Month: September 2008

Illegal Land Barons

by digby

I wrote the other day about the wingnut meme that it’s the racial minorities who’ve caused this crisis. They are really going for it now. Here’s Michelle Malkin:

It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave — Loudoun County, Va., California’s Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix, for starters — also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal-alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

Regional reports across the country have decried the subprime meltdown’s impact on illegal-immigrant “victims.” A July report showed that in seven of the ten metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, Hispanics represented at least one third of the population; in two of those areas — Merced and Salinas-Monterey, Calif. — Hispanics comprised half the population. The amnesty-promoting National Council of La Raza and its Development Fund have received millions in federal funds to “counsel” their constituents on obtaining mortgages with little to no money down; the group almost succeeded in attaching a $10-million earmark for itself in one of the housing bills past this spring.

For the last five years, I’ve reported on the rapidly expanding illegal-alien home-loan racket. The top banks clamoring for their handouts as their profits plummet, led by Wachovia and Bank of America, launched aggressive campaigns to woo illegal-alien homebuyers. The quasi-governmental Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority jumped in to guarantee home loans to illegal immigrants. The Washington Post noted, almost as an afterthought in a 2005 report: “Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing major ethnic or racial group, have been courted aggressively by real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and programs for first-time buyers that offer help with closing costs. Ads proclaim: “Sin verificacion de ingresos! Sin verificacion de documento!” — which loosely translates as, ‘Income tax forms are not required, nor are immigration papers.’

I guess Malkin has never heard of something called “No Doc” loans which mean No Income, No Asset, No employment Verification. It’s got nothing to do with immigration.

And, like most racists, she forgets herself from time to time and forgets to distinguish between illegal immigrants and Mexican Americans. It makes no difference to her, of course, but they are usually a bit more scrupulous in their obfuscation.

The idea that the trillion dollar credit crunch was caused by illegal immigrants is so ludicrous that I can’t stop laughing. She cites California’s Inland Empire as a hotbed of illegal immigrant mortgage scammers. I suppose it’s possible. But unless they were making a really good middle class living, they wouldn’t have been able to afford the payments even under the best conditions on one of those houses. It seems highly unlikely to me that day laborers had the means to commute back and forth hundreds of miles each day to their half a million dollar tract homes out in the desert.

Here’s a story from today’s LA CityBeat about those houses out in the desert:

As the American financial system finally collapsed and the investment experts swore they never saw it coming, the apocalypse continued out here in the Mojave, slow and steady.

Twenty years ago, the only people who moved to this unloved chunk of inland California were misfits and military and the poor trying to escape the crime and horror of L.A. slums. Then, improbably, absurdly, stupidly, the High Desert on the other side of Cajon Pass became an “exurb,” one of those ugly stucco grids dropped on the ground with feeder roads to the I-15, instant fake luxury, only two hours from the office, when traffic’s good.

And every little chunk of non-government-owned sun-blasted creosote – from the prison-covered hellscape of Adelanto to the trailer-park junkyards of Yermo – suddenly became valuable real estate. Dirt lots you couldn’t give away in 1999 were selling for half a million in 2005, at the insane peak of the bubble, complete with a three-bedroom cardboard castle in the middle of the scraped-bare lot.

There are dozens of these abandoned new houses around me, in these desert foothills that deserved a better fate. The financial wizards could’ve predicted the entire apocalypse had they simply walked around the Mojave and watched the sad routine that’s been going on since at least last year.

Read it all for a very evocative illustration of what’s happened to these places. The idea that illegal maids and gardeners were the ones buying is ridiculous. It was average middle class Americans buying in the exurbs to get away from the hustle and flow of the city — which for many of them was defined as — too many Mexicans.

This meme is absurd, but it’s the only way the conservatives can explain things within their world view. And there’s nothing new here. The historical American resistance to government action is historically tied to a reluctance give money to people of color. This goes all the way back to the beginning. They have to find a way to blame this mess on “the other” and while there’s certainly plenty of anger at the Wall Street fat cats, it just can’t satisfy the wingnut lizard brain. They’ve been trained to think that the owners have their best interests in mind and will put them first over the darker hued.

