Grey Matters

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is much in the news today. They have a long history of voter registration fraud and perpetuate this fraud using federal tax dollars. While the news today emphasized the more egregious cases (one guy registered to vote 73 times) the real story is the substantial percentage of (single) registrations that are fraudulent — dead people and minor children being registered. ACORN is under investigation in 13 or more states. 

Barack Obama did some of his “community organizing” working for ACORN. He even ran a voter registration drive for them in 1992. Voter registration drives are one means used by “community organizers” to pressure government for more giveaway programs. 

ACORN should also be “credited” with threatening and pressuring lenders (via government) to loan money to people who could not repay it so they could buy homes. ACORN felt that people have a right to live beyond their means. So, we have ACORN to thank, in part, for the housing market meltdown that led to the current financial crisis. 

Obama and ACORN agree that we need “Reform Now” — or “Change” as Obama calls it. Change of the FDR socialism kind. It will be interesting to see if Obama distances himself from ACORN as he finally did the loony Reverend Wright. 

I find it hard to believe that Obama was not influenced by Wright, ACORN and assorted leftist radicals with whom he associated. This is not “guilt by association,” it’s common sense. If McCain had attended Klan meetings, we’d never let him get away with simply saying, “I didn’t agree with everything they said.” 

The fact is, ACORN and its socialist goals are what Obama is all about. This is the kind of “change” he promises. I’ll pass.

I just sat down to watch a 20th Century Fox movie DVD and it began with that oh-so-annoying “You wouldn’t steal …” video. “You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag, you wouldn’t steal a DVD… Piracy is a crime.” — the latter referring to downloading movies from the Internet.

Now listen up, Fox. You too, you other movie studios. You’ve acknowledged that I wouldn’t steal a car, handbag or DVD. Why on earth do you think I’m going to steal your movie? Indeed, the “You wouldn’t steal” video is on your DVD. I’f I’m watching your annoying video, I sure as hell didn’t steal your movie by downloading it. I doubt that video pirates would bother to steal your anti-stealing tirade video. So by putting this video on your DVD, you’re aiming this at the wrong audience — people who have already bought the DVD movie.

If you want to reach “stealers” of your movies, put your irritating video on TV. Run it in movie theaters. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT use it to annoy your paying customers by putting it on your movie DVDs.

We’ve established that people watching your video are not thieves, but it seems that you are, Fox. You steal from me that which is most precious and irreplaceable — my time. I am forced to sit through this annoying video, I have no choice. I can’t fast-forward through it, I can’t skip to the next chapter. I’m stuck watching it. I can never get that time back. 

What’s worse, I cannot even pause or stop it. As luck would have it, the phone rang just as your mandatory video was starting and I tried to pause. No dice. I tried to stop it. Uh-uh. It this message really so important that nothing can be allowed to interrupt it? 

Ironically, forcing me to watch your indoctrination video just makes me wish I’d downloaded the movie from the Internet, so I wouldn’t have to sit through your scolding.

This morning a judge ruled that the Ohio Secretary of State was not in compliance with the law regarding removal of suspect voter registrations from the state’s central database. There was more, but the gist of it is that there is no way to detect and remove fraudulent voter registrations.

Be that as it may, I’m far more concerned about something I learned some weeks ago. In Ohio, it is possible to register to vote and obtain an early voting ballot at the same time. So, if someone fraudulently registers to vote, the damage will already be done — the ballot already issued, the vote already cast —before November 4. So, even if the registration proves to be fraudulent and would have been detected at the polling place, the vote is already cast, the damage done. 

That this provision of law even exists is an affront to common sense. It is just asking for fraud. What were Ohio legislators thinking when they passed this into law?!?

If the presidential vote in Ohio is close, the winner may well be determined by fraudulent votes.

Persons familiar with flag etiquette know that flying the U.S. flag upside down is a distress signal. Someone needs help. This is not limited to the U.S. flag; An upside-down flag is internationally recognized as a distress signal.

That being the case, for years — decades, actually — I have made a point of preferring U.S. flag postage stamps and I always affix them to their respective envelopes upside down. No doubt a great many people, upon seeing my upside down stamps, think it’s simple carelessness or a “who cares” attitude on my part — that I simply didn’t bother to place it right side up. 

I assure you it is quite deliberate and done with the express intention of sending a distress signal. The country is in trouble. The government and “public servants” who are charged with defending and serving Americans are instead violating our rights, ignoring the Constitution and the country is on the road to ruin as a result.

It’s not my intention to catalog all the distressing problems in this post. Just look around at recent events. The current financial crisis is the direct result of government interference in the free market, yet the free market is taking the blame. This sort of thing has been going on for decades. As a result, the country is doomed. 

It’s a small thing, my upside-down flag stamps, but there are people who Get It and upon seeing my stamps, know that they are not alone.

