !! In typical Republican, knee-jerk tradition, they blame the victim for the criminal's crimes !! In this case, the criminals being the lenders !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

Posted by: Teresa | December 9, 2008 6:11 AM

So theresa, you're ok with banks refusing to lend to minorities? That's what the CRA was written to address, the banking practice if refusing to lend to qualified lenders in minority neghborhoods. You want to do away with that protection. I'm guessing you've never lived in a minority neighborhood, have you? That's where the bad, untrustworthy people live, right? Educate yourself. Read about the practice of "redlining" before the CRA and then come defend that practice for us.

Liz-These particular people on the left are hoping that by FORCING Fannie and Freddie to have such a large % of their port folios reflect these BAD loans (people with even holding jobs, on welfare etc...) that this opens banks up to wanting to make loans to many more of these types and it doesn't help these people out any, they are going to lose their homes no matter what because the only type of loans they can put together for them are loans that have interest rates that jack up over time and once the rates jack up they are automatically without a home, not they they are safe in a home to begin with.

It's all about destroying the banking system, it's not about helping people at all.

Acorn does a real number on banks, forcing them to give them donations and strong arming them into giving loans they're a dirty bunch and the CRA is no better pushing banks in the same way. They need to go.

Theresa, answer the question. Are you OK with banks refusing to lend to qualified minorities and the use of Redlining practices which the CRA, which you want repealed, made illegal. Yes or No? A

Teresa - The greedy banks have done this to us. They all make nice coin in loan initiation fees, and then they sell off the risk to someone else. If it were the government’s fault, like you suggest, then the banks would still be lending to subprime borrowers, right, as there has not been a government rollback of any “program”. The truth is, is that the greasy banks control who they lend to, and right now, they are not lending because they do not want to. It is the same business savvy they could have used 5 years ago, but they got greedy and wanted the money.

Oooops, someone just dropped a little common sense on your arguements.

The time has come to clean house and this organization needs to be abolished. There is obvious corruption and I do not want them to receive anymore tax money. Not 1 more nickel.

Liz-These particular people on the left are hoping that by FORCING Fannie and Freddie to have such a large % of their port folios reflect these BAD loans (people with even holding jobs, on welfare etc...) that this opens banks up to wanting to make loans to many more of these types and it doesn't help these people out any, they are going to lose their homes no matter what because the only type of loans they can put together for them are loans that have interest rates that jack up over time and once the rates jack up they are automatically without a home, not they they are safe in a home to begin with.

It's all about destroying the banking system, it's not about helping people at all.

Acorn does a real number on banks, forcing them to give them donations and strong arming them into giving loans they're a dirty bunch and the CRA is no better pushing banks in the same way. They need to go.

Posted by: Teresa | December 9, 2008 9:38 AM

Wrong. The issue is NOT to force banks to make loans to minorities who can't pay them back, and it never was (except to those who make their point by obscuring the relevant facts). The issue was and is that banks were going ahead and giving loans to non-minorities, but refusing to give loans to minorities WITH EQUAL OR BETTER CREDIT RECORDS. It's that part you guys keep omitting, and it's that omission that turns your statements into a lie.
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From the get-go, banks should have been refusing loans to people (NOTE: "People", not "MINORITIES") whose credit history and financials indicated they couldn't afford to repay the money. Unfortunately, once they decided to go ahead with risky loans to one group of people with a certain credit rating, refusing another group with the same or better credit becomes discrimination, and ACORN SHOULD have gone after the banks for discriminating.

op109-The reason CRA is selling itself as weather the storm thru all of this is banking mess is that the left who is behind this is saying ' see, if we HEAVILY REGULATE ALL BANKS they'll run like the CRA banks'. They deliberately forced Fannie and Freddie insurers to open those portforlio rediculously so they could flood the system and destroy the banking industry and show that it can't run without GOVT RUNNING IT, it needs a SOCIALIST SYSTEM OR IT CAN'T RUN THE WAY THE FAR LEFT WANTS IT TO RUN. That's what I've read about it and I've done some serious reading about it.