I would also bet that one of the ways their conservative leaders can make sure their base will agree to a bail out of the fat cats (eventually) is by making damned sure that blacks and Mexicans aren’t similarly rewarded. They’re going to have to take responsibility for thinking they had a place in the ownership society.

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New Rules

by digby

Whether the debate happens tomorrow night or not, if anyone thinks we are going to have a sort of Lincoln-Douglas series because of the “new rules” they’d better think again:

Before negotiations with the campaigns began, the plan was for the two formal debates (the third is a “town hall” format) to focus on nine questions, with nine minutes devoted to each. Now, each topic will still be allotted nine minutes — but not for focused debate. Instead, the candidates will begin each response with a two-minute statement, which, freely translated, means two minutes from their stump speeches. That leaves only five minutes for discussion of any topic — just long enough to offer the merest start of an exploration of complex issues such as, for example, conflicting explanations for the success of the military “surge” in Baghdad.

The Commission on Presidential Debates called these rules “a breakthrough in the history of televised debates.” And the commission and the political parties speak of these craven modifications as if the public interest were their overriding concern. But to do well, a candidate need only memorize enough statistics and one-liners to fill 45 minutes — essentially what many college students do at exam time. No wonder these debates are likely to disappoint politically aware viewers and fail to enlighten those who watch out of a sense of duty.

It’s a pity. Just a few changes in format could transform these unrevealing, visually static and technologically backward shows into genuine must-see TV.

Read on for a list of excellent suggestions. I particularly like this one, but they’re all good:

Teach painlessly.

Let’s not pretend that viewers have followed politics, economics and war as closely as professional journalists and news junkies — a third of our citizens still believes that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Use the video screens to showcase incontrovertible facts: “The U.S. national debt is now equivalent to about 65% of the nation’s gross domestic product.” Then have the candidates discuss: “What does that mean to you? To your kids? What would you do about it?”

Nobody knows if the debate will happen tomorrow. If it doesn’t, Obama is planning on being there anyway and he’ll hold a town meeting anyway. The networks should tell McCain that if he doesn’t show up, they’ll show Obama’s town meeting in prime time. Everybody’s spent a lot of money and time preparing for the event and he’s canceling it as a political stunt. He shouldn’t benefit from that.

Besides, the Republicans are the ones who insisted on repealing the fairness Doctrine. They don’t believe there’s any obligation for broadcasters to provide the public with both sides of the argument. As ye sow, dudes.

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Job One

by digby

It ain’t done yet:

A spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, cautions that House Republicans have not signed on to anything.

Spokesman Kevin Smith said this includes Rep. Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, who spoke to the press after this morning’s negotiation over the Wall Street bailout bill.

[…]

Bachus was the only House Republican at the meeting. Three Senate Republicans were in attendance. Asked if his boss had signed on to the plan, Bachus’s spokesman said “this is above my pay grade” and referred a reporter to the House Financial Service Committee staff.

Boehner issued a statement this afternoon saying, “I am encouraged by the bipartisan progress being made toward an economic package that protects the interests of families, seniors, small businesses, and all taxpayers. However, House Republicans have not agreed to any plan at this point. We owe it to all those with a stake in this process to continue our discussions until we arrive at an agreement that is acceptable on both sides of the aisle – and more importantly, one that serves the interests of American taxpayers. With that in mind, I look forward to joining my colleagues, President Bush, Sen. McCain, and Sen. Obama at the White House later today to take the next critical steps on a rescue package.”

Two possibilities here. First, that House Republicans are going to let McCain “convince them” that they must sign on to the bailout, thus showing the country that he’s toppermost of the bipartisanmost, who will work with the Democrats and knock his own troops in line for the good of the country. Say jalapeno!

Or, they are giving cover to McCain to vote no on the basis of fiscal conservatism and anti-Big Gummint principles.

There is some basis for them thinking they can get away with it. This is from the WSJ/ NBC poll:

While McCain trails Obama on the issue of the economy, he appears to have tapped into the anger voters feel on this topic.

