By Calvin L. Schaible,
Published Tuesday, September 23, 2008
In 2006 the people rightfully threw out Republicans who gave up their conservative principles and started playing “good old boy” politics. In 2008 they should do the same thing to Democrats. They have shown themselves as being more committed to greedy campaign contributors and bureaucrats than they are to their own constituents.
The federal housing crisis provides a great example of why John McCain-Sarah Palin should lead this nation and Barack Obama-Joe Biden should be defeated. It also shows us why Democrats in general should be thrown out of the House and Senate. Thanks to the Democrats’ incompetence and their political cronyism, American taxpayers are now responsible for the financial viability of $5 trillion in housing loans. If we see a continuation of housing defaults in the next two or three years, the taxpayers could take a substantially large hit.
How could this happen, you ask? As is true for so many of our problems, we must go back to the Clinton administration. This administration, true to its socialist/redistributionist vision, forced lenders to give folks housing loans, who by any reasonable business standard, should not have been given loans. As property values dropped and adjustable interest rates rose there also was a rise in loan defaults and foreclosures. Clinton administrators Frank Raines and Jamie Gorelick, over a period of years, “cooked the books” to cover the financial troubles of Fannie Mae while fraudulently claiming millions of dollars themselves.
According to Investor’s Business Daily, when Raines left Fannie
Mae in 2005 he left with almost
$100 million. Gorelick left with
$75 million. The Justice Department should be calling for accountability of these two and others for what appears to be their criminal activities at Fannie Mae.
When President Bush called for more oversight in 2003, congressional chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., stood in the way and kept it from happening. Frank consistently obstructed meaningful reform that would have limited the size of the portfolios of mortgage-backed securities that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could hold. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., did the deed on the Senate side.
Though Frank likes to blow political smoke about the importance of Fannie Mae in providing affordable housing, the facts remain that most of the taxpayer subsidy went to enrich shareholders and managers. Fannie Mae also used funds to lobby politicians to stop regulators from investigating their way of doing business. Interestingly, according to Capital Eye, Obama ranked No. 3 in accepting campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while North Dakota’s Sen. Kent Conrad ranked No 8. Obama received $105,849 and Conrad received $58,991 in campaign contributions from 1989-2008. Obama’s ranking is even more startling when you consider that he has only been a senator for three years.
When it comes to who will bring real reform to how the federal government does business, the housing scandal provides a stark contrast between the two presidential candidates. McCain has been fighting for years for the type of reform Frank has been opposing. Along with Obama’s lobbyist dollars in Washington, voters should look at how he dealt with “housing reform” in Chicago.
His shady home deal with convicted housing developer criminal Tony Rezko suggests he is anything but a political reformer.
McCain-Palin should be elected because they bring a record of credibility and honesty that suggest true reform is possible. Their record indicates that they will bring the reform they speak about.
The Democrats’ performance on the housing scandal and Obama’s short history suggest they are nothing but defenders of today’s corrupt politics and hence should be rejected by the public in 2008.
Schaible, Fargo, is a graduate of Concordia College with a BA is business administration.
