How would you feel if someone told you that attached to the Dem version of the bail-out bill was a provision to funnel 20% of any profits realized selling these toxic assets NOT back into the treasury (to pay us all back) but to a political activist group that has been found guilty repeatedly of voter fraud?
How would you feel if this group was the same group that had lobbied Congress to push for low-cost housing loans (sub-prime loans) in the first place so that people on the margins or who had no credit could buy homes?
And how would you feel if topping it all off, this group is known to be the group to go to when you aren't legally entitled to vote, but want to register anyway?
Welcome to the clause added to the bill by Senators Chuck Schumer and Chris Dodd:
TRANSFER OF A PERCENTAGE OF PROFITS.1. DEPOSITS.Not less than 20 percent of any profit realized on the sale of each troubled asset purchased under this Act shall be deposited as provided in paragraph (2).
2. USE OF DEPOSITS.Of the amount referred to in paragraph (1)
1. 65 percent shall be deposited into the Housing Trust Fund established under section 1338 of the Federal Housing Enterprises Regulatory Reform Act of 1992 (12 U.S.C. 4568); and
2. 35 percent shall be deposited into the Capital Magnet Fund established under section 1339 of that Act (12 U.S.C. 4569).REMAINDER DEPOSITED IN THE TREASURY.All amounts remaining after payments under paragraph (1) shall be paid into the General Fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.
The organizations that will benefit from this 20% (hidden behind the nice legit sounding term "Housing Trust Fund" are ACORN and La Raza!
If this were the GOP funneling money to the NRA or Focus on the Family, people would be BULLSHIT, and rightly so!
This is some ornament on a Christmas tree! The Dems. are using this bail-out to BUY VOTES, quite literally.
This is from the WSJ about it:
The housing bill signed Wednesday by President George W. Bush will provide a stream of billions of dollars for distressed homeowners and communities and the nonprofit groups that serve them.One of the biggest likely beneficiaries, despite Republican objections: Acorn, a housing advocacy group that also helps lead ambitious voter-registration efforts benefiting Democrats. …
Partly because of the role of Acorn and other housing advocacy groups, the White House and its allies in Congress resisted Democrats’ plans to include money for a new affordable-housing trust fund and $4 billion in grants to restore housing in devastated neighborhoods. In the end, the money stayed in the bill; the White House saw little choice.
What most riles Republicans about the bill is the symbiotic relationship between the Democratic Party and the housing advocacy groups, of which Acorn is among the biggest. Groups such as the National Council of La Raza and the National Urban League also lobby to secure government-funded services for their members and seek to move them to the voting booth. Acorn has been singled out for criticism because of its reach, its endorsements of Democrats, and past flaws in its bookkeeping and voter-registration efforts that its detractors in Congress have seized upon.
I think I'm going to be SICK.
Call your reps, tell them NOT TO PASS THIS BILL WITH THIS SHIT IN IT! Tell them to stand firm to expose Obama for the hack Manchurian Candidate that he is!
I am seriously starting to wonder if all of this mess was by design....How can you NOT wonder?
Are they going to prosecute people who put out ads and lies about McCain???
Lies like THESE for example?
They are using their power as employees of the STATE (they are PROSECUTORS) to help the other side, or only their preferred side?
EXCUSE ME???? This is un-friggin-believable! They have no right to use their power in this biased way! Fine, by all means prosecute "libel" wherever you find it, not as part of some "Obama Truth Squad!"
This is the must read of the week, maybe the year. Here's the most vital snippet. Commit it to memory, along with what it feels like to live in a free country.
The hungry Left always imagines that the end, truly, justifies the means. It holds (it thinks) the key to secular heaven and the suffering of ordinary people feeds the bonfires of its march to power. History is the lesson book of man. We do not have to guess about what happens when the people, without hope, give power to those who thrive on suffering. "The worse, the better" always leads to things much worse than the causes that made men barter their rights for promises.
Hat tip to Lig at Road Sassy/
Too bad Joe Biden doesn't. Seems he only has a passing familiarity with the Bible as well. But that's OK, when you're liberal, you get to rewrite history to suit your needs, so it's all good.
Joe Biden isn't backing down from his startling claim last week that raising taxes on the rich is the "patriotic" thing to do. On Thursday he upped the ante, thundering that he also has Jesus in his corner. "Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most," Mr. Biden preached to a group of union supporters onHeavens! The political left likes to score Republicans for claiming that God is on their side, but here we have Mr. Biden claiming support from both God and Caesar. If Sarah Palin tried this, she'd send the boys at the Daily Kos into cardiac arrest. We won't get into a theological debate with Mr. Biden, except to say that Biblical tax rates tended to run around 10%, not the 39.6%-plus that Barack Obama's tax plan calls for.