Asked to pick between two these two statements below, a whopping 67 percent said they preferred the latter:

* End President Bush’s policies and have more oversight over government institutions
* Clean up Washington and take on waste and fraud

That second statement, in fact, is very similar to what McCain routinely says now on the campaign trail. “I’ll tell you whose fault it is — corruption in Washington and corruption on Wall Street,” he said in Michigan last week. “And as president, I am going to clean it up, and I am going to fix it and return you back to the strength of our economy which you have earned and deserve.”

In another article, Peter Hart calls McCain the “Howard Beale of this election.” Geez..

Certainly, voters still think the Democrats and Obama are better able to deal with the economy, but the protests we are seeing sprout up around the country may actually end up aiding McCain’s cause.

At this point, I just have to cling to the idea that Democrats understand that the single worst thing they can do for the health of the economy is to allow John McCain to become the next president (and then very likely shortly thereafter, Sarah Palin!) If you want to see a worldwide economic catastrophe handled like Katrina, wait until Phil Graham gets a hold of it.

Winning the election is job number one.

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Big Picture

by digby

Uhm, I just saw the video of the “big meeting” which showed Bush flanked by Pelosi and Reid. He blathered about something useless and then said they wouldn’t take any questions. The camera then panned over to McCain grinning like a jack-o-lantern and that was it.

If politics is TV with the sound turned off, this photo-op gave the impression that Bush, Pelosi and Reid are consulting McCain.

It’s probably just as well. This Dog and Pony show is not something Obama should wish to be associated with.

Update: Ok there’s some footage that shows Obama in the room.

Going Over Like A Led Palin

by dday

I think John McCain suspended his campaign (sort of) to deflect attention away from the jaw-gaping performance by his running mate with Katie Couric. We already know that he ran in for a damage control interview with Couric last night in the middle of Letterman. That was the right move. I mean this is stunning:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

And this:

COURIC: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land– boundary that we have with– Canada […]

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We– we do– it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is– from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to– to our state.

As Couric said yesterday, in the understatement of the year, “She’s not always responsive when she’s asked questions.” Yes, in the way a hen is not responsive.

(ZOMG, you just called Sarah Palin a hen!)

I’m with Greenwald, she’s either deeply ignorant and incurious or she’s so buttoned up by the McCain campaign that she can only speak gibberish. I’m inclined toward the latter, actually. McCain’s team is desperate to keep her stage-managed to such a ridiculous degree that Campbell Brown is calling it sexist. Nobody can look too credible when you’re always looking over your shoulder and worried about what you’re going to say.

Of course, the McCain campaign has good reason to restrict access to Palin. Because her views, if offered to the public, would be extremely damaging. She has extreme Christianist viewpoints including book-banning. Her pastor is a nutcase who believes in witchcraft and who made this comment about Jews right in front of her:

The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It’s high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That’s what we are waiting for. That’s part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the — you know — if you look at the Israelites, that’s how they work. And that’s how they are, even today.

Yeah, I think you would want to hide the candidate of holy war. Plus there’s the unseemly influence of Todd Palin, her unelected de facto chief of staff. And the vindictiveness of their obstruction in the Troopergate case, which now might include witness tampering.

“Until McCain campaign staffers flew to Alaska to stop this investigation, the Governor and her staff agreed to comply with what we all know is a bi-partisan investigation. After Aug. 29 the campaign started working to block this investigation, and witnesses began joining that effort by ignoring their subpoenas and risking jail time. Something obviously changed the minds of these witnesses after Aug. 29th,” said Rep., Les Gara (D-Anchorage), a State Representative and Former Alaska Assistant Attorney General.

Alaska’s witness tampering statutes prohibit any person from “inducing” a witness to fail to comply with a subpoena. Almost daily, McCain staffers have called press conferences and made efforts to stonewall the legislative investigation. Prior to Aug. 29 no witness had stated they’d refuse to comply with the investigation, and the Governor in fact promised she and her staff would comply.

Karl Rove was asked if Sarah Palin would make a good President. He said “I don’t know.” And the McCain campaign wants to keep it that way.

…see also this Rolling Stone article on the myths versus the facts in Palin’s image.

