Cartoon: Killing the Forest for the Tree

Bailout Begins A New Round Of Shakedowns

By MICHELLE MALKIN | IBD 19 Feb. 09

Fresh off the trillion-dollar porkulus bill signing in Denver, President Obama immediately launched into his next New Raw Deal expansion: a massive mortgage entitlement program forcing lenders to refinance at an initial cost of $50 billion to $100 billion.

That’s in addition to the bipartisan-supported $50 billion in the “stimulus” bill to bail out homeowners underwater on their mortgages and the $2 billion in “neighborhood stabilization” funds to alleviate the foreclosure crisis.

In tandem with the White House Bad Borrowers Bailout, Obama’s old friends at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) are launching a new campaign of their own: the “Home Savers” campaign. What a coinky-dinky, huh?

As with most of the bully tactics of the radical left-wing group, it ain’t gonna be pretty. They are the shock troops on the streets doing the dirty work while the Community Organizer-in-Chief keeps his delicate hands clean.

Trumpets ACORN: “On Feb. 19, ACORN members will launch a new tactic in fighting foreclosures: civil disobedience. Participants in the ACORN Home Savers campaign nationwide will simply refuse to move out of foreclosed homes, or in some cases, will move back in. ACORN homesteaders intend to squat in their homes until a comprehensive, federal solution for people facing foreclosure is put in place.”

ACORN’s foot soldiers, funded with your tax dollars, will scream, pound their fists, chain themselves to buildings, padlock the doors and engage in illegal behavior until they get what they want. It’s a recipe for anarchy. Threatens Baltimore ACORN’s Louis Beverly, who calls himself a “Foreclosure Fighter”:

“After you’ve used all your legal options, your last resort is civil disobedience. We’re talking about families who have been in their homes 20 or 30 years. People who are assets in the community, who look out for the elderly, who have community associations, and these are the people being kicked out of the community.”

We can all sympathize with good folks who can’t pay their bills. But as I’ve said repeatedly in my criticism of the mortgage entitlement mentality embraced by both parties in Washington, home ownership is not a civil right — and neither is home retention.

Artificially propping up the housing market will only result in more of the same costly borrow-spend-panic-repeat cycles that got us into this mess in the first place. Failing corporations need to fail. So do failing home borrowers. This is borrowing from frugal renter Peter to pay profligate Paul’s home loan.

Now that’s the kind of theft that should be the subject of civil disobedience.

Instead, ACORN offices, funded with your tax dollars, are training teams of “Home Savers” — described as “people ready and willing to mobilize on short notice to defend the homesteaders against attempts to evict them.”

Ready, willing and able to mobilize on short notice because they are either unemployed or employed full-time as ACORN shakedown artists.

Guess who’s encouraging them to defy the law. Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who told them: “Stay in your homes. If the American people, anybody out there is being foreclosed, don’t leave.”

The housing bullies will be assisted by left-wing propaganda documentarians at the Brave New Foundation, headed up by Hollywood lib Robert Greenwald, who will disseminate sob stories to crank up pressure while Obama pushes his housing entitlement plan.

ACORN is targeting the following areas: Tucson, Ariz.; Oakland, Calif.; Los Angeles; Contra Costa County, Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Baltimore; New York; Houston; San Mateo County, Calif.; Denver; Bridgeport, Conn.; Wilmington, Del.; Broward County, Fla.; Boston; Flint, Mich.; Detroit; Minneapolis; Raleigh, N.C.; Durham, N.C.; Albany, N.Y.; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Pittsburgh; and Dallas.

ACORN has waited three decades for this moment in the sun. And as Obama promised ACORN members at a forum in December 2007, “We’re going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We’re gonna be having meetings all across the country . . . so that you have input into the agenda.” The moment is nigh. Prepare for lawlessness.

President Obama’s Savior-Based Economy

By MICHELLE MALKIN | 12 February 2009 | IBD

President Obama is back in messianic campaign mode. It is unbecoming. When he’s not snarling at conservative opponents of his endless spending programs, he’s pandering to supporters as the nation’s community-organizer-in-chief.

At a stimulus rally in Fort Myers, Fla., on Tuesday, a woman named Henrietta Hughes stood up to decry the mortgage crisis and ask Obama for his personal help. Choking back tears, she implored: “I have an urgent need. . . . We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom.”