As for patriotism, maybe the young Joe Biden missed school the day the Boston Tea Party was being taught. There's also the point that if you want to finance a war, you need a strong enough economy to throw off the tax revenues to pay for it. As we learned in the 1980s under Reagan, lower taxes that help an economy grow can finance a defense buildup that helps win the Cold War. By that standard, cuts in marginal income tax rates deserve to be called patriotic.
Regarding taxes and social justice, the issue is whether the high taxes that Mr. Biden favors promote economic growth and prosperity, not least for America's poorest citizens. There he doesn't have evidence on his side. Studies from around the world, including the annual Wall Street Journal-Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom, conclusively indicate that countries that keep taxes low tend to have the least amount of poverty.
As for fairness, we'd note that today the top 1% of taxpayers pay twice as large a share of income taxes (39%) at a 35% rate than they did in 1980, when they were taxed at a rate of 70% yet paid only 19% of income taxes. In that sense, the tax code is more "progressive" now.
By the way, Mr. Biden and his wife recently released their tax returns, and they reported an average of $380, or 0.2% of their income, in annual charitable contributions over a 10-year period. The national average was about 2% of income.
Alt. title: "You've commanded what exactly Senators Obama and Biden?
/eyeroll
So I've noticed that the "big story" this weekend has been whether or not Sarah Palin "commands" the Alaska National Guard. The McCain camp used that word--"commands"-- Tucker Bounds a campaign spokesperson used it and said that it provides evidence of her "foreign policy" experience.
DUMBASS!!!!
I have respect for her exp. relative to the Guard, but dang, Bounds is a moron. Even Palin never claimed it as providing "foreign policy" experience, but what bothers me is that the media (who are still out for her blood and he oughta know that) have latched onto that claim and are doing everything in their power to diminish what ought to be considered some excellent relevant experience for her (relevant to being a heartbeat away from the CIC job in general, certainly as compared to the exp. people think she has or doesn't have, never mind as compared to the exp. of her opponents).
I found this video of an appearance by the actual "commander" of the AK national guard, I think it's very interesting and speaks to what she did that does demonstrate strong CIC abilities, as well as relevant experience.
I also found this info. regarding the unique nature of AK's role in our national defense, a role that Palin is responsible for overseeing, and which gives her security clearances to top secret information:
The info. below was a summary I found on a blog favorable to Palin, but the blogger got the raw info. from ]this primary source which you can check for yourself.
Alaska is the first line of defense in our missile interceptor defense system. The 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard is the unit that protects the entire nation from ballistic missile attacks. It’s on permanent active duty, unlike other Guard units.As governor of Alaska, Palin is briefed on highly classified military issues, homeland security, and counterterrorism. Her exposure to classified material may rival even Biden's.
She's also the commander in chief of the Alaska State Defense Force (ASDF), a federally recognized militia incorporated into Homeland Security's counterterrorism plans.
Palin is privy to military and intelligence secrets that are vital to the entire country's defense. Given Alaska's proximity to Russia, she may have security clearances we don't even know about.
What worries me is that this election will be decided in the media b/c of semantics. Like the earmark thing, or the "foreign policy" exp. thing (when I bet he meant "national security" but he's too daft to appreciate the news value of ignoring the difference). WORDS have meaning, once they're on the page, they take on a life of their own!!
In this respect, it is clear that the Obama campaign is far superior in their appreciation for and ability to use the manipulation of words and media to their advantage.
UGH. Have we seriously reached the point where we don't vote for President, but the media do?
I've been meaning to blog about McCain's choice of running mate since she was announced on Friday, but I got busy. Then in four short days, all hell broke loose on the loony left and now I find I can't just post about how ECSTATIC I am that McCain has made it possible for me to vote this year at all, I have to post about the insanity (or the "Palinsanity" as Althouse calls it) that's infecting the blogosphere and our political discourse in general. All I know is, if Palin were the "right" kind of woman (or rather the left kind), the kind of heinous hate-filled garbage masquerading as "information" about her would not be tolerated. Oh, who am I kidding, it wouldn't exist b/c we on the right have better things to do with our time (and our obviously higher IQs) than sit around and conjure up tinfoil-hat stories about faked pregancies, botched mid-air manslaughter via premature rupture of membranes and imaginary abstinence hypocrisy.
But I don't WANT to post about that shit, better minds have done it already, ad nauseum I'm afraid--fighting the good fight, but at what cost to their own sanity I wonder?
I do, however, want to focus on one angle of the whole mess that interests and concerns me most: The rabid SEXISM of all of it. I won't bother going into that in any further detail because Melissa Clouthier has done far too fine a job of it already.
Read what she says and you'll know what I think and feel about all this.
I pray I wake up tomorrow to find it was all a bad dream and the news is instead filled with tales of Gustav and the sputtering RNC, you know, the stuff that should've been the bad news this weekend, but was edged out by this crap.