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Waiting For McCain

by digby

Last night I was driving on the freeway listening to Mara Liasson tell me all about McCain’s debate gambit and realized that the news media was going to cover the story with a “waiting for Biden” vigil. It’s their favorite kind of story. They can spend the next two days speculating about something they can’t possibly know the outcome of. What’s not to like?

It’s possible that Bush actually thinks he helped McCain by demanding the meeting and dragging Obama back to Washington. But I think he may have thrown a monkey wrench into his mavericky plans by trying to get both candidates to hold hands and accept the bill. Mccain desperately wants to vote against this thing, but if he has to accept it, I have no doubt that McCain didn’t want to be anywhere near him at the moment, preferring to be seen marching into meetings from which emerge details of his hard knuckled demands that everybody “stop the bullshit.”

Of course, I’ve been wrong about this before. I assumed that when Bush defied all logic and initiated the surge after having just lost the congress to anti-war Democrats, that he’d seriously messed up McCain’s electoral hopes by taking away his ability to run against the administration on Iraq from the right. It didn’t work out that way. The surge ended up having some press friendly short term success so McCain took credit for it and now he’s seen by too many people as some kind of foreign policy oracle.

So, it’s theoretically possible that could happen now. He may be backed into supporting the bailout in which case he has to hope that it works fast and that they can diffuse the “economy story” long enough for him to get elected. One thing you can bet on is that if McCain votes for the bill, he will certainly take credit for having knocked the heads together to make it happen.

And if it happens before tomorrow, he’ll say it was a result of his cunning, well-timed threat to cancel the debate and force a resolution. I don’t think it will work, but it’s all he’s got.

Update: A deal has been struck among the congressional negotiators. No details yet. Also no word on whether the House republicans and the Bush administration agree. And we still don’t know if McCain will vote for it (or Obama, for that matter.)

Oddly, and very surprisingly, Gallup’s daily tracking and the new WSJ/NBC poll show McCain and Obama tied. Very wierd.

Update II: more evidence that McCain may be leaving his options open in order to vote against the bill.

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And Bush’s War Continues To Kill American Soldiers

by tristero

One more American soldier died in Iraq. The official toll is 4,171.

All for the invasion, conquest, and occupation of a country that posed no existential threat to anyone other than itself, that never attacked the US on 9/11, and that had zero WMD. And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died because of the Bush/McCain invasion.

Folks wonder why the US mainland hasn’t seen an al Qaeda attack since 9/11. Why should they bother? Every day in Iraq radicalizes more people. The Bush/McCain policies are far more effective at recruiting militant islamists than a crummy video. Why attack if the US is playing your game better than you could have possibly dreamed it would?

Shameful. Disgraceful. Criminal.

Politics, Thanks To Sarah Palin, Rises Out Of The Gutter

by tristero

There was a time when a Senator’s career and presidential aspirations were utterly destroyed because he was photographed with a bikini-clad young woman not his wife on his lap. There was a time when a popular president trying to kill bin Laden was accused of wagging the dog to distract attention from conservatives’ obsession with his leisure-time activities involving a young intern and a cigar. There was a time when politicians resigned in shame when they were caught soliciting sex from interns or in bathrooms or from hookers.

Those days are over, and we have Governor Sarah Palin to thank for it. It took a Republican to go to China. It took a Republican to nationalize insurance companies and the banks. And now, it’s taken a Republican to make the country ok with adulterous politicians.

Today, our politics is elevated. We are above such tawdry sensationalism, at least when it concerns Republican women, who remain virgins until they marry and then only fuck make love submit to their husbands for procreation.

Indeed, not a single blog I read regularly nor any mainstream news source has reported that the National Enquirer is so confident they would win a libel suit that they have named Sarah Palin’s alleged lover.

I don’t think I’ll mention it either.

The Bad Apples Were In The White House

by tristero

As if we didn’t know already:

Senior White House officials played a central role in deliberations in the spring of 2002 about whether the Central Intelligence Agency could legally use harsh interrogation techniques while questioning an operative of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah, according to newly released documents.

In meetings during that period, the officials debated specific interrogation methods that the C.I.A. had proposed to use on Qaeda operatives held at secret C.I.A. prisons overseas, the documents show. The meetings were led by Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, and attended by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top administration officials.

