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The Band Played On - the Great Debate

The debate this evening was more interesting than its predecessors because of a more intimate, conversational format - but still lacked the fire and brimstone needed for Senator McCain to take advantage of the last major free media audience that he will enjoy before the election in less than three weeks.

Obama Puzzle Senator McCain made some of the necessary points but did not move forward aggressively to close the deal in any of his opportune moments.

So the public remains blissfully uninformed on a number of major troubling topics. And the media continues to watch reruns of Monday night Football from last year and remain cooly above the fray without concern for their responsibilities in this mess.

Senator Obama, who has become more comfortable with the debate format, should have left the studio with Bill Ayers, Pastor Wright, Tony Rezko and ACORN wrapped around his neck like a necklace representing his past and Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid, Chairmen Dodd and Frank wrapped around his ankles representing his present - and potentially our future.

Since the focus of this evenings debate was domestic policy, and since the dramatic drop in the stock markets today was clearly on everybody's mind, I would like to explore the history of the housing bubble, as that is agreed to be the primary catalyst in the current troubles in the banking and credit markets.

Emmett Tyrell, contributing to Townhall.com today, features an article on the roots of the housing problems. Although there is plenty of blame to go around on this one, it is interesting that Senator McCain as part of the Presidents party seems to be taking much of the public's anger over the current situation. The role of the Democrats and particularly one Senator who is running for the Presidency seems to be overlooked as the public, unaided by an honest media, actually looks to Senator Obama for the solutions to the problem. Amazing.

My source: http://townhall.com/columnists/EmmettTyrrell/2008/10/16/the_slippery_senator

Thursday, October 16, 2008 The Slippery Senator by Emmett Tyrrell
WASHINGTON -- How is it that Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been damaged badly by this financial crisis while the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, is presenting himself successfully as a financial genius capable of working Christ's miracle of the loaves and fishes on our economy?

The financial markets froze up because the Democrats prevailed on mortgage lenders -- mainly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac -- to relax standards against thitherto unqualified property buyers. They did it out of an ideological commitment to their thesis that poor people living in private homes would be better citizens. It was a noble vision. Yet it was economically untenable. A huge real estate bubble resulted, and now that the bubble has burst, the entire economy is imperiled.

Curiously, the Democrats have not suffered the consequences of their "deregulation" of the mortgage market. Instead, they have hung the "deregulation" canard on McCain. As the record makes clear, it is McCain who signed on to a letter with 19 other Republican senators in 2006 calling for the tightening up of Fannie's and Freddie's loans. Even before that, in the summer of 2005, Republican Sen. Richard Shelby fashioned a bill in the Senate Banking Committee to impose stricter regulations on Fannie and Freddie, only to see it blocked from getting to the Senate floor by a party-line vote, which kept it in committee. The Republicans favored this regulation tightening. The Democrats opposed it.

In an early example of his slipperiness, Sen. Obama stood with his fellow Democrats in opposing the bill. Then he went on record opposing his own vote by writing the secretary of the Treasury that subprime mortgages are dangerous. As has been said of other evasive politicians, Obama is a chameleon on plaid. Apparently, a chameleon on plaid can escape having the media hold him accountable even as he boldly opposes stricter regulations on subprime loans while writing the Treasury to oppose such loans. Yet how is it that the media have given the entire Democratic Party a pass on its advocacy of subprime loans?

As this election grinds on, I am reminded frequently that voters are not getting the whole story, that coverage is amazingly slanted toward an inexperienced Obama, who incidentally comes from a very dubious background. I have been especially aware of that since Sept. 26. That was when The American Spectator online reported that Sen. Obama's longtime political supporter and present national finance chairwoman gutted a Chicagoland bank by recklessly extending the kind of dubious loans that have caused today's financial crisis.

Penny Pritzker, from her position on the board of the holding company controlling Superior Bank, approved of risky loan practices that eventually cost depositors hundreds of millions of dollars. Superior had been unable to make money with traditional safe loans, so Pritzker encouraged the bank to enter the subprime market. Then she defied regulators who told her the bank's practices were reckless. After the bank failed in 2001 and government investigators examined the corpus delicti, the wealthy Pritzker family ended up paying $460 million in penalties over a 15-year period.

Nonetheless, when it came to selecting his finance chair, candidate Obama chose Penny Pritzker. Now, with not a peep of recognition from the media, he abominates Wall Street for practices she pioneered. He claims Republican aversion to regulation led to this financial crisis. Yet the record is clear. In the financial sector, it is the Republicans who favored regulation and the Democrats who thwarted it. If the media remain mum on all this, these same Democrats will control two branches of the federal government soon. Maybe they will make Penny Pritzker secretary of the Treasury.

Posted by Ted Baker - Real Estate in Central Florida on 10/16/2008 02:18 AM

Comments (5)

emmett tyrell, townhallcom, presidential debate

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5 Comments on The Band Played On - the Great Debate

OCT

2008

Ted, this debate was definitely more interesting and better than the previous ones. McCain was more polished and made some of the key points, but I agree that he did not go far enough.