Teresa, with all due respect ... someone is lying to you, and it isn't us.

ACORN is not a destructive Marxist conspiracy that is out to destroy the banking system. If that was true, why would John McCain give the keynote address at their convention a few years back?

Really. You can look it up.

And the CRA does not force banks to make risky, leveraged loans to racial minorities, people on welfare, etc. What is DOES require that the banks apply their lending standards equally, without discrimination.

The current housing crisis was caused by a huge run-up in housing costs, driven by easy credit. Most of it occured during a period where "leftists" were very thoroughly out of political power, and the GOP was running things. In this political atmosphere, it should be clear that the federal government was NOT forcing the banks to make loans to welfare recipients and unqualified borrowers simply based on their race.

And during this housing bubble, people -- and I mean ALL sorts of people, at all income levels -- needed to borrow more and leverage their finances more and more heavily to keep up with prices, if they wanted to buy a house. And when the economy soured, and credit dried up? The leverage disappeared.

The banks made a lot of money on this housing bubble while times were good. And now they (and Wall Street) are demanding to be bailed out of the consequences of their own reckless behavior.

This isn't a left-vs-right issue. These are just facts. And when people like Boehner and Limbaugh blame ACORN and leftist shadow conspiracies for our current problems ... I think you need to question their motives.

Bokonon-McCain wasn't there for Acorn he was there for the Hispanics the event was for, that was who he was speaking to.

There was a false bubble caused by housing loans that there were given in such great numbers that jacked up the price, which actually even priced these poor minorities out of the housing that were suppose to help them to begin with. Well, it just burst, and for once those homes are now within the 'average joes' range (my range) and I plan to take advantage of it. Now if I were only living in sunny Florida somewhere ha ha.

Yes, Theresa - it is true that there was a housing bubble that inflated prices. But my point is that ACORN, CRA and government programs did NOT create this bubble on their own - and that it was NOT mortgages to poor people that eventually made the bubble collapse. The mortgage industry largely did this to itself, by making stupid loans to over-leveraged people at all income levels, in all parts of the country.

Bokonon-I agree that people from all walks of like started getting these low interest loans, lots of people who were buying up second and third homes who dropped them like hot potatoes, but the idea of opening the door to these low to no interest loans came about over opening them up in the name of helping the poor which was never what the intention was in the first place. They took these bad loans insisted that insurers carry them in larger numbers and then started allowing them to bundle them and spread them everywhere and use them in other deals and the banking system collapsed everywhere. It's what goes wrong when govt starts social engineering. It's predictable everytime. They need to go back to the begining and change the portforlios of the insurers and that is a start, get rid of ACORN and the CRA who use the unions and their strong arm tactics on banks to force them to make loans (I've read the horror stories) and they need to clean this mess up. Boehner gets my respect and my support.

Dear Theresa, thank you for fighting the good fight on our behalf. It's right thinking average joes like you that we count on to know that we have done nothing wrong, and that the current crisis is wholly the fault of unions, liberals and those peskly minorities. Please keep fighting for the repeal of the CRA so that we can go back to the good ol' days of refusing to lend in minority neighborhoods, and offering loans to less qualified white lenders. With your help we can keep the minorities in their place and focus on our primary mission of helping the "right" kind of people. We can get these regulations repealed and begin rightously discriminating again. I'm glad we can count on your support in fighting the good fight against fair lending practices. Redlining forever!

So ... let me get this straight, Theresa.

Because the government probibited banks from redlining minorities when they applied for mortgages, and promoted home ownership for low-income people through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ... the government was therefore responsible for real estate speculators buying up multiple homes with no equity, and inflating the real estate bubble.

And because of that, the government is therefore also responsible for Wall Street's orgy of mortgage-based financial derivatives, which blew up in our face.