Apparently, Angler was there, too, but the Times doesn’t quite have the, eh, smoking shotgun to prove it:

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on which officials attended the meetings in 2002. He said Vice President Dick Cheney often attended meetings of the National Security Council’s principals committee, a group of senior officials who advise the president on national security.

Short version: the president of the United States personally ordered that prisoners be tortured. The vice president of the United States figured out how.

Kind of makes one sick to the stomach.

Forking It Over

by dday

So President Power Of Nightmares came on the teevee tonight and spoke darkly of grave and imminent dangers to our financial system, all of them somehow magically divorced from his own laissez-faire policies, belief in deregulation and failure to respond to the very clear warnings that we were headed down a path of disaster.

President Bush on Wednesday warned Americans and lawmakers reluctant to pass a $700 billion financial rescue plan that failing to act fast risks wiping out retirement savings, rising foreclosures, lost jobs, closed businesses and even “a long and painful recession.”

His dire warning came not long after the president issued extraordinary invitations to presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, one of whom will inherit the mess in four months, as well as key congressional leaders to a White House meeting on Thursday to work on a compromise.

“Without immediate action by Congress, American could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold,” Bush said in a 12-minute prime-time address from the White House East Room that he hoped would help rescue his tough-sell bailout package.

Basically, gimme gimme gimme or the economy gets it. And while Bush appeared to accede to a lot of the steps sought by Congress – vague limits on executive compensation, some ability for taxpayers to cash in on the upside potential, and some manner of oversight – he drew the line at any re-regulation of the companies who got us into this mess, saying that it could “come later.” And indeed, most of the talk was about the failure of borrowers to pay their bills, not the predatory practices of lenders to shuttle people into loans without explaining the circumstances (and through yield spread premiums, actually getting bonuses for that).

After a couple days of seeing the Paulson plan go down in flames, I now have a very queasy feeling about this. Bush clearly intervened in a Presidential election by inviting McCain and Obama to the White House, and the joint statement released by the two of them is worthless, all “we must rise above partisanship and work together for the good of the country” gibberish. McCain apparently dropped the specifics from the statement. Now the House and the Senate are claiming a deal with President Paulson, and the draft that’s been floating around is not good. Ian Welsh calls it FISA all over again.

It’s essentially a Wall Street giveaway plan, with only some fig leaves to try and pretend that it isn’t.

Why? Because the language about taking warrants in exchange for buying up toxic assets is only for direct purchases and not for reverse auction puchases, which will be the majority of the purchases. As Soros points out, in any reverse auction, the government will get stuck with the most toxic of toxic waste because of information asymetries. In exchange they should at least get stock, equal not to what they paid, but to the face of the crap they are buying.

There is quite a bit of language about helping mortgage holders, but it is almost all qualified with words like encourage and request, rather than require. Since the Treasury is bailing mortgage holders out, the idea that the Secretary must “encourage” and “request” is just BS. The correct response is to make help for mortgage holders a requirement of participating in the program at all. If financial institutions don’t like that they don’t need to participate. Good way to make sure that companies that don’t really need help don’t swill at the trough.

Unlike the Dodd bill, this is not a copy of the actual language of the bill, but a summary gloss. Without seeing the language we don’t know what’s actually in there. Dodd was straight up with us. Frank is hiding his legislative language. Why?

The bill will allow bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages for those having trouble paying, and that’s the bright spot. But in the end, this is a stick-up. A stick-up with a $700 billion dollar price tag that was literally invented out of thin air. Now, there’s one paragraph in The Hill piece that suggest this might go in stages:

Paulson said unemployment rates could approach 10 percent if the plan was not adopted, senators said, although he did indicate possible receptiveness to the idea of implementing it in stages. Such a plan, Paulson told senators, has worked in countries like Japan, where financial rescue plans were done in stages.

That’s really the only way out of this right now. That $700 billion dollar price tag defunds even the most mildly progressive agenda. I think John McCain may have lost the election today, and at the hands of David Letterman, no less. But with the federal treasury raided and in the hands of Wall Street corporations who made bad decisions, it’s hard to see how a President Obama can be anything but a fixer-upper and a caretaker. All because everyone bought the crisis frame so hard.

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