Domestic Policy
More Meltdown Back Story
Clinton Promised Middle Class Tax Cuts Too…
Yet another piece in the Wall Street Journal worth a read…
Clinton’s campaign before his first term was full of promises similar to Obama’s rhetoric.
“Now, I’ll tell you this,” [Clinton] said. “I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending, or we will slow down the phase-in of the programs.”
Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise. At a Jan. 14, 1993, press conference in New Hampshire, he claimed that it was the media that had played up a middle-class tax cut, not him. A month later, he announced his actual plan before a joint session of Congress.
On page one of the New York Times, the paper described the fate of the middle-class tax cut this way: “Families earning as little as $20,000 a year — members of the ‘forgotten middle class’ whose taxes he promised during his campaign to cut — will also be asked to send more dollars to Washington under the President’s plan.”
In some ways, we are today reliving the campaign of 1992. As in 1992, the Democrat is promising a middle-class tax cut. As in 1992, the Democrat is hammering the Republican as a tool of the rich…
and…
Barring divine intervention, a President Obama would not have a Republican Congress to worry about. Instead, he would be working with a Democratic speaker of the House who loaded billions in pork onto a bill meant to fund our troops; with a Democratic Senate majority leader who promised to change the way Congress spent but fought earmark reform; and with committee leaders such as Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, who did so much to bring us the financial implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
History on Video: Dems Defend Stupidity Fiercely
Watch and rate the video on YouTube to keep it in front of the fence-sitters who don’t know this information.
“I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by republicans in congress or by me as president to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” -Bill Clinton
Burning down the house – what caused the financial crisis
Watch and rate the video on YouTube to keep it in front of the fence-sitters who don’t know this information.
Video: Democrats And Fannie Mae = “Family”
Reasons To Vote Democrat: A Quick List
There’s another email going around that contains some very valuable truths…
WHY I’VE DECIDED TO VOTE DEMOCRAT
I’m voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
I’m voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
I’m voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they’re doing because they now think we’re good people.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that people who can’t tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don’t start driving a Prius.
I’m voting Democrat because I’m not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe three or four pointy headed elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.
I’m voting Democrat because I believe that when the terrorists don’t have to hide from us over there, they’ll come over here, and I don’t want to have any guns in the house to shoot them with.
(I’m so Democrat that I have a big sign on the door of my house: There are no guns in this home! That, I am quite sure, will deter criminals. I think all Democrats should be required to display this sign on their home.)
I’m voting Democrat because I believe oil companies’ profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn’t.
I’m voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I’ve decided to marry my horse.
I really wonder why anyone would ever vote Republican.
Shep Smith on Democrat Congressional Leaders
Looks like the markets has had a bit of an uptick in the last few minutes. Seems like the downturn happened when the (democrat) congressional leadership was speaking, and the uptick came when they finally shut-up.
Clinton & Dems Mandated Bad Credit Housing
READ THIS vintage 1999 L.A. Times article, “Minorities’ Home Ownership Booms Under Clinton but Still Lags Whites”, and thank Clinton and and his administration for coaxing into homes those who didn’t need, and obviously couldn’t afford, them. Cheer for the democrats, who let massaging their voting base of minorities cloud their already embarrassingly poor natural judgment about the economic stability of the country as a whole.
The one thing the democrats are doing that they may not expect, is making the case that the poor are just as greedy to live beyond their means and aren’t ready for responsibility, even when you make it easy. The article points out…
It’s one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era. In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African Americans owning their own home is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites.
These numbers are dramatic enough to deserve more detail. When President Clinton took office in 1993, 42% of African Americans and 39% of Latinos owned their own home. By this spring, those figures had jumped to 46.9% of blacks and 46.2% of Latinos.