So - if I understand you correctly, ANYTHING the government attempts is a catastrophe. Including forbidding racial discrimination, and promoting home ownership. Because that sort of public policy will ultimately drive rational people bonkers, and make them do depraved things, and cause otherwise sober bankers to do crazy things with their money.

Shoot, Theresa ... that is a really wacked out chain of causation. So it is always the government's fault when bad things happen, no matter what?

And what about personal responsibility? Why aren't you tagging the people who did stupid, reckless and irresponsible things with the blame, instead of shifting it over to these vague, faceless enemies like "the government" or "the unions" or ACORN?

And seriously. What do labor unions have to do with all this??

LIberals amuse me. You are here for my amusement. Social engineering by 'well intentioned' (those concerned with buying votes) politicians is primarily to blame. They set up the system which provided punitive measures to banks who didn't write enough risky loans. They then created bloated government-backed agencies (Mayday & EasyMac) to underwrite loans which had no business being written in the first place. Investment firms, knowing the government was on the hook for the risk, repackaged and bundled worthless loans and sold them off. The well meaning, ignorant government continuously undermines the free market by trying to change the rules, creating ill advised programs which don't work in the real world. Silly liberals.

Hey EvilcorporationsBadSocialEngineeringGood:

Yeah ... you are right. The free market is operating so well right now. So well that that banking industry has had to approach the government with tin cup in hand, begging for bailouts.

Darn that government. Darn them.

Reduced to essentials, you are arguing that any time the government tries to enact social policy or regulate, no matter how well intentioned, the effort will ultimately backfire and cause catastrophes. So the "ignorant" government should do nothing, and should simply let the private sector operate.

Well ... we tried that. And we tried it very recently, on a grand scale. The federal government chose not to regulate the derivatives market ... including the mortgage-backed derivatives whose de-leveraging has brought us to the brink of financial collapse. That deregulatory approach didn't work out so well, did it?

Your argument even acknowledges that the banks made stupid business decisions, and chose to do reckless things - based on the assumption that the government would ultimately be on the hook and would bail them out if something went wrong. That is looting by the private sector, not a failure by the government.

I would say something along the lines of "you conservatives amuse me ... you are here for my amusement." But I am too ticked off at the mess your policies have created - and by your continued evasions of responsibility for the epic fails created by those policies - to laugh at you guys right now. Because if you succeed in rewriting the record, it just means that we will learn nothing as a nation from this latest disaster, and will just do this all over again ten years from now.

Take some responsibility, for pete's sake. After some point, the partisan games need to end.

On May 6, 1999, the Senate passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act by a 54-44 vote along party lines (53 Republicans and one Democrat in favor; 44 Democrats opposed).On July 20, the House passed a different version of the bill on an uncontested and uncounted voice vote. When the two chambers could not agree on a joint version of the bill, the House voted on July 30 by a vote of 241-132 (R 58-131; D 182-1) to instruct its negotiators to work for a law that ensured that consumers enjoyed medical and financial privacy and also "robust competition and equal and non-discriminatory access to financial services and economic opportunities in their communities" (i.e. protection against exclusionary redlining). Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act and address certain privacy concerns. On November 4, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90-8 and by the House 362-57. This legislation was signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.
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Notice that the dems jumped on board as soon as "economic opportunities" were made avialable in their communities. In English, that meand making loans to those who can't pay them back.
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That folks is the root casue of this whole mess - banks having to expand "economic opportunities" to those who can't afford the loans.

Terry> none of the banks wanted the CRA, there wasn't a bank around that supported opening themselves up in such a way to unsound lending. Out of all the banks only one banker showed up in support at the hearings....a white southside banker who had bought a bank deliberately to fight redlining. He would later go on to work with Clinton.

ONLY one banker in the entire U.S, Ron Grzywinski from ShoreBank in [south side] CHICAGO, testified in favor of the CRA. This CRA idea came about as a result of national grassroots pressure
for affordable housing, and despite considerable opposition from the mainstream banking community it was enacted.

