In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Oscar Wilde

Affirmative Action+Lending Practices=Financial Meltdown

By: Pam On: Oct/12/08 -

Video: Subprime loans “affirmative action” - Andrew Cuomo

They would not have qualifed but for the affirmative action on the part of the bank, yes.

The quotes that explain the entire financial meltdown

CUOMO: To take a greater risk on these mortgages, yes. To give families mortgages that they would not have given otherwise, yes.

Q: [unintellible] : that they would not have given the loans at all?

CUOMO: They would not have qualified but for this affirmative action on the part of the bank, yes.

Q: Are minorities represented in that low and moderate income group?

CUOMO: It is by income, and is it also by minorities? Yes.

CUOMO: With the 2.1 billion, lending that amount in mortgages ” which will be a higher risk, and I’m sure there will be a higher default rate on those mortgages than on the rest of the portfolio :

Ed:

Here, in fact, is the genesis of the problem, the ideology that created the monster.  Cuomo, the Clinton administration, and Congress believed they had the right and the power to determine acceptable risk for the lenders, rather than lenders determining it for themselves in a free market.  Even while imposing risk standards on lenders, Cuomo admits that he expects a higher default rate on the new loans ” which is why the lenders didn’t want to write them in the first place.

In other words, the CRA didn’t get used to fight discrimination, but to force lenders to give money to high-risk borrowers for political purposes.  And Cuomo knew it.

That was the political arrogance at the heart of the collapse.  However, the CRA was more a sideshow than the actual problem.  When Congress decided that enforcement alone wouldn’t generate enough mortgages to boost their political fortunes, they had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac eliminate the risk entirely for lenders through the purchase of the subprime loans.  Without that risk and with almost-guaranteed short-term profits of subprime loans, lenders went wild while Fannie and Freddie repackaged them as quasi-government bonds for investors.

While Democrats like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi keep blaming “greed” for the collapse, it was Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd building that “greed” into the system in order to drive the subprime lending market.  And it was Democrats like Frank, Dodd, Maxine Waters, and Lacy Clay who suggested that regulators like Armando Falcon were racists for blowing the whistle on the Ponzi scheme they created.

The Democrats decided, as Michelle says, that mortgages were a civil right, and wouldn’t cost the American taxpayers a dime.  How well is that working out, America?  And now, the question you have to ask yourselves is this: Do you want the nation’s economic policies run by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, and Frank for the next two years?

Judge rules Ohio Secretary of State violated federal election law; plus ACORN victim on tape

Court Finds Brunner in Violation of Federal Law
Secretary of State appeals ruling, fights effort to validate registrations

(Columbus) - A federal court ruled tonight that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner violated federal election laws by not taking adequate steps to validate the identity of newly registered voters.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith called the identification breakdown “a serious problem” and ordered Brunner to immediately comply with federal requirements to match voter registration data with the information in the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Social Security Administration databases. The court accused Brunner of failing to provide county election administrators with “an effective way to access and review mismatches.” She immediately appealed the ruling.

“For some reason, Jennifer Brunner does not want these new registrations checked,” said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine. “Her refusal to comply with federal law raises serious concerns about her ability to objectively oversee this election. It’s especially troubling in light of her connection to ACORN and that group’s stunning confession this week of fraudulent registration activity happening right here in Ohio.”

Brunner’s effort to fight the court order comes just two days after the Democrat activist group ACORN admitted to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that the group engages in fraudulent voter registration activity.

Ohio ACORN officials “blamed the elections board for not scrutinizing ACORN’s suspicious cards,” claiming the group “can’t be expected to catch everything.”

ACORN is facing similar inquires in other Ohio counties as well as 10 other states. Members of the group’s “voter-mobilization arm,” Project Vote, regularly advise Brunner on election strategy, even recently issuing a news release that claims credit for Brunner’s directive restricting challenges to suspected fraudulent voter registrations. Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama also has strong ties to ACORN, working previously as an attorney and “leadership trainer” for the group.

