Thursday, October 28, 2010

Controversy and Chaos: BARNEY FRANK HAS GOT TO GO!

Controversy and Chaos: BARNEY FRANK HAS GOT TO GO!: "Frank’s fingerprints were all over the financial fiasco The Wall Street meltdown was caused by “bad decisions that were made by people in t..."

BARNEY FRANK HAS GOT TO GO!

Frank’s fingerprints were all over the financial fiasco

The Wall Street meltdown was caused by “bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector,” Frank said; the country is in dire straits today “thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best.” And that philosophy goes “back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, ‘Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.’ ”
In fact, that isn’t what Reagan said. His actual words were: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.

Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits — many of whom have been learning lately just how pitiless the private sector’s discipline can be — they weren’t the ones who “got us into this mess.” Barney Frank’s talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn’t wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so – or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and “redlining” because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods.” Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this “subprime” lending by authorizing ever more “flexible” criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. “Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor,” the Fed’s guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as “valid income sources” to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.

As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn’t take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. “What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?” I asked in this space in 1995. “Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today’s self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?”

Frank doesn’t. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that “these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” When the White House warned of “systemic risk for our financial system” unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the “systemic risk” is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: “The private sector got us into this mess.” Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.

By Jeff Jacoby

http://controversyandchaos.com/

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Controversy and Chaos: IS BARACK OBAMA A MUSLIM?

Controversy and Chaos: IS BARACK OBAMA A MUSLIM?: "IS BARACK OBAMA A MUSLIM? Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (Black Muslim) of Nyangoma-Koge..."

IS BARACK OBAMA A MUSLIM?

IS BARACK OBAMA A MUSLIM?  

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (Black Muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (White atheist).
When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro — a Muslim — moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language. Obama spent “two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school” in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school. 

Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham-a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas-at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was two.
Obama’s spin-meisters have made it appear that Obama’s introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best.  In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son’s education.

Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta’s Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

MUSLIM or not Obama is deceitful, deceptive and will do and say anything to gain and keep power.
LET’S SEND BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA PACKING IN 2012!

http://controversyandchaos.com

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Controversy and Chaos: DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF SCREW YOU: CAP AND TRAD...

Controversy and Chaos: DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF SCREW YOU: CAP AND TRAD...: "DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF SCREW YOU: CAP AND TRADEEmbraced some years ago in Europe and a few other countries, cap and trade creates an art..."

DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF SCREW YOU: CAP AND TRADE

DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF SCREW YOU: CAP AND TRADE
Embraced some years ago in Europe and a few other countries, cap and trade creates an artificial market for various industries to buy, sell, and trade allowances that permit a certain amount of carbon output.  It has long been on the wish list for American liberals and extremist environmentalists. 


OBAMA and the DEMS want to suck us all dry!

Top 10 Reasons to Oppose Cap and Trade  

1. It will raise energy costs:  While different nuanced approaches continue to surface, any analysis of any cap and trade scheme comes to the same conclusion; energy costs will go up.  The latest serious attempt to enact cap and trade in the United States, America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), serves as a good example.  An analysis of this legislation cited during a Senate hearing held by the Committee on Environment and Public Works estimated the costs to the average American household would be between $800 and $1,300 by 2015, and then increasing to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.
 
2. It doesn’t help the environment:  If energy costs are going to go up for Americans, shouldn’t there be significant environmental benefit and progress towards reversing climate change?  You would think so.  But even if the most aggressive of cap and trade schemes were properly adhered to, scientists that both advocate and oppose a cap and trade program widely agree that the maximum drop to the earth’s temperature would be no more than 0.07 degrees Celsius by the year 2050.  To give some sense of just how negligible this decrease would be, we cannot even estimate the absolute mean surface temperature of the earth within 0.07.  What’s worse is that cap and trade actually provides incentives to emit more carbon, not less.  An article by the Christian Science Monitor explains: “By turning carbon emissions into commodities that can be bought and sold, cap-and-trade policies could remove the stigma from producing such emissions.”  In other words, if industries understand they are working within a legal framework when they output carbon, the public pressure for them to cut down is weakened.  Evidence of this can be seen in Europe where most countries have seen carbon emissions go up, even though the European Union has had a cap and trade regime in place since 2005.   


3. It doesn’t work where it has been tried:  Speaking of Europe, let’s take a closer look at how cap and trade is fairing.  As mentioned earlier, the EU is watching carbon emission levels rise despite the fact that they have had a cap and trade system since 2005.  Furthermore, the Heartland Institute reports that 12 of the 15 EU nations taking part in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a program that sets greenhouse gas reduction targets and serves as a precursor to cap and trade, are failing to meet their reduction targets, with three going over by more than 10 percent and another three going over by more than 20 percent.  In fact, emissions for all EU countries went up on average 2.1 percent between 2000 and 2004.  Compare this with the United States where currently no such regulatory regime exists and yet emissions went up only 1.3 percent during the same time period.  Nonetheless, President Obama has announced an aggressive set of targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promising to “work expeditiously with key stakeholders and the Congress to develop an economy-wide emissions reduction program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions approximately 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.”