WAIT, IT GETS BETTER> In 1985, Ron Grzywinski worked closely with then Arkansas Governor Bill CLINTON to set up the Southern Development Bancorporation.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Grzywinski

CLINTON later credited ShoreBank’s success with inspiring a movement
of community development financial institutions (CDFI’s).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_development_financial_institution

In a 1992 speech, CLINTON called ShoreBank “the most important bank in America." [Indeed!]

In addition to ShoreBank, Ron Grzywinski currently works with the board of the Aga Khan Foundation in PAKISTAN

In 1995, as a result of interest from President CLINTON's
administration, the implementing regulations for the CRA were strengthened by focusing the financial regulators' attention on
institutions' performance in helping to meet community credit needs....OR IN LAYMENS TERMS, force banks who strongly opposed the CRA to begin with, to give bad loans to those who would never otherwise qualify.

Tracy, Theresa, Terry --

You are continuing to miss the point. It wasn't the CRA or loans to "unqualified minorities" that brought on the current crisis.

And all the fulminations in your posts about Bill Clinton or Ron Grywinskyi or Shorebank or Pakistan (wait -- Pakistan??) that you make don't prove your underlying claim.

Really. If you are going to keep pushing this argument, let's see some causation. And you specifically need to address not only mortgage defaults and the causes of the housing bubble in the banking industry (hint - look up "Federal Reserve") but the wildly irresponsible trade in derivative financial instruments on Wall Street (which is what turned an ordinary recession into something much worse). Now ... what caused all that?

The mortgage problem was much, much bigger and more systematic than you seem to grasp. It involves irresponsibility on a grand scale by our bankers, business people and elected officials. And so long as you march around searching for political conspiracies and scapegoats on the left, and grasp for causes dating all the way back into Jimmy Carter's term as President, you aren't going to get it.

- Bokonon

Tracy-I personallly believe Hillary and George Soros who happened to have ties going way back hatched this scheme to do banks in. I believe her husband and other like mindeds like the southside banker mentioned above and ACORN fanatics made a concerted effort to take down our banking system in an attempt to take it over and turn it into a socialist system. I believe that the only way they could do this is by proving that CRA banks were the only ones that could run properly and they made sure they did, meanwhile they opened the flood gates to the port folio's of Fannie and Freddie type insurers and banks being busiesss minded as they were fell right into the trap and headed forward feeling completely safe just as all the insurers did feeling the govt would save them.

There were bankers who were even paradied on SNL for selling out and knowing exactly when to do that and making a fortune on it, which tells one that they had those loans set to expire at just the right time being it went off like a time bomb just as the others all did somewhat at once.

They want all banks under govt control and that may sound to sinister for you to wrap you mind around but it's not for me. I've done enough reading about Acorn's founders background with Welfare to believe anything is possible.

I meant my letter to be addressed to bokonon, sorry!

One more added thing>Bill clinton all added the very young Hud administrator who installed the the new rules on Fannie and Freddie that were extremely severe stating that their portfolios had to reflect an enormous amount of these bad loans, and the one fella in the lime light and catching heat now (forget his name) balked about it at the time I read.

That is Frank Raines.

Boko,
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Causation? The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act - only the part that called for "increasing economic opportunities in their (low-income)communities". So the banks faced rolling the dice with making these bad loans or facing the rath of the federal gov't (and bad public relations)on discrimination charges. They rolled the dice with the ecncouragement of the federal gov't.
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The subsequent packing of these sub-prime loans into derivative instruments was just a way to try and mask the risk. It all boils down to putting the lipstick on the pig. You still have Rosie O'Donnell. As soon as the musical chair game stopped (with higher interest rates and then falling housing values), the folks holding those sub-prime derivatives were screwed, blued, and tattooed.

Tracy -

You are omitting the Rockefellers, the Illuminati, the Masons and the Gnomes of Zurich from your list of conspirators. No self-respecting plot to take over the world should exclude them.