If she had more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too. The soul-fixer dutifully asked her name, gave her a hug and ordered his staff to meet with her. Supporters cried “Amen!” and “Yes!” A young McDonald’s worker named Julio Osegueda bolted out of his seat and exclaimed: “It is such a blessing to see you. Oh! Gracious God, thank you so much! Ungh!”

The event turned into a full-blown revival meeting when Obama announced that the Senate had passed his massive stimulus plan. Audience members erupted into applause. Tongues of fire descended from the sky. Loaves and fishes (or rather, pork and Kool-Aid) multiplied miraculously into trillions for all.

GOP Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina didn’t know how right he was when he warned over the weekend: “We’re moving precipitously close to what I would call a savior-based economy.”

Like Mighty Mouse, President Obama is here to save the day. The government is here to help — and it is your patriotic duty to pay for it all without preconditions. Hughes didn’t explain the cause of her financial turmoil. Obama didn’t ask.

And if we conservatives dare to question the circumstances — and the underlying assumption that it is government’s (that is, taxpayers’) role to bail her out — we’ll be lambasted as cruel haters of the downtrodden.

Woe unto ye unbelievers in Big Government who cling to what Obama derided as “ideological rigidity.” Well, pardon my unbending belief in fairness and personal responsibility, but why should my tax dollars go to feed the housing entitlement beast?

At his fear-mongering press conference Monday night, Obama lamented that homeowners “are seeing their property values decline.” Countrywide crony Sen. Chris Dodd successfully stuffed $50 billion into the just-passed stimulus package for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to spend on “mandatory loan modifications” for homeowners deep underwater on their mortgages. That’s in addition to the $20 billion already allocated by the House last month for the same purposes.

Banks have been engaged in these “Mo Mod” programs over the past year. Democrats want to accelerate the pace and use the power of government to essentially provide a blanket amnesty for borrowers and lenders who made bad financial decisions.

Yes, there are many responsible borrowers out there having trouble negotiating loan modifications. But this $50 billion giveaway to the banks — on top of the upward of $2 trillion more from the Treasury department, on top of the $700 billion in original TARP funding — is throwing more bad money after bad.

This massive expansion of government meddling in the housing market — yet another attempt to get federal bureaucrats in the business of rewriting loan contracts and reducing principal — will just delay the inevitable.

A report released by the Comptroller of the Currency in December showed that more than half of loans modified in the first quarter of 2008 fell 30 days delinquent within six months. And after six months, 35% of people were 60 or more days behind on their payments.

Where’s the fairness in forcing prudent homeowners and renters to subsidize people who bought overpriced houses and rescue the banks that lent to them?

Tellingly, Obama chose Fort Myers to drum up support for his wealth redistributionism. The area has been one of the hardest hit by foreclosures, as the president was quick to point out. But many of those homes are second or third homes and investment properties.

And low housing prices are not a catastrophe for everyone. They’ve created opportunities for Americans who haven’t been able to buy in an artificially inflated market. The median sales price of a home in the Fort Myers area fell 50% to $106,900, from $215,200 in December 2007. Bargain-priced home sales are up 146% from a year ago.

It’s sacrilegious to say it in the Age of Obama, but it needs to be said: Homeownership is not an entitlement. Credit is not a civil right. Your property-value preservation is not my problem. Can I get an “Amen!”?

BAILOUT!

First, the banks and insurance companies and now, the auto makers.

They each made stupid blunders, Then got bailouts!

Sounds like you should be in line for a bailout!

Bailing Out Shariah Law

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 31 Dec. 2008

Islamofascism: In bailing out AIG, Uncle Sam may have taken on more than he bargained for, including a constitutional fight over the promotion of religion.

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Earlier this month, as the New York-based insurance giant benefited from $153 billion in tax-supported bailout funds, it launched a business unit offering Shariah-compliant insurance products in the U.S.

For the first time, homeowners’ insurance policies “compliant with key Islamic finance tenets” will be marketed to Muslims in America.

“We are pleased to offer socially responsible solutions to this segment of the domestic market,” the near-bankrupt AIG announced in a press release, explaining that the Islamic market represents “an important and emerging growth opportunity for AIG.”

