Can this man ever admit his mistakes? When a student asks the unhappy Massachusetts Congressman, “How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?” the Democrat proceeds to blame Republicans, labeling the student, lashing out at the “right wing,” but sidestepping his question.

Sees Barney would rather blame the right wing than explain his own actions. To his credit, Frank did acknowledge the Fannie Mae reforms he helped pass in March 2007, but doesn’t address his efforts to thwart earlier Republican-sponsored reforms of the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) when it might have made a difference.

Kudos to this student for calmly challenging the mean-spirited Democrat. I guess he had expected more fawning from the Harvard crowd.

(H/t Reader Peter Hughes for alerting me to this Townhall post.)

UPDATE: Michelle: “His defensive bullying and sputtering and ranting about ‘right-wing attacks’ speaks for itself.”

UP-UPDATE: Calling this a “meltdown,” Glenn thinks Barney sounds “kinda defensive.”

To note (yet again)–Barney’s first impulse is to attack the student asking the question rather than consider his inquiry. And note which one does a better job of keeping his cool. So much in this clip, wish I weren’t so pressed for time today.

It seems to be the standard Democratic practice now to blame the economic crisis on George W. Bush as if Democrats’ hands were perfectly clean and they had done everything possible to prevent this from happening.  Last month, the President said he “inherited” the budget deficit at the same time he was making plans to leave his successor an even bigger deficit.

Now, his fellow Democrat Harry Reid has called the recent Senate passage of the president’s budget is “a critical step” in the direction of cleaning “up the mess we inherited.”  Well, it’s a mess Harry Reid inherited from himself given that he began his tenure as Senate Majority Leader well over two years ago.

Wonder what he did it that time to forestall the current crisis.  He held a leadership position in one of the three branches of the federal government, the branch with the power over the federal purse strings.  He was in a position to prevent this from happening.

In short, even before he took the reins in the Senate, Mr. Reid had the power to take action to avert this crisis.  Instead of using his position to effect reform, he used it to block it.

Indeed, in the two years prior to taking charge in the Senate, as the leader of the opposition, he did everything in his power to obstruct Republican reforms.  He didn’t want them to see any succees. He did nothing to discourage his Democratic colleagues, notably Connecticut’s Chris Dodd, from thwarting legislation then-President Bush and Republicans proposed to reform the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

He inherited a mess that he helped create.  This mess is as much his as it is the former President’s and the budget he and his Senate Democrats just approved will only serve to aggravate matters.

A MISMANAGED, BANKRUPT ENTITY PAYING OUT BIG BONUSES WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS:

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

Emphasis added.

In his press conference last night, the president said he “inherited” a $1.3 trillion annual deficit.  Guess this former constitutional law scholar has lost sight of the document which ostensibly served as the center of his legal studies.

According to that august document, Article 1, Section 8, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”  For the last two years of George W. Bush’s Administration when the deficit spiked, Democrats, the incumbent president’s party, controlled Congress.  Obama, as a Senator from the great state of Illinois, was part of that majority.  This fact has led one blogger to ask,

What did Obama do to reduce the deficits as the Senator from Illinois? What legislation did he author? What opposition did he provide to the high-spending policies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in 2007 and 2008?

Unless President Obama can provide evidence of such opposition, he shares responsibility for the deficits he claims to have inherited.

As we read yet again of Barney Frank’s grandstanding over executive salaries while remaining silent over his own cozy relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I recall Mr. Frank has an ethics problem which Congress has yet to investigate.

As you may recall, while the Massachusetts Democrat served on the House Banking Committee in the 1990s (now the House Financial Services Committee which he chairs), he was living with Herb Moses, then an executive at Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) regulated by his committee.  Since a heterosexual Congressman would have stepped down from a committee if it regulated the industry where his wife worked, a gay Congressman should step down in similar circumstances.

Frank led Democratic efforts to thwart reforms of Fannie and its sister GSE, Freddie Mac.

So, learning of Frank’s outrage over AIG, I decided to do something I had intended to do when the Democrat’s conflict of interest came to light, write to my Congressman, Henry Waxman, asking him to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

I just mailed (and e-mailed) the letter and encourage you to contact your federal representatives and ask them to do the same.  I include a copy of my letter below the “jump.”

To ignore this matter, would, as I have written previously, be tantamount to downgrading gay relationships.