That’s a lot of new picket fences. Since 1994, when the numbers really took off, the number of black and Latino homeowners has increased by 2 million. In all, the minority homeownership rate is on track to increase more in the 1990s than in any decade this century except the 1940s, when minorities joined in the wartime surge out of the Depression.
and…
All of this suggests that Clinton’s efforts to increase minority access to loans and capital also have spurred this decade’s gains. Under Clinton, bank regulators have breathed the first real life into enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, a 20-year-old statute meant to combat “redlining” by requiring banks to serve their low-income communities. The administration also has sent a clear message by stiffening enforcement of the fair housing and fair lending laws. The bottom line: Between 1993 and 1997, home loans grew by 72% to blacks and by 45% to Latinos, far faster than the total growth rate.
Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more.
and…
In 1992, Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains. It has aimed extensive advertising campaigns at minorities that explain how to buy a home and opened three dozen local offices to encourage lenders to serve these markets. Most importantly, Fannie Mae has agreed to buy more loans with very low down payments–or with mortgage payments that represent an unusually high percentage of a buyer’s income. That’s made banks willing to lend to lower-income families they once might have rejected.
and…
The top priority may be to ask more of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers; HUD, which has the authority to set the targets, is poised to propose an increase this summer. Although Fannie Mae actually has exceeded its target since 1994, it is resisting any hike. It argues that a higher target would only produce more loan defaults by pressuring banks to accept unsafe borrowers. HUD says Fannie Mae is resisting more low-income loans because they are less profitable.
Barry Zigas, who heads Fannie Mae’s low-income efforts, is undoubtedly correct when he argues, “There is obviously a limit beyond which [we] can’t push [the banks] to produce.” But with the housing market still sizzling, minority unemployment down and Fannie Mae enjoying record profits (over $3.4 billion last year), it doesn’t appear that the limit has been reached.
You could almost smell the invitation to crash in the second to last paragraph above. Almost as if the L.A. Times, high on the powder of a Clinton White House and Democrat Congress, even smelled the rotten fish.
EVEN more damning is this New York Times (currently dba Obama Campaign PR consultancy) article written in the last year of the evil reign of Clinton. READ IT HERE
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people…
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry…”
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
And here we are.
Publish on the rooftops… Bill (I feel your pain) Clinton, Barney (Buddy Hackett’s less intelligent twin brother) Frank, Chris Dodd, etc. can claim this victory for the poor and disenfranchised. Well done!
And the Surrender Poodle from San Francisco has the guts to blame Republicans!?
The SF Surrender Poodle Has No Intention of Drilling
There’s nothing good to say about the shrilling hollow head of Nancy Pelosi. After watching her venomous and classless, yet always canned and poorly performed, talking points for more years than I can frankly stand anymore, I find her to be so offensive that I can’t find words other than these to describe it.
Anyway, adding to the pile of reasons “we think she’s worst human San Fran-sicko ever produced” (nod to you bathtub boy), are the latest jerky movements the DNC hand operating that empty head (sometimes you can see the strings from which her hands and feet dangle as well) expressed regarding drilling for oil offshore. In typical Surrender Poodle partisan fashion, the people need to settle for the appearance-of-desire.
Instead of getting us out of this energy mess, The Poodle is playing typical Democrat politics of talk-big-then-hide-the-missing-follow-through. The WSJ published a piece today on the situation…
The ruse began late Monday night, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a 290-page bill and then waved it through less than 24 hours later, 236-189. “Closed” rules prohibited the GOP from offering alternatives. The real game was to give vulnerable Democrats political cover by letting them vote for more offshore drilling — while also making more drilling all but impossible, thus appeasing the party’s green wing.
The bill would allow exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf, but only in waters 100 or more miles out in the Atlantic and Pacific. The farthest reaches of the OCS contain resources, but undersea geography and deep water make development very — if not prohibitively — expensive. Areas closer to land are far richer and easier to access. Conveniently, Mrs. Pelosi’s bill imposes a 50-mile “buffer zone” around the country.
Shameful, Nancy, but nothing new coming from you.