But there’s little that is “socially responsible” about Shariah law, which regulates the “takaful” insurance AIG is selling, along with other Islamic finance.

Shariah law authorizes horrific human-rights abuses, including the kind of violence and oppression against women, homosexuals, apostates and non-Muslims seen in Saudi Arabia and earlier under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

To fully comply with Shariah code, AIG has hired a “Shariah Supervisory Board” composed of “Shariah scholars.” Who are these so-called scholars?

One, according to its press release, is Muhammad Imran Usmani, who happens to be the son of Sheik Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, who supports violent jihad against Westerners. The elder Usmani is so radical that Dow Jones & Co. recently removed him from the board of its Islamic market index.

At a minimum, AIG has to do better due diligence if it’s going to use taxpayer money for such a controversial enterprise. But what’s the responsibility of the U.S. government here?

The Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., argues the U.S. is promoting a religious legal code at odds with democratic values and capitalism. And that makes the bailout unconstitutional. So it’s suing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the Federal Reserve to stop all bailout funds from going to AIG.

According to the suit, use of taxpayer funds to acquire ownership of a business that intentionally promotes, endorses, supports and funds Shariah-based Islamic religious practices violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

“The U.S. government, through its ownership of AIG, is not only violating the Constitution,” the suits claims, “but also promoting and financing the destruction of America using American tax dollars.”

While that sounds over-the-top, a sizeable share of the profit and any interest earned by AIG’s Islamic subsidiary must be “purified” by investing in Islamic charities. Such transfers will be controlled by Usmani and other Shariah advisers.

Since 9/11, dozens of major Muslim charities around the world, including several based in the U.S., have been tied to terrorism and shut down. So AIG — along with American taxpayers — could unwittingly finance terrorism against the U.S. and its allies.

The potential for terror money laundering deeply concerns two Republican leaders on the Hill, who on the heels of the Thomas More lawsuit fired off a letter to AIG CEO Ed Liddy warning him that the FBI could come knocking.

“We hope you can verify what hands your money passes through, because we would hate to see the FBI visit you one day, look into your books and tell you that money from AIG found its way into terrorist hands,” wrote Reps. Frank Wolf, congressional Human Rights Caucus co-chairman, and Sue Myrick, co-chairwoman of the congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus.

What’s odd is that the Treasury Department is the agency charged with cracking down on terror financing, yet it’s encouraging firms like AIG to go into Islamic finance. In fact, Treasury co-sponsored a seminar in November titled “Islamic Financing 101” to promote Shariah financing to corporate America. [HOLY LAND FOUNDATION]

The seminar was jointly sponsored by Harvard University, which is heavily supported by Saudi petrodollars.

So it’s not just AIG that’s actively helping Shariah gain a foothold in America. It’s also Washington.

Financial crisis or not, it’s hardly in the economic interest of taxpayers or the U.S. to own part of a business that supports a Stone Age legal code championed by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

AIG should divest itself from Shariah business practices if it wants to keep its public bailout money.

Thumbs Down On Bailouts For Autos, Banks And Mortgage Holders

“Thumbs Down On Bailouts For Autos, Banks And Mortgage Holders”  – Yet the American majority still were overruled by the minority? – Liberals claim we are a democracy – even though our Founding Fathers did all they could do to found America as a republic.  They knew that democracies were dangerous to liberty.

Americans must read history – just go back to Germany at it’s collapse – remember the pictures – wheelbarrows full of Deutchmarks for a loaf of bread!

Don

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IBD/TIPP Poll: Thumbs Down On Bailouts For Autos, Banks And Mortgage Holders

IBD 9 Dec. 08

Sixty-three percent of Americans surveyed in the latest IBD/TIPP Poll — including 66% of investors, 59% of Midwesterners and even 53% of Democrats — disapprove of financial aid for U.S. automakers. Respondents also opposed bailouts for banks and other financial institutions by 53% to 45.5%, with only Democrats and Midwesterners in favor. They were more ambivalent, with 50% opposed and 45% in favor, when it comes to mortgage holders. Help for state and local governments won grudging approval. Republicans were opposed across the board.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/Polls.aspx?id=313629919786029#polla

Click above link for a enlarged view.