(more…)

BARNEY FRANK COMES OUT AGAINST “rewarding incompetence.”

As I pondered Barney Frank’s accusation that John McCain was appealing to anti-gay prejudice when he brought up the Masachusetts Democrat’s recent proposals to raise taxes and slash defense spending, I was struck at how quick he was to smear Republicans.

Instead of taking issue with McCain’s arguments, perhaps defending the merits of his proposed tax increases or showing how a drastic cut in national defense wouldn’t impact national security, he immediately jumped to the conclusion that a Republican would only bring him up to play into anti-gay sentiments.

Does he believe his statements are not worthy of criticism?  Is he incapable of recognizing that conservatives might object to his ideas?  Why does he assume that a Republican who criticizes him does so because of prejudice?

I mean, he equates McCain’s criticism of him with “past Republican efforts to raise voter concerns about the prospect of congressmen Charles Rangel and John Conyers, who are black, becoming committee chairs.“  Um, Barney, both men come from the extreme left of your party, with the latter having “a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war” (before he chaired the House Judiciary Committee) with a host of left-wing conspiracy theorists.

It seems Barney harbors similar conspiracy theories about Republicans, given the assumptions he makes about us.  Call it his partisan prejudice.  It’s a sad day for America when a politician so prominent and so smart harbors such prejudices about the opposing party.  He ignores our ideas and assumes our animus.

Let’s see Barney Frank refuses to take any responsibility for the mortgage mess.  He accuses Republicans of racism when they fault government programs for causing the crisis.

Now, he’s getting all bent out of shape because John McCain, on the campaign trail, is making an issue of the Massachusetts Democrat’s proposals to raise taxes, increase domestic spending and gut the defense budget.  Ol’ Barney says it’s because he’s gay, calling McCain’s attack on his actual statements, “an appeal to prejudice.”

Sorry, Barney it’s not because you’re gay, it’s because you’re a liberal who’s been clearer than any of your colleagues on what would happen should the Democrats win the White House and increase their congressional majorities next week.

I thought that Barney was really smart. Yet, he doesn’t seem to understand where Republicans have been coming from since his first election to Congress in 1980.  All he can do is accuse us of the most nefarious of motives.  Doesn’t sound like a very smart man to me, sounds like a very narrow and intolerant one.

As Allahpundit puts it, Barney “never met a bad-faith accusation he didn’t like.”

Grow up, Barney, quit your belly-aching, admit your mistakes, resign from the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee and become a role model of responsiblity for gay people.  Because right now you’re an embarrassment to all of us.

In 1948, President Harry S Truman reversed his political fortunes and avoided what then-seemed a long certain defeat by running not just against his Republican opponent, Tom Dewey, but also against the first Republican Congress elected since the New Deal.

Tagging the 80th Congress a “do-nothing” legislature (as he did throughout the campaign), Truman told voters in Charleston, West Virginia on October 1 of that year:

The Republicans would like you to forget these fundamental differences between the two parties. But during the past 2 years we have been given a sharp warning that these differences still exist, and these differences are wide and deep.

. . . .

I know, of course, that there are many fine people throughout the United States, who from habit or choice are members of the Republican Party. To them I say that the national leadership of their party has failed them miserably.

With the current Democratic Congress’s approval as historic lows (making George W. Bush seem downright popular by comparison), it would seem John McCain would do well to run a similar campaign against the do-nothing 110th as a reminder of a stark difference between the parties.

It seems the only thing the Democratic Congress has been able to do has to be to increase federal spending at levels even greater than those of the preceding spendthrift Republican Congresses. Having scored his congressional colleagues in the past for spending money “like a drunken sailor,” John McCain should have found a profligate Democratic Congress a natural target.

But, maybe, the presidential election has prevented the incompetence of this Congress from exciting as much interest as it should. No sooner did Democrats take over in 2007 than the 2008 race for the White House began. And that seems to have turned media attention away from the Capitol and to the hustings.

The unending presidential campaign may well have prevented a campaign against Congress from really resonating.

Two years ago at this time, you could not open up a newspaper or turn on a TV newscast without learning about the follies of then-recently disgraced (& then-recently) former Congressman Mark Foley. That Florida Republican had been sending sexually explicit Instant Messages to male House pages.