Sarah Palin held up well, going against the more experienced Joe Biden in their vice-presidential debate. But she let me down when it came time to talk about the current financial crisis. Jumping on the “Wall Street greed” bandwagon, she missed her chance to lay blame for the current financial crisis at the feet of those actually responsible. Lest we forget, the match that touched off this conflagration was the failure of huge numbers of sub-prime mortgage borrowers to repay their loans. 

In answer to the moderator’s question, Palin stated: “Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that, uh, it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there. And there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street.” 

This puts Palin in agreement with such as Maxine Waters. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D. CA) was on the TV the morning of October 2 blaming shady lenders for tricking people into buying homes with sneaky variable-rate loans and other deceptive practices. These borrowers, she opined, simply didn’t understand what they were getting into. A lawyer can’t understand those loan documents — they’re that confusing.

She talked about “… people who were lured into these exotic products, uh,  the adjustable rate loans and the no documentation loans. Our regulators should have been on top of that. They should have seen these predator type, uh, exotic loans coming on the market and they should have stopped them.”

“Most people who signed on the dotted line,” she continued, “really don’t understand everything that’s in that mortgage. Contracts. You have lawyers, uh, you have people in the industry and in the media who are signing contracts every day who don’t understand them. But most people are not lured into products that they cannot afford. This happened with deregulation. This mess started because they found that they could come up with all kinds of adjustable rate mortgages and loans, uh, that people truly didn’t understand who wanted to get into that American dream of owning a home, and they got lost in all of this. They got messed up. It’s not that they’re all irresponsible people, of course there are some, but many good, hard-working people thought this was an opportunity to own a home.”

So there you have it: Mortgage lenders, apparently seized by a desire to not be repaid the money they loaned, tricked borrowers into signing confusing loan documents with incomprehensible adjustable rate features, to lessen the chances the loan would be repaid. Congresswoman Waters did not explain why lenders wanted to force money on people who could not repay it. But I can tell you: Government forced lenders to make loans to people who were unlikely to repay them. 

So is “this mess,” as Maxine Waters labeled it, really the result of de-regulation, as Congresswoman Waters would have us believe? Let’s jump in Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back machine and go to 1992. Here we find the Congress, controlled by Democrats (including Maxine Waters) at that time, requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchase of sub-prime mortgages — the loans of low income and middle income borrowers. The Los Angeles Times reported: “Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains.”

That Democrats required the purchase of sub-prime loans does not sound like de-regulation to me.

Let’s leap forward now to The Clinton administration. As I wrote on September 8, 2008, the housing market collapse, which touched off this financial meltdown, was the result of Clinton administration meddling in the free market.

Andrew Cuomo, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under Clinton, accused mortgage lenders of racial discrimination, because too many of the people who could not afford mortgage loans were minorities. Threatened with lawsuits by the Federal Reserve, lenders were required to find ways to make more loans to persons considered bad risks. Andrew Cuomo proposed the goal that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have 50% of their portfolios made up of these sub-prime mortgages by the year 2001. 

This again, does not sound like de-regulation to me.

It did, of course, have the desired effect — according to a 1999 Los Angelses Times article, “...black and Latino home ownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded.” Once again, government meddling in the marketplace had the desired effect. 

It is, of course, the undesired effects we’re seeing now. As stated in my Laws Of Government, the Sixth Law, first corollary:

“Legislation designed to help the poor is as likely to hurt them as to help. While any given law may benefit the targeted individuals in exactly the manner intended, the unintended consequences will result in overall harm to those beneficiaries as well as society in general.“

That describes this situation perfectly. The intended recipients of this government beneficence (racial minorities, the poor) did enjoy, at least for a while, the benefits of home ownership. Arguably, however, many of these folks are now worse off than before, and, of course, American society at large is now paying the (unintended, but not unforeseeable) cost.

Instead of placing blame where it belongs, Palin promises more regulation (see Law Six, Third Corollary) due to a problem caused by government interference in the first place.

I can’t help but wonder how Palin intends to prevent people from buying something they cannot afford, whether it is a $300,000 home when they can only afford a $100,000 home or a $50,000 vehicle when they can only afford a $20,000 vehicle. 

We had a mechanism in place to prevent people from over-extending themselves financially. It was called credit-worthiness. If you couldn’t afford a $300,000 loan, lenders would not give you a $300,000 loan. 

Connect the dots, people. “This mess” was caused by government-mandated replacement of credit-worthiness with political correctness. Before the Democrats, and in particular, the Clinton administration, changed the rules, there was no sub-prime mortgage problem. People who could not afford loans were not given them. The “exotic” loan types were the result of FedGov’s mandate that loans be given to people who could not afford them. 

In their zeal to help poor people, Democrats have unleashed the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. The bigger crime though, is blaming “this mess” on the free market and demanding “better oversight” of the financial sector. That’s what got us into “this mess” in the first place.

Ironically, the Democrats are successfully blaming this on Wall Street and the free market, much to the Republicans’ dismay. If the McCain-Palin ticket would just help the American people connect the dots, this election could go a whole different way.