The wind-powered bicycle headlight utilizes head-on wind while the bike is in motion to generate electricity as a source of energy for the headlight. The electricity is saved in rechargeable batteries and is used to power the headlight when the cyclist stops at traffic lights.
John Murtha: My constituents are RAAAACIST October 15, 2008
Michelle Malkin » John Murtha: My constituents are RAAAACIST
Jack Murtha, the pork-stuffed corruptocrat infamous for libeling our troops, has now moved on to libeling voters in his own district.
He agrees with Barack Obama’s assessment that Pennsylvanians are nothing but a bunch of bitter, clingy, bigoted rednecks.
Why is this man still in office?
U.S. Rep. John Murtha said today he expects Democratic nominee Barack Obama to carry Pennsylvania in next month’s presidential election.
Mr. Murtha, a 17-term Democrat from Johnstown, told the Post-Gazette’s editorial writers he sees momentum building in Mr. Obama’s campaign across the state for the general election after he lost his party’s April primary to Hillary Clinton. He thinks Republican John McCain’s efforts have been stymied by the country’s economic crisis.
“I think Obama is going to win, but I don’t think it’s going to be a runaway,” he said. “I think he wins Pennsylvania.”
Mr. Murtha said it has taken time for the state’s voters embrace a black presidential candidate.
“There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area,” said Mr. Murtha, whose district stretches from Johnstown to Washington County. “The older population is more hesitant.”
(Link)
Reminder: Boot John Murtha. Support Bill Russell.
Join the Russell Brigade here.
Technorati Tags: John Murtha, Obama, racist
Barney Frank’s own words to haunt him … October 15, 2008
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Note the date of this NYT article…
September 11, 2003
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae
By STEPHEN LABATON
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.
”There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,” Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan.
Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies.
The administration’s proposal, which was endorsed in large part today by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would not repeal the significant government subsidies granted to the two companies. And it does not alter the implicit guarantee that Washington will bail the companies out if they run into financial difficulty; that perception enables them to issue debt at significantly lower rates than their competitors. Nor would it remove the companies’ exemptions from taxes and antifraud provisions of federal securities laws.
The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session.
After the hearing, Representative Michael G. Oxley, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, announced their intention to draft legislation based on the administration’s proposal. Industry executives said Congress could complete action on legislation before leaving for recess in the fall.
”The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,” Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ”We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,” the independent agency that now regulates the companies.
”These irregularities, which have been going on for several years, should have been detected earlier by the regulator,” he added.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was created by Congress in 1992 after the bailout of the savings and loan industry and concerns about regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.
At the time, the companies and their allies beat back efforts for tougher oversight by the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the Federal Reserve. Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families. This year, however, the chances of passing legislation to tighten the oversight are better than in the past.
Reflecting the changing political climate, both Fannie Mae and its leading rivals applauded the administration’s package. The support from Fannie Mae came after a round of discussions between it and the administration and assurances from the Treasury that it would not seek to change the company’s mission.
After those assurances, Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chief executive, endorsed the shift of regulatory oversight to the Treasury Department, as well as other elements of the plan.
”We welcome the administration’s approach outlined today,” Mr. Raines said. The company opposes some smaller elements of the package, like one that eliminates the authority of the president to appoint 5 of the company’s 18 board members.
Company executives said that the company preferred having the president select some directors. The company is also likely to lobby against the efforts that give regulators too much authority to approve its products.
Freddie Mac, whose accounting is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and a United States attorney in Virginia, issued a statement calling the administration plan a ”responsible proposal.”
The stocks of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fell while the prices of their bonds generally rose. Shares of Freddie Mac fell $2.04, or 3.7 percent, to $53.40, while Fannie Mae was down $1.62, or 2.4 percent, to $66.74. The price of a Fannie Mae bond due in March 2013 rose to 97.337 from 96.525.Its yield fell to 4.726 percent from 4.835 percent on Tuesday.
Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence over their regulators.
”The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,” said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ”Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie’s operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.”
Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
Technorati Tags: Barry Frank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
What Would ACORN Do? October 15, 2008
THE MORNING BELL
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15, 2008
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15, 2008
What Would ACORN Do?
Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention infuriated the left for many reasons, but one of the barbs that seemed to upset them the most was her extended attack on community organizers. Weeks later, liberals settled on a retort to Palin that Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) voiced from the House floor: “Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor .” We’ll let Palin explain why she is no Pilate, but rest assured, comparing today’s “community organizers” to Jesus is an insult to Christians everywhere.
Community organizing might sound like pauper’s work, but in today’s professionalized advocacy world, it is not. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), had an operating budget of $37 million in 2006. ACORN is spending $16 million this year alone to register new Democrats nationwide. In today’s world, community organizing is big business, and that business is extortion. ACORN’s scam works like this: 1) identify deep pocket corporation; 2) protest that corporation; 3) sign a partnership with the corporation to end protest in exchange for money. From 2004 through 2006, ACORN won six-figure payments from Ameriquest Mortgage, Citibank, Washington Mutual and M&T Bank. It even won million-dollar payments from JP Morgan and Bank of America.
When ACORN is not extorting money from corporations, it is pressuring politicians for taxpayer dollars. ACORN has been winning federal money since the Carter administration, and the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) estimates ACORN has received $16 million in federal tax dollars since 1997. In the 1990s, ACORN began shaking down local business communities and has established local “Housing Trust Funds” in more than 300 counties, cities and towns. The funds funnel money through groups like ACORN to produce new homes and refurbish existing ones . The holy grail for ACORN has been the establishment of a National Housing Trust Fund, and when the federal government was forced to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this summer, ACORN’s allies in Congress succeeded in making that slush fund part of the deal.
In addition to the extortion and swindling of taxpayers, ACORN also practices outright fraud. In 1986 a dozen ACORN members were convicted of vote fraud. In 2007, eight ACORN employees pleaded guilty to election fraud. This year ACORN has outdone itself. It is under investigation for vote fraud in a dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida, Indiana , Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Last but not least, let’s not forget the hypocrisy. In 2001, when ACORN members tried to turn the group’s tactics on itself and organize its employees, the upstart members were summarily fired. And ACORN is not the only suspect community organizer. Just this past summer federal investigators raided a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina . The agency had been hired by the city to run a $3.6 million program intended to help elderly and poor New Orleans residents gut and board up their storm-damaged houses. Instead, the money appears to have gone to politically connected contractors who did little or no work on the houses. Is this how community organizers want to be known? Fraud, extortion and hypocrisy — all on the taxpayers’ dime.
Technorati Tags: ACORN, Palin, community organizer