Now, we learn that Tim Mahoney, the Democrat who won Foley’s seat in Congress, paid “a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him.” The affair begin “in 2006 when Mahoney was campaigning for Congress against Foley, promising ‘a world that is safer, more moral.’”

So, why is it that we don’t get wall-to-wall news coverage of the Mahoney scandal?  The Democratic House leadership knew about it before the story broke this week.  And here, there is hush money, something absent from the Foley scandal.

Is it the gay angle that made the Foley story so sensational?  Or did MSM merely use the story to advance their narrative about the hypocrisy of gay Republicans?  Or was it that pesky little (R) after Foley’s name, but not Mahoney’s?

Methink the explanation is that last one, given how little attention the MSM has paid to various Democratic scandals this year, including that of another Florida Democrat, Robert Wexler and of New York Democrat Charles Rangel. Not to mention the fundraising shenaningans of the Obama campaign.

Why is it that the MSM only get into high dudgeon when the scandal involves Republicans?

I guess it’s up to us bloggers, like Gateway Pundit who’s been all over this story, to go where the MSM refuses to tread.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin builds on this theme (below the “jump”): (more…)

Sometimes when I discuss politics with other gay people, I learn that they share my fiscally conservative views.  They too favor smaller government, less regulation, fewer federal (and state) intrusions into our lives and more freedom.  But, they end up supporting the Democratic Party, often contributing to its coffers because, they claim, it’s better for gay people.  (I happen to disagree with that assessment.)

I sometimes press these Democrats, asking how can they, while claiming to favor free enterprise, support a party which consistently pushes for an ever-increasing role for the state.  Sometimes, they hem and they haw.  Other times, they point to Bill Clinton’s accomplishments.  Most times, they say it all boils down the the gay issue.

Those supposedly fiscally conservative Democrats should look at Nancy Pelosi’s latest proposal.  With the government about to bail out financial institutions for about one trillion dollars and with deficits continuing to skyrocket, the Democratic House Speaker favors a “$150 billion economic stimulus plan . . .  to help counteract a faltering economy.”  When Democrats see a problem, they look to increased government spending as the solution.

Deficits wouldn’t be as high as they are now if recent Republican Congresses hadn’t abandoned their conservative principles and spent taxpayers’ money, in John McCain’s words, “like a drunken sailor.”  Nancy Pelosi would not be Speaker today had Republicans held true to those principles.

It’s amazing that Democrats just can’t learn lessons that the average citizen learns when he overspends.  When I balanced my checkbook and paid off the expenses for my trip to St. Paul, I discovered I was behind in my finances for the year, so I’ll have to cut back for a while.  No new books or DVDs, no new clothes, fewer dinners out (and then at less expensive restaurants), all lunches at home, fewer dirty martinis.

If Nancy Pelosi were in my situation, instead of cutting expenses, she’d be increasing them.

Well, some of my fellows say the gay issue is paramount.  I respond, fiscal responsibility as well as economic and personal freedom are more important.  And national security.  And judicial restraint.

If John McCain loses this election, it will because, in large measure, he failed to promote a consistent conservative economic message.

You see in national elections, we Republicans are at a disadvantage to the Democrats.  They can get by with running against.  We have to run for something.

In 1974, Democrats increased their majorities in both Houses of Congress when voters overwhelmingly rejected Republican incumbents and candidates to punish then-recently disgraced former President Nixon’s party for Watergate.  In 1976, Jimmy Carter won by running for “a government as good as the people” which was really his slogan to capitalize on residual distrust of the GOP.

Four years later, to oust that incompetent executive, Ronald Reagan presented a plan for economic recovery.  It worked, both on the campaign trail and for the economy.

Fourteen years later, Republicans finally recaptured Congress by running on “The Contract with America,” “a detailed agenda for national renewal.“  Twelve years later, however when an majority of House Republican had lost sight of the principles undergirding that contract, Democrats ran against their corruption, regaining the majority with vague promises of making the 110th the “most ethical Congress in history.”

Two years later, Barack Obama is running for president promising change from “the last eight years,” his favorite expression in the second presidential debate this year which, as I noted before, he used more often than Sarah Palin used the word, “maverick.”  While change may seem a positive message, in many ways, it’s just a negative campaign tactic, signaling that he’s running against those last eight years.

He still hasn’t really spelled out what he means by change.

It just may work.  For the better part of the past thirty-odd years, Democrats have won by running against something while Republicans win when we run for something.