Paul Strauss, a reader of my personal blog, www.cadfael.net, thought I was a bit one-sided in my presentation of an article which mirrored the above post. He posted the following comment there, whcih I am pleased to add to the discussion here... (as I said, there is plenty of blame to go around here)

Republican deregulation does not consist only in legislation that was passed or not passed. There has not been much financial legislation passed in recent years.

Democrats were not in control of Congress during the time you discuss, and hence they could not be responsible for a bill not getting passed. In the Senate, they could have filibustered against a bill, but in this case the bill never even came to the floor. Why not? Well, some Republicans weren't very enthusiastic about it either.

But there is much more to the condition of deregulation than this. Republican deregulation ALSO consists of a Republican administration sending out orders to ignore regulations or to enforce them weakly. This has happened a whole lot over the last eight years.

One agency whose chairman was appointed by President Bush, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has admitted to allowing Wall Street to be regulated through a program called "voluntary regulation," and it has also admitted that the voluntary regulation program did not work and that the program helped to cause the meltdown.

How? Because banks, investment banks, insurance companies etc were allowed to hold assets in "off balance sheet" companies and no regulator insisted that those assets had to be disclosed for the good of investors and the safety of the system.

The SEC's failure to regulate Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve's willingness to allow banks to have 33-to-1 debt/equity ratios are very similar to the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA)'s loosening of the clean water regulations.

See: EPA ignores the toxic threat in our drinking water
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10697784

And see:
E.P.A. TO ABANDON NEW ARSENIC LIMITS FOR WATER SUPPLY
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E2DE1F3DF932A15750C0A9679C8B63

And then there was the move to end mandatory testing for testing for salmonella in hamburger meat served in federal school lunch programs.

http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Irradiate-School-Beef.htm

To its credit, the Bush Administration later reversed its policy on ending that testing, after an outcry.

Bush Administration Reverses Position on Salmonella Testing of School Lunch Beef
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EUY/is_14_7/ai_73121533

And then there were the changes to the Clean Air regulations:
Bush Administration Eases Air Pollution Controls

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, November 22, 2002 (ENS) - The Bush administration has enacted changes to clean air rules that will allow power plants and refineries to avoid new pollution controls when they expand operations. The decision drew sharp criticism from Congressional leaders, state officials, environmental groups, public health organizations and the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who charge the administration has put industry interests ahead of public health and the environment.

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, criticized the Administration's "shameful record of abandoning environmental protection" and called on EPA Administrator Christie Whitman to resign in protest.

And then there is workplace safety, or the lack of it:

Bush administration rushes to change workplace toxic rules

http://www.jerebeasleyreport.com/2008/09/bush-administration-rushes-to-change-workplace-toxic-rules/

And:

Bush Forces a Shift In Regulatory Thrust
OSHA Made More Business-Friendly

By Amy Goldstein and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 15, 2004; Page A01

First of three articles

Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers -- all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.

By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.

Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary.

The demise of the decade-old plan of defense against tuberculosis reflects the way OSHA has altered its regulatory mission to embrace a more business-friendly posture. In the past 3 1/2 years, OSHA, the branch of the Labor Department in charge of workers' well-being, has eliminated nearly five times as many pending standards as it has completed. It has not started any major new health or safety rules, setting Bush apart from the previous three presidents, including Ronald Reagan .

For details see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1315-2004Aug14.html

And then there are the regulations that require bidding on federal purchases, so that we taxpayers do not get the shaft.

Federal No-Bid Contracts On Rise

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/22/AR2007082200049.html

One paragraph from this article says: "A recent congressional report estimated that federal spending on contracts awarded without "full and open" competition has tripled, to $207 billion, since 2000, with a $60 billion increase last year alone."

And the lack of regulation extends to government control of its own agencies, where officials are not permitted to accept bribes Etc. Or, at least they used not to be permitted to accept bribes, etc.

Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior Department

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
New York Times
Published: September 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal - including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

October 16, 2008 5:25 AM

As this election grinds on, I am reminded frequently that voters are not getting the whole story, that coverage is amazingly slanted toward an inexperienced Obama, who incidentally comes from a very dubious background.

The American so called "free" press has sold its soul to Obama. They have not reported the whole truth, only slanted truth, fabricated truth, one sided at best in favor of Barak Obama.

A man who has no record, only a record of voting for the most liberal od ideals, then voting present when he had to go against his Marxist friends.

Threatening lawsuits to the banking industry to force them to open up the floodgates to unqualified borrowers will go down in history as one of the most dispicable acts in American history.

Funny thing is, Obama has people who love to rewrite history in favor of the liberal from Chicago.

Ted ~

Congratulations this post is now featured in Silent Majority of Active Rain.

OCT

2008

Ted:

The problem with the G.O.P. is they came late to the dance. They and John McCain allowed the Dems to paint the financial crisis on them. Of course, the idiots of the G.O.P. and McCain's advisors decided to take "the high road" and didn't want to make it political. Nasty Pelosi and Harry Reid sure politicized the moment didn't they?

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