4. It will cost Americans jobs:  This calculation is a pretty simple one.  For U.S. industry to comply with a cap and trade scheme, they have to reduce their carbon emissions.  There are two ways to do this: (1) produce less – this obviously hurts jobs as companies would seek to streamline their workforce to compensate for a drop in production, or (2) buy carbon allowances in order to keep production up – this, too, would threaten jobs as companies would be forced to devote more internal resources to allowances, negatively effecting their bottom lines and potentially putting workers on the chopping block.  In either case, the rising costs of energy under a cap and trade system, as mentioned earlier, only add to the problem.  An analysis conducted by Charles River Associates in 2007 estimated anywhere from 1.2 million to 2.3 million jobs would be lost under a cap and trade scheme. 


5. It is in effect a hidden regressive tax:  We’ve talked about how cap and trade causes energy prices to go up.  That doesn’t just hit American industry, but American consumers as well.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) correctly notes that as these prices go up in the form of higher gasoline, heating oil, and electricity, the poor are hit hardest with what is in effect a hidden regressive tax.  President Obama promises to return revenues to vulnerable communities, families and businesses, but that leaves taxpayers at the whim of government to redistribute income rather than letting taxpayer keep their hard earned dollars.

6. It sets a dangerous precedent:  While extremist environmentalists and their liberal allies have been whining about climate change for years, most stop short of declaring cap and trade the silver-bullet solution.  Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council are generally supportive of the concept of cap and trade.  However, as The Heritage Foundation has pointed out, these groups have found fault with actual proposals such as America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, criticizing them for not going far enough and willing only to endorse them as “a good first step.”  As much damage as a cap and trade scheme would cause in its own right, this posture by extreme environmental groups foreshadows even more draconian regulations in our future.

7. It prevents market forces from working for the environment: The market distortions imposed by a cap and trade system would be significant.  Recently, major energy companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in technologies that capture and store carbon as well as lower carbon alternative energy sources.  A cap and trade system however, sets up perverse incentives that will distract these and other companies from market-based solutions to curb carbon output.  Resources instead will be funneled to the artificial market for carbon allowances that cap and trade sets up.

8. It threatens to put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with other countries: Though the E.U. and the United States may be buying into cap and trade, industrial giants like China and India are not.  Remember the lost jobs we talked about in point #4?  In addition to China and India, nearby Mexico (another country where cap and trade is not even a remote possibility) are more than willing to pick up the U.S. slack and bolster their already robust manufacturing sectors.

9. It opens the door to massive fraud and corruption:  As energy companies look to game the system, cap and trade would open the door wide for fraud and corruption that could devastate U.S. investors and the economy as a whole.  This has been seen already in the UK, a country currently participating in cap and trade.  In a recent article by the British-based Guardian newspaper they report: “Britain’s biggest polluting companies are abusing European emissions trading scheme (ETS) designed to tackle global warming by cashing in their carbon credits in order to bolster ailing balance sheets.”  In the United States we have seen what happens when companies engage in creative accounting measures to hide losses and the staggering domino effect it can have on Wall Street investors and the larger economy.  If you need more proof of this threat, look no further than this report by The Competitive Enterprise Institute that discusses Enron’s support for a cap and trade scheme that would allow them to dominate this new, made-up market for carbon.

10. It threatens to bust the federal budget at a time when the United States can scarcely afford it:  Federal spending continues at a breakneck pace.  The recent passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill along with even more taxpayer funded bailouts looming on the horizon add to U.S. budget woes and sink us deeper into recession.  And as if times weren’t tough enough, the CBO reports that cap and trade would heap additional undue pressure on our fragile budget.  According to their report, government would face the same challenges with higher energy costs that consumers do.  Additionally, the fall in production for U.S. industry would lead to a loss of federal government tax revenues.  Further increasing spending while decreasing revenues makes cap and trade a tough sell in the current economic climate.

http://www.freedomworks.org

http://controversyandchaos.com

Friday, October 1, 2010

Controversy and Chaos: WHY EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO GET BEHIND THE TEA PAR...

Controversy and Chaos: WHY EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO GET BEHIND THE TEA PAR...: "The purpose of the Tea Party movement has been to stop wasteful government spending, excessive taxation, and overreliance on regulatory bure..."

WHY EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO GET BEHIND THE TEA PARTY & VOTE OUT THE BUMS!

The purpose of the Tea Party movement has been to stop wasteful government spending, excessive taxation, and overreliance on regulatory bureaucracies.  Please forward this blog to as many people as you can and GET INVOLVED!


Support the Tea Party & VOTE OUT THE BUMS!

Contract with America   
We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

 Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.

Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.

Demand a Balanced Budget Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike.

Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. 

Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning.

6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.

Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries.


Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy 
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark.

Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011.

If you would like to learn more or get involved to TAKE BACK AMERICA go to: http://www.teapartypatriots.org/

http://controversyandchaos.com