And the media accuse us of cynicism and negative campaigning.

I’m not the only one to notice my Congressman’s failure to look into the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the financial meltdown.  Even though the jurisdiction ofHenry Waxman’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee includes the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), at the heart of the current crisis.

In yesterday’s hearings, Waxman and his Democrats “grilled Lehman Brothers executives over CEO pay and ‘deregulation’, but never mentioned the names Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.“  Seems they so want this scandal to fit their narrative of the private sector run amok that they won’t address the role federal regulation and government-sponsored enterprises played.

At least, one representative wants a broader investgation.  Connecticut’s Christopher Shays wants to bring the records of past hearings brought into the record to show how Congress failed to heed warnings of the coming catastrophe — and to address Bush Administration requests “to overhaul GSE regulation in 2003.”

Methinks Waxman and the MSM are ignoring this because of their faith in government institutions and of their distrust of the private sector.  They don’t want to confront evidence which upsets their worldview.  Government regulation, they believe, can’t be responsible for the problem–or even have a share in it because it’s the remedy they seek.

Democrats just don’t want to believe that government might be part of the problem.

Instead of admitting his own responsibility in the current financial mess, Barney Frank does what he and Democratic partisans always do when their records are called into question: attack conservatives.  It’s not the same blame he attempted to ladle out when Bill O’Reilly pressed him.  Now the Massachusetts Congressman is accusing conservatives of racism:

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank claims conservatives are trying to partly blame the nation’s economic woes on black people.

“This is an effort I believe to appeal to a kind of anger in people,” Frank, a Newton Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, today told a Boston foreclosure-prevention forum.

Frank charged that conservatives aim to shift blame for the market meltdown away from Wall Street and toward minority-lending laws like the federal Community Reinvestment Act.

Um, Barney, if you bothered to read the conservative stuff, you’d find they’re looking at more than just the Community Reinvestment Act. It’s not they, but you who are trying to shift the blame.

What is it with liberals? Instead of taking responsibility for their own messes (or, in the case, their own involvement in a mess which had many authors) and blame others.

Unable to acknowledge conservative arguments, Barney Frank has decided that Republicans harbor racist sentiments.  I guess he just borrowed a page from the liberal playbook.

He’d rather level false and absurd charges against conservatives than accept his responsibility. Once again, let me repeat, in the interest of recovering from this financial mess with plunging further into recession, Barney Frank should resign from the House Financial Services Committee.

Ed Morrissey who alerted me to Barney’s latest comment provides a nice summary of the conservative view of the mortgage meltdown which I provide below the jump (H/t JammieWearingFool): (more…)

Until recently, I never thought particularly highly of Bill O’Reilly. I found him boorish, self-important and a bit arrogant. He didn’t seem to allow his guests to express themselves. But, then once, I saw a bit of a conversation he had on the issues raised by the Terry Schiavo case. I was impressed at how well he understood the complexity of the situation.

Later, I saw (and read) portions of his interview with Hillary Clinton, again, tough but fair. It helped elevate my opinion of that Democrat whom I didn’t much care for. And he was aggressive in pursuing Obama for his non-answers in their exchange.

But, not until I saw him confront Barney Frank did I full appreciate the TV host’s style:

Despite being one of the major players on the House Banking Committee, Frank did little in his tenure to push for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To be sure, he did get his reform bill through last year, but he’d been blocking reform going back at least to 1992, one year after he moved in with a Fannnie Mae executive.

In the summer of 2003, when “Freddie Mac’s multibillion-dollar accounting scandal” became public, the Massachusetts Democrat said, “I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis.” Later that year, he claimed Fannie and Freddie posed no “threat to the Treasury.”

Yet, when O’Reilly confronted him, Frank attempted to shift the blame to Republicans and the Administration. Barney leaves out how frequently he thwarted the Administration’s numerous pleas for reform. To be sure, given the scope of this crisis, there is much blame to go around. And many Republicans deserve considerable opprobrium.

Their responsibility for this mess pales in comparison to the Massachusetts Democrat.  Indeed, few Congress have as long a record of blocking reforms at Fannie and Freddie as does Barney Frank. (Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd may have a claim on that crown.)

At this time of year, we Jews examine our past, look at our mistakes and seek to correct them. Barney seems to have forgotten the spirit of the season; he won’t acknowledge any responsibility for the current mess. Kudos to Bill O’Reilly for calling him on that failure.