Universities request federal economic stimulus money

Letter proposes giving millions to governors

Tuesday, December 16, 2008 BY VALERIE STRAUSS

Ann Arbor News

WASHINGTON – More than 40 higher-education leaders from across the country asked Congress today to commit 5 percent of any economic stimulus program to the nation’s colleges and universities.

The educators, led by Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, an educational foundation, published an open letter in newspapers warning that state budget cuts have harmed the public educational enterprise that is at the heart of the nation’s long-term security.

The letter says that an investment of between $40 million and $45 million will help the country remain economically competitive.

Most of the money would go to public institutions, which educate 80 percent of all college students, although private schools could qualify.

Among those who signed the open letter are the leaders of state university systems in Wisconsin, Florida, New York and Texas. Others include University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau and the heads of several national higher-education associations.

** RIDICULOUS! **

SAMPLE: From the University of Michigan Financial Report 2008

“Today, the University of Michigan’s endowment is a collection of 6,500 separate funds with a total value of $7.6 billion at June 30, 2008.    At June 30 2008, U-M’s Endowment was the eighth largest among public and private universities.”

Rewarding Failure: Auto Companies

Rewarding Failure

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, December 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Bailouts: The proposed $15 billion bailout of the Big Three failed in the Senate for one major reason: Some lawmakers stood up to the unions. But their stand may be moot, since automakers may get the money anyway.

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Read More: Business & Regulation | Economy

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For a full week, GOP lawmakers bore the brunt of the bitter battle waged over an aid package for GM and Chrysler. Though the idea is wildly unpopular among voters, some Washington politicians were desperate to pass it — particularly the Democrats, who are beholden to the Auto Workers and other unions for tens of millions in campaign donations.

In addition to major restructuring by the automakers, GOP senators insisted on givebacks by the United Auto Workers. The UAW responded with a resolute “No.” But the bailout foes won, killing the $15 billion in aid.

And they were right to do so.

As the chart shows, gold-plated union contracts are a big reason for U.S. automakers’ woes (though managerial incompetence at the Big Three also played a role). The average Big Three worker made $73.26 an hour in 2006; the average worker at a foreign transplant, $44.20. Bailout foes wanted the gap to be shrunk by the end of next year.

A chart making the rounds on the Internet tells it all: Last year, Toyota made 9.37 million vehicles. GM, virtually the same number. Yet, Toyota made a profit of $38.7 billion on its global operations, or $1,874 per car, while GM lost $38.7 billion, or $4,055 a car, almost entirely due to its operations in the U.S.

Even so, the UAW vowed to make no big changes unto 2011, when their current deal expires. That basically would lock in the Big Three’s lack of competitiveness for at least three more years, requiring billions and billions more in bailouts or bankruptcy.

Immediately after the bill failed Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he “dreads” seeing what the stock market would do on Friday. “It’s not going to be a pleasant sight,” he warned. For the record, the NASDAQ rose 2.2%, while the S&P 500 increased 0.7%. He needn’t have worried.

As for the UAW, they rolled the dice, betting they could lose in the Senate and still get bailed out. It looks like their gamble paid off.

On Friday, the White House said it might use money from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program — reversing its earlier stance. Why? “A precipitous collapse of this industry would have a severe impact on our economy, and it would be irresponsible to further weaken and destabilize our economy at this time,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Friday.

We’re sympathetic, but this is the wrong path to take — especially after the president’s own party successfully made its case in Congress, and won.

We don’t want to see workers suffer or the auto industry disappear. But the fact is, under bankruptcy reorganization, they won’t. The workers will still exist, as will their skills. Unprofitable plants that can’t be turned around will close. A bankruptcy judge will sell unprofitable assets to those who can use them productively.

They won’t need a “car czar,” or congressional oversight, or political micromanagement. And out of this process, a slimmer, more competitive and, yes, even profitable Big Three can emerge if we let it — one that will be able to compete with foreign companies on our own soil.

GM, Ford, Chrysler, UAW – BAILOUT

Auto Execs

General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, and Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli listen to a question during a Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday. AP

Is our Congress really stupid enough to give these clowns any of the taxpayers hard earned money?

Look into the faces of these incompetents – and haven’t we had enough of seeing Ronnie Gettelfinger right there in line for a hand-out?

Look into these faces – all of them multi-millionaires themselves.

Don’t let your Congress person do it!