Come on. Listen to yourselves. You are going on and on about ACORN, Bill Clinton, Frankin Raines, George Soros ... even Marxist plots to destroy the banking system by making the bankers do stupid things? It is all one big scapegoat-and-conspiracy fest, isn't it?

Don't believe every far-out thing you read on the Internet. The causation of this mess is a lot more mundane than that.

Tracy, as far as your claim that Frankin Raines forcing banks to make lots of "bad loans" - that sounds like a characterization of something rather than a fact. What did Raines do exactly? And if he pressured the banking community to make mortgages to low-income people, how were these particular loans responsible for the current subprime mortgage meltdown now, all these years later? And wasn't promoting low-income home ownership a critical part of George W. Bush's "ownership society" agenda? Consider - over the last 7-8 years, did Bush and the Federal Reserve and the banking industry pursue policies that made things get out of control?

Or was it all just Bill Clinton's fault, about a decade ago?

All of this is important, because the housing bubble inflated after Clinton left office. And the financial derivatives based on mortgages proliferated and expanded during the closing years of Clinton's term ... but really took off during Bush's terms in office.

Cause and effect, people. Cause and effect.

Piper- here's some reading that may open some eyes to those who think a coin is only one sided. There's so much more going on behind the scenes. Acorn started out in Little Rock, Arkansas.

George Soros and Hillary Clinton have a very close connection.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6706

There was also the New Party>

The New Party was a third political party in the United States that tried to re-introduce the practice of electoral fusion as a political strategy for labor unions and community organizing groups. In electoral fusion, the same candidate receives nomination from more than one political party and occupies more than one ballot line. Fusion was once common in the United States but is now commonly practiced only in New York State, although it is allowed by law in seven other states. The party was active from 1992 to 1998. There had been an earlier New Party in 1968 that ran Eugene McCarthy for President.

The New Party was founded in the early 1990s by Daniel Cantor, a former staffer for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, and by sociology and law professor Joel Rogers as an effort to break with the largely unsuccessful history of left-leaning third parties in the United States.

The party could best be described as social democratic in orientation, although party statements almost invariably used the terms "small-d democratic" or "progressive" instead. Its founders chose the name "New Party" in an effort to strike a fresh tone, free of associations with dogmas and ideological debates.

After a false start in New York, the New Party built modestly successful chapters in several states. Some of these chapters — such as those in Chicago and Little Rock — had their main bases of support in the low-income community organizing group ACORN, along with some support from various labor unions (especially ACORN-allied locals of the Service Employees International Union). Other chapters — such as those in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Missoula, Montana; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Dane County, Wisconsin, received institutional support from a variety of other labor unions and community organizations. These chapters built local political organizations that ran or endorsed candidates, primarily in local non-partisan races but with occasional forays into Democratic Party primaries or (more rarely) traditional third party-style independent candidacies as well. The party's chapters endorsed hundreds of political candidates. [1][2] Some New Party chapters introduced the idea of a contract for candidates to sign, to encourage accountability to the promises they had made the party in exchange for an endorsement, an idea that met with some resistance.[3][4][5] Party chapters were also active between elections, pressuring elected officials to pass legislation on issues such as living wages and affordable housing.

Left-wing critics of the New Party, such as supporters of the Green Party, argued that the New Party was merely a pressure group on the fringes of the Democratic Party, rather than a genuinely new political party.[citation needed] New Party leaders argued that classic third-party strategies were doomed to failure, but that the Democratic Party was too entrenched and undemocratic to be a useful institution for "small-d democrats" either, even if they could succeed in taking it over, and so a new kind of organization was needed.[citation needed]

Although the party's founders hoped to foster a shift in the United States toward electoral fusion, they were not successful in doing so. Their hopes rested largely on the U.S. Supreme Court case Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party. In 1997, the Court, in a 6-3 decision, rejected the New Party's argument that electoral fusion was a right protected by the First Amendment's freedom of association clause.[6]

After the Timmons case, the New Party quickly declined. Several chapters — initially, those chapters not connected with ACORN — disaffiliated. Perhaps the only and certainly the most successful surviving local chapter, known as Progressive Dane, remains active and relevant in Dane County, Wisconsin. Cantor and other key staff members left to found the Working Families Party of New York (1998), an organization which has had considerable success in building a New Party-style organization within New York state, and which is now exploring possibilities for expanding into other states.