In any other industry, someone would a record like Barney Frank would have long since lost his job.

It’s simply amazing that this man who was so for so long spectacularly wrong on Fannie and Freddie’s financial health seek to pass judgment on Republicans who tried to do something to reform those two government-sponsored enterprises before their collapse posed a threat to our Treasury (a threat that Democrat dismissed).

For his past mistakes alone, Frank should step down as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.  His failure to take responsibility provides one more reason we shouldn’t have this man as the helm of this important committee as Congress attempts to fix teh current mess — and prevent it from ever happening again.

When I learned that my Congressman Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was holding hearings this week on Lehman Brothers and AIG, I decided to call his office to see if he was looking into problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

His aide, incredibly helpful and polite, told me that his committee has “jurisdiction over anything in the federal government.”  Fannie and Freddie are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).  But, since Waxman took over the committee in 2007, he has not held a single hearing into their meltdown.  Not one.

Politely, I asked his aide to tell the Congressman that this was a “gross dereliction of duty.”  It seems that for Henry Waxman, the only problems in this country are private enterprise and Republicans.

Fannie and Freddie were among the first to fall.  They’ve been having problems for years.  And the Democratic Chairman of the House Oversight Committeee has yet to look into their role in the current financial mess.

UPDATE: I wonder if it came out in Waxman’s hearings that Obama raised more money from Lehman employees than any other Senator save Hillary Clinton.

UP-UPDATE:  Waxman may want to dodge the issue, but at least one Republican, Connecticut’s Chris Shays wants to look into the GSEs shenanigans:

Republican Rep. Chris Shays called for hearings on the role of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the financial crisis Monday, accusing the two mortgage companies of “wretched manipulation” of Congress.

“We are not confronting the 800 pound gorilla in room…the role of Fannie and Freddie in this debacle,” said Shays at a congressional hearing on the financial crisis.

Shays wondered why Democrats will target Wall Street firms during their planned set of hearings, but not Fannie and Freddie, who he said offered the type of subprime loans that helped trigger the crisis.

(Via Jennifer Rubin).

Explaining to Charlie Rose why we’re in the financial mess we’re in, Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Commitee, said there was a “lack of appropriate regulation.”  Interesting that this man who decries an absence of private sector regulation was so loath to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises at the center of this mess:

His record is close to perfect as a stalwart opponent of reforming the two companies, going back more than a decade. The first concerted push to rein in Fan and Fred in Congress came as far back as 1992, and Mr. Frank was right there, standing athwart. But things really picked up this decade, and Barney was there at every turn

Hmmm. .. going back to 1992? Wasn’t Barney then partnered to a man who worked at Fannie Mae?

Interesting that a man who blames the crisis on a paucity of regulation of the private sector has a long record of opposing regulation of the public sector.  Shouldn’t government institutions be subject to greater scrutiny given that they don’t face the same market-place risks as does private ones?

Do you think those media guardians ever willing to expose the supposed hypocrisy of gay Republicans will look into the hypocrisy of this gay Democrat?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

UPDATE:  Seems Frank finally got the message that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed additional oversight.  Last year, he sponsored H.R. 1427 which would have strengthened oversight of the GSEs. It passed the House, but died in Chris Dodd’s Senate Banking Committee. So, if he finally found it necessary to regulate the GSEs, long after Republicans had been pushing for such reform, why did he blame an absence of private sector regulation? (Via Instapundit.)

His own legislation shows he understood the necessity of additional oversight of government-sponsored institutions. Guess it’s just too hard for a liberal Democrat to let go of his faith in government interference in the free market.

Five years ago, Barney Frank contended that “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” at the center of the mortgage mess and financial crisis, “are not facing any kind of financial crisis.”  He called them “fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.

Indeed, he wanted to take a little risk with these government-sponsored enterprises:

I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. .

Now, it looks like Barney Frank’s risk is costing American taxpayers billions of dollars.

And just as the mainstream media has taken little note of Barney Frank’s past defenses of the soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and his efforts to block Republican efforts to rein in the mortgage giants, they have also paid little heed to the Massachusetts Democrat’s past conflict of interest in dealing with Fannie Mae.