# # #

_____________________

FOR THE RECORD: ACORN’s Ohio Fraud File

The Columbus Dispatch, 5/9/07: In what might be a Franklin County first, a Reynoldsburg man was indicted yesterday for voting twice in the November election. : [An attorney] said Gilbert was registered in both counties by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a nonprofit agency that has come under fire in 12 states for voter fraud.

Associated Press, 9/20/06: The mother of a 16-year-old has told the Summit County elections board that her daughter was registered to vote, just two months after a 10-year-old boy was summoned for jury duty because he was on the county’s voter rolls. :The board plans to issue subpoenas to the girl and the person who filed the voter registration application, Prentice McNary of Akron, a circulator paid by Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, [board director Bryan] Williams said.

The Columbus Dispatch, 9/1/06: Concerns about bogus names increased recently as Franklin County Elections Board staffers questioned the validity of hundreds of names on registration forms and petitions for a proposed constitutional amendment to boost Ohio’s minimum wage. Most of the disputed names came from lists provided by paid solicitors working for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The Columbus Dispatch, 8/30/06: Franklin County elections officials plan to issue subpoenas to paid solicitors suspected of forging hundreds of signatures on ballot-issue petitions and voter-registration forms. : Most have come from people paid by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which was blamed for similar problems with voter-registration forms in 2004.

The Plain Dealer, 8/11/06: Potentially fraudulent voter registration cards have turned up in at least three Ohio counties, and 500 have been turned over to a prosecutor to determine if a crime has been committed. Matt Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said the 500 cards his office referred to County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien Wednesday were collected between March and July by workers for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Cincinnati Enquirer, 10/23/04: Cuyahoga County election officials are investigating more than a thousand possible fraudulent voter registrations - including one for Jive Turkey Sr. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Friday that the name is one in a string of fake names on new voter rolls. Others include Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins and Michael Jordan in Defiance County.

The Columbus Dispatch, 9/8/04: A part-time worker signing up new voters for a local community group has been indicted by a Franklin County grand jury on charges he forged a registration form. : The charges stem from an investigation that began in May after the Franklin County Board of Elections discovered dozens of voter registration forms with fake names or false information. They were submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which paid workers bonuses based on the number of voters they registered.

The Columbus Dispatch, 6/3/04: A nonprofit group registering low-income and minority voters in Franklin County has fired two temporary workers thought to be the source of fake names and forged signatures on official registration forms. ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also has agreed to perform extra checks on forms turned in by its voter-registration workers before submitting them to the Franklin County Board of Elections, the group’s head organizer said yesterday.

“Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we’ve got Democrats in charge of the machines.”
- Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama (Columbus Dispatch)

Maggie Thurber has more (hat tip - Patrick Poole):

For about two weeks, I’d been trying to verify that Brunner’s office was actually comparing the new voter registrations to an outside source, either the BMV or the SS databases. My phone calls to the Secretary of State’s office this week have not been returned.

Both Ohio law and the Help America Vote Act require that new voter registrations be compared to an outside, independent database in order to verify the identity of the voter. I’d been told that the connection between the Secretary of State’s database and those outside agencies was either not operation or had been removed.

In light of ACORN’s admission to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that the group engages in fraudulent voter registration activity, the independent verification of identities by the SOS office is critical to ensuring a fair and honest election in Ohio.

Tons more at MM

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Posted on: October 12, 2008 |

Posted in: Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, National News, Presidential Election '08, State/Local Elections '06, Subprime Crisis

One Response to “Affirmative Action+Lending Practices=Financial Meltdown”

  1. FrmrArtyOffcr
    October 12, 2008 - 09:33 PM on October 12th, 2008

    Does anyone REALLY believe that this fall’s election is going to be honest? The Dems are taking their voter fraud show on the road. As long as the dem controlled voter boards can get away with dead people (Chicago and Houston among other places) and people who were never even alive (King County Washington among others)voting without going to prison for hard time, they will spread their voter fraud wings across the country until they trash the economy, and end up with the people coming after them with torches and pitchforks, or more likely AK 47s and AR 15s. Which is probably why they are so anxious to eliminate both the right to free speech (Talk radio through the un “Fairness Doctrine” or “Political correctness”) and the right to keep and bear arms (through an international treaty with the UN if all else fails.)

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