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Finally someon who gets the truth. And he's a dem.
Faxxer
Member Posts: 3,247
http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html
quote....
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign......... story cont'd on link
end quote...
damn, this guy said it so good i doubt even siobabble can argue this one :P
Comments
actually there is a time line here on this forum with the times BUSH called out and warned americam's about this starting in 2001 ...
no one really responsed to it.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I'm no siobabble, but I can argue that the collapse was completely intentional: The decisions went past the analysts and in unison for things with historically crappy Sharpe ratios. If that doesn't scream INTENTIONAL , then I don't know what does. The big hogs got laid off with nice severance packages due to no small effort of the lobbyists (FFS it was even in the wall street journal how much they had spent on lobbying) and now the BANKS THAT DIDN'T COOPERATE are being shafted by the government.
This whole "loan crisis" was a scam to take over the banks. It's funny how the media attributes it to "bad computer models" when the models that they teach in finance 101 (i.e. CAPM) could have told anybody enough to not invest nearly everything in high risk loans without hedging, or even keeping enough for the margin.
How about them pharmaceuticals? Yeah, they get to now force people to get vaccines that are unnecessary to keep the pharmaceutical profits high. Flu shots for kids? No problem. Vaccine for a virus that is spread sexually that can be prevented with a condom? Great. Let's make that mandatory too. Pharmaceuticals are now pushing the vaccine that was intended to cure bird flu, because they have a surfeit even though there is a 5% chance of contracting the disease from it.
America is in bad shape and I would really like nothing more than to GTFO.
Sure you can choose from Puppet O.B., or Puppet M.K. , but they will still be controlled by the special interest groups that spend millions of dollars to get what they want at your expense. The core problem is that there is nothing the American people can do to insure that the government's actions are in their interest once elected and that will obviously never change.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
consequentially
Obama has a sail on his back due to this crisis.
also,
he is poised to reap the rewards of a historically up market after an inevitable turn around.
however,
the turn around can take a little longer with a traditionally factual history of tax and spend liberal. especially considering house,senate,oval office liberalism. it just may be orchestrated to possibly begin an upswing in 2010 with a bill signing for the cameras.
of course, all of this implies conspiracy.
but i dont youtube and probably wont sound as good as the zeitgeist guy anyways...
-I will subtlety invade your psyche-
It is sad that the media has been so bought off in our country that it has come down to personal agendas vs truth. It is ridiculous that even when posting information that are on sites such as justia, people start screaming if this was true than why aren't nbc, cbs, and everyone under the sun reporting it? The media has so brainwashed so much of our society they do not even accept facts as truth, they do not accept that there is a case in court at all simply because they did not hear about it on the news. Being blindly mislead by biased media believing that everything they say is gold because they are "reputable sources" .
It very well is a shameful time for our media when the conspiracy theorists report more truth than they do. When we have to search alternative sources to even see that the US is not the only country at war right now, that the major players in congress that caused this crisis that are democrats have profited from supporting the people who are behind this. I have not seen any reports in the mainstream media talking about how Obama has raised all of this money in 3 years, but I see press everywhere on the lower amount that McCain has raised in 30 years.. still less than Obamas in 3.. which should speak for itself as to which candidate is more bought and paid for by those who wish to screw us over.
I have lost all faith in most of our media at this time.
Remember how matt Drudge was the anus of the world for reporting about some intern named Lewinsky?
now over a million hits a day.
Remember how Drudge reported on the nuclear weapons found in Iraq?
He's a broken clock.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
I don't care if he is registered as a Democrat, Card is a Republican in the way he thinks and the way he will probably vote. I have a bookshelf full of his novels, and even some of his graphic novels. The most recent book of his that I read was Empire. Trust me, besides being the first of his books that was almost too lame to read, he told his readers how he viewed the country and politics. I won't judge him on the only novel to really dive into modern politics, but Card is voting McCain/Palin, Barr. or not at all.
Have you ever considered that being a Democrat does not automatically make one a far left liberal?
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
I want to read news that isn't pro anyone, just report what is really happeneing and I am happy. I hate reading biased crap from either side. Why is it noone wants to report the truth plain and simple?
Exactly. Just because your voter card says "Democrat", it doesn't mean you are left leaning at all. In Card's case, he is extremely right leaning. In other words: "Preaching to the Choir". In other words, it doesn't mean anything to point out Card is a "Democrat". Good point Squeak.
not going to steer this into that direction, you will.
enjoy the content of the article, fuck who the author is- you must.
wheres my fuckin cane, are you
mmm goooood
-I will subtlety invade your psyche-
Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and he is not a Democrat. I know both Mormon Democrats and he is neither of them.
Then why did the newpaper say he was? just curious.
Remember how Drudge reported on the nuclear weapons found in Iraq?
He's a broken clock.
When did he do that? care to share the evidence? He is right far more often than he is wrong. That's not a broken clock; that's a good journalist.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Remember how Drudge reported on the nuclear weapons found in Iraq?
He's a broken clock.
When did he do that? care to share the evidence? He is right far more often than he is wrong. That's not a broken clock; that's a good journalist.
well a broken clock is right at least once every-day
Trade in material assumptions for spiritual facts and make permanent progress.
LMAO at all you who say drudge is anything at all...
his web site simply posts links to other news sources...
You guys obviously don't go there or you'd know that.
once in a BLUE moon he posts info on a "developing..." story... and THEn...the full story comes out on some media outlet. period.
Like I posted before (and btw I love Orson Scott Card I am rereading "Speaker of the Dead" right now) the current Republican administration is not responsible for this.
And I posted 25 pages worth of info.