Although the New Party has been effectively defunct since the late 1990s, a website still exists.

bokonon-I didn't say banks were forced to make loans by Raines. Raines was not happy that Clinton admin was changing the port folio requirements because of the risks they were opening them up to. Banks operate like usual, they are in the biz to make money, if they are insured that's all they cared about, they did what they do, they made money, that's why I went against the grain and supported this bailout....because I knew who was behind masterminding this mess in the first place and it wasn't the banking industry.

EVen Dodd makes the claim that it was the subprimes loans that did the system in.

It's the derivatives or bad loans that were bundled that did the system in, there were plenty of them. They got home owners in there and 3 % some 0% interest rates which went up after a short time an boom up went their rates and the homeowner was forced out. It was never about helping the homeowners. THe letter to piper is for you. You need to read some other things not just ask all the questions....Kurtz does some good articles. Soros and Acorn are close and so is Soros union and Acorn.

Bokonon- you seem to want to concentrate on the end game and where the bomb exploded with the bundled derivitives.

We are concentrating on who set this thing in motion. I believe it started with Carter opening us up to CRA and really took off with CRA and CLINTON and ACORN pressuring banks and changing port folios of Fannie and Freddie.

I'm not really sure how you can solve the problem at the back end of this thing where the bomb went off. I think you need to difuse it so that there are no assets to be able to bundle up any more. I don't think that you can mandate all banks to be under CRA type govt control and expect there to be no so called redlining without looking to the tax payer to continually bailout all the bad subprime loans that willl default.

Theresa - I'll ask you this. If Clinton and Carter really set this up 10 or 20 years ago, why did the bomb go off NOW?

Why didn't this happen during the deep recession in 1980-81? Or in the 1990-91 recession? Or after 9/11?

Because something changed.

And the thing that changed was NOT groups like ACORN agitating around the margins for low-income mortgages or doing voter drives in the inner cities. What was different was the size of the housing bubble that inflated over the last seven years, and the increasingly loose and aggressive lending practices of the mortgage companies - which started taking risks, and encouraging homeowners to take risks, that they had never taken before, like zero downpayment loans.

The other new factor was the massive increase in the number of mortgage-based financial derivatives at investment banks, which were based on these shaky loans, and which were completely uncapitalized other than the underlying mortgages.

All of these things were new. And they happened because of conscious, deliberate policy choices - or non-choices - made by the federal government.

I repeat. This stuff didn't happen because of regulation. It happened because there WAS mininal or no regulation, and the federal government - we are talking Congress, the White House, the Federal Reserve, and agencies like the Comptroller of the Currency - wanted to let the marketplace take care of itself, and shot down any idea of reigning in the bubble.

That is all fine and good. But now the marketplace is taking care of itself. Sort of like it did when the highly leveraged economy of the 1920's corrected itself during the Great Depression. That is the natural course of extreme swings in any market. But people don't much like the downside of this corrective cycle.

Here is another thing. In any recession, the number of foreclosures ordinarily goes up when people lose their jobs and the housing market cools. What is different this time is the number of foreclosures - nearly 10 percent of all mortgages are currently late or in foreclosure right now.

And the sheer number of properties should tell you something - those AREN'T LOW INCOME HOMEOWNERS. These aren't FHA loans. These aren't all poor people. This is a massive number of homeowners across all income groups, who leveraged their personal finances and bought outsized and under-capitalized mortgages during the boom times and who are now unable to sell their houses - or afford their monthly mortgage payments, now that the economy has turned sour they have lost their jobs.