While Frank served on the House Banking Committee in the 1990s, his partner, Herb Moses, worked at Fannie Mae as assistant director of product initiatives from 1991 to 1998. The two lived together at that time, breaking up in 1998, “a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae.”

While Frank and Moses had “assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest,” others disagree. Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute said:

It’s absolutely a conflict. . . . He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane? . . . If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane. . . . But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.

If we want our relationships treated as traditional marriage, then we must hold them to the same standards.  If a straight Congressman would have stepped down from a committee because it regulated the industry where his wife worked, so too should a gay Congressman step down when his committee regulates an industry where his partner works.

Thus, Frank should have stepped down from the Banking Committee in the 1990s. Not only would he have demonstrated integrity as a legislator, but he would also have shown his commitment to treating gay relationships the same as traditional marriage.

Instead, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too. And he still refuses to take any responsibility for the current crisis. And yet another reason why he should resign his position as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

ADDENDUM:  While I do think Barney Frank holds a good share of responsbility for this mess, I don’t know if I’d go as far as Mark Steyn who, on linking the article exposing this conflict, writes, “It turns out the entire planetary meltdown is due to Congressman Frank’s sex life.”

it seems Bruce and I have been reading different sources to reach the same conclusion. It was not a failure of government to regulate which caused the current problems facing Wall Street, but an excess of government intervention which provoked it.

Bruce posts my friend Rich Miniter’s piece which I had not yet seen, but addresses many of the issues I’ve been learning about these past seventy-two hours or so.

A bill passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President (Jimmy Carter–can he do anything right?), the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, basically forced banks to make loans to would-be home-buyers without good credit histories. Another Democratic President, Bill Clinton, expanded on the bill.

The two institutions at the heart of this crisis are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSEs. Some media sources sometimes fail to define GSE. Well, it means Government Sponsored Enterprises. Let me repeat they are Government Sponsored Enterprises. They are not the free market.

Republicans have been calling for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac throughout the Bush Administration, with the President himself calling for reform 17 times just in 2008.

As I mentioned before, John McCain co-sponsored legislation in the 109th Congress designed to fix the problem. Meanwhile, as per the video below, House Democrats thwarted reform while Republicans warned of the upcoming crisis.

And there is Barney Frank in 2004, saying all is hunky-dory at Fannie Mae.

(more…)

No, “WE” didn’t cause this Wall Street mess – Richard Miniter – PajamasMedia
(and yes, this is the whole column printed below)

You must be as tired of hearing it as I am.  Somehow, we are all at fault for Wall Street’s meltdown.  We demanded cheap loans for houses we couldn’t afford and voted in corrupt dolts, who took from Fannie Mae and told us what we wanted to hear.  Now, we are getting what we deserve.

Take Rod Dreher’s otherwise excellent column in the Dallas Morning News:

After all, these scoundrels did not elect themselves, nor was there an outcry heard in the land against Wall Street rapacity and recklessness when our 401(k)s were rising, and all but the lowliest plebeian was moving into his very own McMansion.

Along those lines, there’s one proverb that we will all become painfully acquainted with in the years to come: You reap what you sow.

There are two essential problems with this analysis: it is factually false and morally unwise.

Rep. Barney Frank was elected by a majority of the people of his district in Massachusetts. Senator Chris Dodd is brought to us by many but not all of the voters of Connecticut. And so on. Most of us never had the chance to vote for or against these solons. So why should we be blamed?

The regulatory changes that led us to this point were the work of lobbyists, bureaucrats and lawmakers including Dodd and Frank and corrupt executives, like Raines and Johnson. We know or can know their names.

The idea of blaming “all of us” is a way to avoid blaming those who did the deeds and reaped their ill-gotten gains.

What about cheap mortgages?   Sure, some of us took them when they were offered.   But who offered them and why?   Yes, it is the Clinton-era changes to the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend more for “affordable housing.” Law firms, including ones connected to Obama, sued banks that failed to meet their low-income quotas for mortgages. Bankers were not driven by greed, as everyone says, but by fear.  Fear of the baying hounds of regulators and lawyers would call them racist and ruin their careers.  But who unleashed the hounds on the bankers?

Particular policies and people made this mess. The public’s only role will be to pay the tab, a cruel addition that will equal more than $2,500 per person.  Can’t the talking class at least have the decency to stop blaming the one group generous enough to pay for the party they didn’t attend?

Amen, brother.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)