ACORN and the Housing Crash

My good friend Kimberly Morin has an excellent article on ACORN's promotion of the so-called "predatory" loans.

Here's a taste:

Many of the subprime mortgages were given without checking consumers’ credit scores, allowing no down payments and allowing non-traditional income to be counted as income, in other words, people who were being paid under-the-table (not paying taxes on this) were allowed to count this income when applying for a mortgage. Furthermore there were many ‘exotic’ mortgages as they are referred to in the industry, such as paying interest only for a certain number of years which builds no equity for the consumer and does not pay down the principle of the loan. On top of this it does not provide the consumer with the reality of what the payments will be when the principle payments actually kick in. This is just one type of loan that caused a lot of people to have their homes foreclosed upon; they simply could not afford the principle payments once they finally came to be.

Through the direct actions of ACORN Housing, banks were giving people who were not ‘normally’ creditworthy loans that had low interest rates at first but were adjustable. When the rates were adjusted up, the consumers simply could not afford the higher payments. The forcing of banks by groups like ACORN using the Community Reinvestment Act to give loans to people otherwise not able to receive them is a huge cause of the housing bubble and why so many have been forced into foreclosure. ACORN receives millions of dollars of taxpayer money to help people every year yet they are hurting these very people by aiding them in getting the subprime or exotic loans that have caused nothing but problems for the consumers, the banking industry and the economy overall and responsible taxpayers may now be included in this list.

The non-partisan Consumers Rights League did an extensive in-depth investigation into ACORN Housing and their mortgage practices in 2008 which they submitted to Congress recommending at the very least that Congress investigate ACORN Housing’s mortgage practices. I implore you to read their full report here: http://www.consumersrightsleague.org/UploadedFiles/ACORN_AHC_Report.pdf To date there has been no investigation into ACORN Housing. Maybe now that Obama is seeking to prosecute all organizations that were involved with these practices, he will read the Consumers Rights League investigation and actually have the Department of Justice perform a further investigation? Maybe someone in Congress will actually think twice before giving more money to ACORN for housing activities? Actually Michelle Bachmann(R-MN) amended the Housing Bill to disallow any groups that have been indicted for voter registration fraud from receiving any money but Barney Frank(D-MA) changed that. I think ACORN Housing being involved in the mortgage crisis would have proven a bit more substantial as a reason to disallow more funds to be steered their way.

Read the whole thing here!

Why Ayers Matters

In the television industry, the saying goes: "Its not what you know, its who you know". The same goes for politics. Its not what you know (economics, military studies, statesmanship, organization), its who you know (William Ayers, Reverend Wright, John Hagee, Charles H. Keating, Jr).

John McCain has had little trouble with his connections. He openly rejected John Hagee's endorsement after Hagee's alleged anti-Catholicism came to dominate the news cycle for a few days. The Senator from Arizona had no real relationship with Hagee other than normal political platitudes. McCain's connection to Charles Keating was nothing more than "poor judgment" [1] according to the investigation into the Savings and Loan scandal. On the other hand, Barack Obama's connections to Rev Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers are on a whole other level than McCain's. Obama was a member of Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ for over twenty years. Wright married Barack and Michelle, baptized the Obama children and was the inspiration for Obama's memoir, The Audacity of Hope. Unrepentant domestic terrorist [2] and leftist radical [3] William Ayers has been a major player in Chicago politics since he came out of hiding in the early 1980s. Since his return to the real world he spent the 1980s gaining degrees and in the 1990s he began to aid (in my view, damage) Mayor Daley's education reform. During 1995 to 1999, Obama was president of the board of the directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and oversaw indirect grants (explained below) to various schools including "breakthrough" schools (alternative schools) who's lessons weren't exactly math and science:

Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC [Chicago Annenberg Challenge] disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn). [4]

ACORN has been recently raided and charge with fraud in signing up voters [6]. And, to top it off, Ayers has compared his work to the work of authoritarian leftist Hugo Chavez:

I do not think that the link made here between the LSC’s [local school councils] and “democracy” is, in fact, accurate. I think that such “councils” look eerily similar to efforts by regimes like those in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Venezuela under Chavez to impose control over teachers and their independent unions by an authoritarian regime. Thus, it is not a surprise to me that Bill Ayers has traveled several times in recent years to Venezuela where he has spoken in front of Hugo Chavez and has enthusiastically applauded that regime’s efforts to link education policy to the Chavez “revolution.” [7]

Now, why should this matter?

First and foremost, Ayers, along with his wife, have never apologized for their terrorism. In fact, in a well-known quote, Ayers said he "didn't do enough" [8]. Such a view from a man who's career is based around educating children is horrifying. I highly doubt that if Eric Rudolph's case was fumbled and he was set free, that any attempt he made to enter the public education system would be met with massive and righteous outrage. There is no reason an boastful, unrepentant terrorist should have any significant influence in modern education. I could understand if he had apologized, at least. Repentance goes a long way towards reconciliation.

Secondly, the groups connected to the CAC are far-left in views and criminal in nature (as stated above). ACORN was one of the several "urban" groups that pushed for the abundance of mortgages and credit to low-income borrowers who couldn't get a loan before the change in the Community Reinvestment Act [9]. This act, along with Greenspan idiotic idea of cheap credit, the Democrats protection of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, and the Republicans failure to tackle this issue when they had power, all came together in the current economic and political crisis. Thanks to groups like ACORN, we now have most of the country calling for bigger government, and pompous left-wing economists like Jeffery Sachs [10] who claim the entire crisis was Reagan's fault and finally get to get their pseudo-economic theories heard.

Third and finally, what does this say about Obama? I've given Obama the benefit of the doubt countless times since he took center stage in the Democratic nomination race. When Wright came out, I believed he didn't really hear him. When Ayers came out, I believed he only met the man a few times. Both turned out to be blatant lies. If you look at Obama's record, his dealing with far-left people and groups would, in normal elections, be a pretty good indicator of his views. Except this isn't a normal election. The first black (or in this case half-black, Obama's mom is white) Presidential candidate has made everyone crazy. The media has jumped on the McCain camp for bringing up the Obama-Ayers connection. The AP actually called it "racist" [11] to mention Ayers. David Neiwert, an left-wing independent journalist and self-labeled expert on right-wing extremism, has actually traveled to Wasilla, Alaska to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin's ties to Neiwert's version of the far right (libertarians) [12] in what seems an attempt to create a moral equivalency between Wright/Ayers and Palin's connections. The best he could come up with is a connection to a man with the John Birch Society who had some extremist (libertarian) views on firearms.

As seen in the second debate [13], Obama is slowly shifting himself to the center in a smart, but dishonest attempt to make McCain look redundant. I would give him the benefit of the doubt once again, but his shifty words and attempts to divert attention from his past has swept the trust away, as I bet it has done for many others in the electorate. With the polls giving Obama at least a 7% lead and state polls already pushing him over the top [14], unless the junior Senator from Illinois has had a change of heart from his leftist views he professed in the first half of the year and for most of his life, we have much to worry about what he may do in office.