Yes, the banks are in the lending business to make money. And some of the banks acted stupidly, and created this mess by taking greater and greater risks in order to make more and more money. And now that their gambling failed, they have gone bust. That is the free market in action.

But it is a diversion and a red herring to lay the blame for all of this mess at the feet of anti-discrimination legislation from the 1970's. Seriously. Come on.

Think about it. Say we repealed the CRA today, and somehow wipe ACORN off the face of the earth, and deregulate the mortgage industry further. Would that really make the banking industry recover? Would that prevent this from happening again? And if government was really the cause of our problems, why won't that work?

Bokonon-What has happened has happened globally...in China, Japan, Russia and so on, but it's our own subprime issues added on top of it as well. I've heard subprime issues from other countries as well.

We should have never allowed the bad lowns to be added to derrivatives, that was a truely huge mistake but certainly not our first one for sure.

We can't go back and change everything like I want and expect that over night it will all be better but if we don't fix the areas I want we will be doing nothing more than going right back into the same stupid mistakes and doing the same things. Sound banking needs to return. I'm always curious when someone is making a strong arguement for regarding loans for those who don't qualify. I find it hard to understand.

Bokonon-as an add on, you also have to understand that Fannie and Freddie had a REQUIREMENT OF 52% of a porfolio to HAD TO HOLD IN THESE TYPE OF BAD LOW INCOME MINORITYLOANS. They were given explicit directions as to how to go about fulfilling this goal, it was a strict requirement, and as the housing bubble began to grown the housing market boomed and so did the prices and this prices the houses right out of the market for many of these low income non-qualifying people all together. So, then loans were for homes that were over priced for homeowners. Someone making $30,000.00 might wind up in a $300,000.00 home. It got ridiculous, but SOCIAL ENGINEERING NUMBERS HAD TO BE MET. Bokonon, they were giving loans out to ILLEGALS for heaven sakes !

Bokonon- read about your acorn. I have so much respect for Kurtz, he does a very good job telling it like it is....read how Acorn treats this banker, how they intimidate this man and his wife and kids. Read what their agenda is and how they want to regulate banks and try and drive Big Box businesses (jobs) away from poor areas. Their agendas are harmful to the people the aspouse to help.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=&w=MA==l

borkonon-here is a little background on Acorn that might give you another perspective.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=&w=MA==l

Bokonon- here is a site on Acorn with some interesting info and easy blogging if you want to try it>

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-acorn-voter-fraud/

Thanks, Theresa. Here is some additional reading that comes up with a different conclusion about the CRA and the mortgage meltdown:

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-home-front/2008/12/17/sheila-bair-stop-blaming-the-community-reinvestment-act.html

Bair is a Republican, BTW, and knows the industry.

- Bokonon

Former Alphonso Jackson HUD Sec, Orlando Cabrera, then-assistant secretary resigned this year in disgrace as they were involved in corruption themselves (Philadelphia Mayor and FHA). Kim Kendrick
was involved and amazingly is still at HUD. Look what she is doing with our money now. But first alittle about Kim from an article:

"HUD Officials Caught Bullying State Employees Members of the Bush Administration have once again been caught strong-arming government officials into abiding by their policies. In an email exchange, two top political appointees at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) discussed ways to make the life of Philadelphia's housing director Carl R. Greene miserable after he refused a request to transfer a $2 million piece of city property to a business friend of the HUD Secretary.

"Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary at HUD wrote about Philadelphia housing director Carl R. Greene.
"Take away all of his Federal dollars? : D" responded Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary who oversaw accessible housing.

Thanks for using our taxpayer money to finace ACORN KIM! At the core of the ACORN is HUD.

Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/E5-7268.htm
$200,000 from HUD to ACORN - Kim Kendrick

and

http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr08-164.cfm
New Mexico ACORN Associates $100K in October
HUD AWARDS MORE THAN $21 MILLION IN GRANTS TO FIGHT HOUSING DISCRIMINATION
92 agencies nationwide receive Fair Housing Initiative Program funding