Stick It Out the Window!

More than a few things been burnin’ my ass lately. Here are a couple of ‘em.

First, Sen. Max Baucus just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is in this for the politics, not the American people. Voting against BOTH “public option” amendments to the Finance Committee’s health care “reform” legislation, he said he liked the Schumer amendment better than the Rockefeller amendment, but he didn’t think it could get 60 votes in the Senate, so he had to vote against it.

What an idiot. What a traitor to the people who put him in office. Rather than do what he thought was best for the American people, and what he had to know his constituents want, he bowed to the pressure from Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and, no doubt, his corporate insurance benefactors.

With the final vote being 13 to 10 against, if any two of the three Judas Democrats had voted with the progressives and moderates, it would have passed, and the chances of getting a true public option out of Congress would have been greatly improved.

Your earliest opportunity to show how out of touch a Senator can be will be 2010, when Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces the electorate. Any volunteers for the Arkansas primary? Add North Dakota’s Senator Kent Conrad to the list for 2012. Baucus must be hoping everyone in Montana will have forgotten by 2014, when he is up for a primary thrashing. Call these folks TODAY and let them know how shamefully they’ve behaved.

Second, on a different subject:

The so-called “toxic mortgages” are still in the news. I thought the idea behind the bank bail out was to clean those up and get the banks back on an even keel. Well, the banks seem to be claiming to be on that even keel, but they still have the toxic mortgages on the books. Begs the question, were those bail out funds really necessary? Did the banks cry poor to sucker the government into handing over billions in cash so they could shore up their own credit, and not do a thing for the folks who were struggling under outrageous interest rates and balloon payments? I’m thinkin’ it looks like a duck.

And now we’re hearing the mantra that those toxic loans were given to undeserving people. Not people who got suckered. People who should have known they didn’t deserve such good fortune as a home of their own.

I’m hearing code words here. Over-represented in the group are African-Americans and Latinos. Undeserving.

And the bleeding heart liberals are blamed, of course. We wanted those lazy welfare bums to have a mansion of their own, and we wanted the mean nasty bankers to pay for it. Oh, and we wanted tax dollars to subsidize the whole thing.

I’d like to remind those who are selling this snake oil that it was their very own hero, President George Bush, who sold it in the first place. Take a look at these flash back videos… dating back to 2002, the start of it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8&feature=related The compassionate conservative President Bush promised to help us realize the American Dream by subsidizing downpayments with tax dollars, streamlining the lending process, making it “easy to understand” (read “even the dumb people can do it”) and keeping interest rates low.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9viaJatpo&feature=related (radio with pictures) – President Bush speaks to African-Americans and Latino Americans, (pointing out that less than half of the people in these groups own homes) and promises to provide more money – beefing up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, etc. He promised that even a “low income homebuyer can have just as nice a home as anybody else” with his plan.

And we all know what a bleeding heart liberal George Bush was.

What I see is a plan to funnel the hard-earned savings of first time homebuyers to banks, through fee-taking brokers, subsidize it with $7,000 or $8,000 of tax dollars, then, when the poor sucker can’t keep up with his mortgage, kick him out, keep his downpayment and the tax dollars, and then cry poor to Congress (while slipping them millions in campaign contributions).

I even know of cases, like here in South Carolina, where they took some of their subsidized housing, did a bit of a re-paint job, and offered it to Section 8 renters on a rent-to-own basis. If the resident could keep up their payments for a few months, come up with a small downpayment, get that government subsidy, they would apply part of their already-paid rent to the purchase price. For those residents who managed to keep up their payments, it was a chance to own low-income housing in a not-so-nice neighborhood. Whoopee! And for those who couldn’t make consistent payments, the housing authority got to keep the downpayments, rent, and subsidy. Not a bad deal, eh?

OK, so maybe some people took out mortgages they knew full well they couldn’t keep up. Some should have known they weren’t in a position to own a half million dollar house. But these people have paid the price – they’re out on the street. The bankers are still smokin’ their cigars on Wall Street, gettin’ those daily massages.

Who’s the villain here?

And if the buyers realized they couldn’t keep it up, and needed to get out from under by selling the house within 5 years, they’d have to pay back the subsidy over the next15 years. So they could never save up a downpayment again! Even if that first-time low-income undereducated homebuyer managed to keep it up for four years, improved his education, got a better job, and decided to move up in the housing chain, they have to pay it back. So they had to add that payment to their budget in their new home.

Who was this “program” designed to help? Do you really have to ask? Consider the source.

JM