I'll be honest, I love blogging. It's fun, it has SEO advantages and it gives me a forum to get stuff off of my chest. The one thing that it doesn't do for me (yet) is get my message out to a bunch of people. If my web site is the equivalent to having a bill board in the middle of a corn field, then my blogs are generally the equivalent to being a tree in the middle of the forest!
It's hard to stand out and to get your message through when there are so many other folks out there writing blogs. It especially sucks when so many of those folks are better writers than I am! ;-)
All that said though, I still keep hacking away at building my blog and have been pleasantly surprised when my message manages to seep through to the outside world. Every once in awhile when something particularly gets my goat, I'll write a commentary and submit it to my local paper, The St. Louis Post Dispatch. 
This was the case last week. A buddy of mine called me and told me about HR3915 and how Congress was trying to do away with Yield Spread Premiums. I hopped on the House Financial Services Committee web site and managed to watch quite a bit of the debate that was going on regarding HR3915, The Mortgage Reform and Anti-predatory Lending Act of 2007.
As I watched a couple of things became very evident to me.
1) That our congressmen/women don't really take the time to educate themselves on these bills before they debate and vote on them.
and
2) That the banking industry's lobbying efforts are vastly superior to that of the mortgage brokerage industry.
After reading the working copy of the law and watching the debate, I noticed that my congressman, Lacy Clay, was one of the bill's co-cosponsors, so I called his office. I was directed to one of his legislative assistants who was working on the bill. I left a message on his voice mail to call me.
When that message wasn't returned, I called back and left another message. When that call wasn't returned, I called and left a somewhat irritated message and that one was returned.
I ended up talking to Mr. Clay's assistant for over an hour and while he was one of the lead people on this bill, it was obvious that he didn't have a through understanding of how the mortgage banking industry functions. While he was nice and did take the time to speak with me, I could tell that his lack of understanding wasn't going to stand in the way of them attempting to push this legislation through. Therefore, I wrote a commentary and submitted it to The Post.
I'm happy to say that the Post published my commentary, "Proposal Would Mean Less Competition, Higher Costs For Consumers" yesterday.
If you get a chance, please read my piece and if you agree, forward it on to your congressional delegation.
Bob Mitchell
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