Harry Reid on our voluntary tax system

Just a clip from Greg. 

The leader of the U.S. Senate being interviewed on YouTube.

Clearly, the man is not too bright.  I don't think he is manipulative beyond being a typical politician, not a Machiavellian genius;  he really seems stupid.  In the video he doesn't answer a question because he didn't accept the "phrasology" (sic) of the interviewer.  He points out America has a voluntary tax system even though if you don't pay, you go to jail or are fined, therefore no one is forced to pay taxes.

This is the guy who is bringing you  "health care' and $6.00 a gallon gas.

Also, I still hear the dullards among us say the GOP and Bush caused the banking collapse, here is a timeline story of Bush and McCain trying to reform Fannie and Freddie from "day one."  Frank and Schumer tell us not to worry.  Obama didn't vote.  Since m any do not believe facts, votes, numbers, they may believe the words of the people invovled. 

Keep in mind, the person forcing lending into red lined areas (red lining having been a US government requirement to keep banks from failing) was Andrew Cuomo which makes him the pivot point in the collapse in of the U.S. economy.

Remember that on election day or have some Kool Aid..

Here is an opening article from the Buffalo News.  It confirms what I am saying and I am using it because it is a whitewash, so they, article by Fairbanks,  admit the truth and move on.  They state his control and direction, then blame bankers for, I guess, following the orders:

Cuomo's HUD career under scrutiny

Questions persist over department's possible role in subprime mortgage meltdown

By Phil Fairbanks

Updated: May 30, 2010, 12:14 am / 49 comments
Published: May 30, 2010, 6:40 am

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Buzz up!

Andrew Cuomo promised to "transform the lives of millions of families across our country" when as HUD secretary he announced his historic plan to increase home ownership.
Eleven years later, many experts think that much-heralded transformation played a role in the devastating subprime mortgage meltdown and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
"They should have known the risks were large," said Edward J. Pinto, former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae. "Cuomo was pushing mortgage bankers to make loans and basically saying you have to offer a loan to everybody."
Pinto argues that Cuomo, now running for governor of New York, helped create the framework for the subprime crisis by pushing unrealistic and irresponsible affordable housing goals as head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"He was a contributor in terms of him being a cheerleader, but I don't think we can pin too much blame on him," Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said of Cuomo's role in the subprime crisis.
Baker sees Cuomo as a contributor because he advocated a philosophy that almost everyone should be able to own a home. And yet, he thinks others, most notably mortgage lenders and brokers, were the real culprits....

Read Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money" to learn how Cuomo/Hud forced Fannie and Freddie, having made the appointments now in question, to make bad loans or be attacked by IRS, FDIC, and not have any Fannie business.  This is what we call Fascism.  The Fascists get away with causing disaster to those not important by claiming big business did it, like BP, GM, etc.

At least Cuomo figured a way to clean out Detroit.

Government (you) bailout of the government (Democrats) update

Just a recap, here, prompted by info from Irene:


1.  Red lining was once the law of the land so banks would not make bad investments.

2.  Clinton got into office, redlining became illegal and, indeed, lending to people with no credit was mandated by Freddie and Fannie, if you wanted to stay in its good graces. To accomplish this stupid thing, banks merely laid off the bet to Freddie and Fannie by immediate sales to them.  Thus, the banks got rid of most of their bad loans. Appointees made a fortune.

Democrats sang and danced. Cuomo was ecstatic. Clinton friends made tens of millions of dollars.  GOP mumbled.  Bush and McCain, a few years ago, started jumping up and down about out risk exposure, they were ridiculed.  

3.   Stupid economics catches up with the government, the Clinton people are all gone with their money, and the financial crisis starts.

Cry:  Goldman Sachs did it!  (They packaged the stupid loans and sold them to stupid countries that believed our government.) Of course, the gnashing of teeth about Goldman, now, is theater as the government is Goldman. It is the carbon credit exchange, it is the source of Treasury and Fed executives, it is where the Supreme Court nominee was advising when all hell broke loose and the U.S. saved Goldman.

4.  Heritage Foundation: ... Chris Dodd (D-CT) told reporters about his financial regulation bill, “We’ve ended the ‘too big to fail’ debate. So no longer do I expect any argument to be made that this bill exposes the American taxpayer.” Really. Someone might want to tell Sen. Dodd that in other news yesterday, Freddie Mac announced that it lost another $6.7 billion in the first quarter of 2010 and therefore needed another $10.6 billion in cash from U.S. taxpayers. Since formally nationalizing Freddie in 2008, the federal government has already spent $50.7 billion bringing the Freddie bailout total to $61.3 billion so far. Combined with Fannie Mae’s raid on the Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the American people will spend $389 billion bailing out the two Government Sponsored Entities by 2019. So much for American taxpayers no longer being exposed to “too big to fail.” 

I suppose one could invest in Goldman Sachs as it runs the White House, if not the world.  Still, its like aking a pact with the devil.

The nation has shown severe reaction to the oligarch's socialistic pandering, but New York is going to elect mini Cuomo. Sell if you can.

[Its the Cheshire cat: strange philosophical discussions and vanishes as needed.]

Keeping up with the gates of hell

Little entertainment: Here

Below, Irene's research on how the Clinton era destroyed the housing industry.

NEW MOTTO:

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY.

Catchy, I thought.

To my mind, it is one's duty to avoid tax payment. Otherwise, you are feeding the enemy.

Don't go to jail, the Crown having only the force of the usurper to rely upon, but go out of you way to remove yourself from the trough. There is no longer a voluntary tax system of the people that has been designed to support their common good. We have become slaves to the taxman who uses the FBI, the police, and computer systems to extract money from the producers in order to pay government non-producers, as well the directors of Fannie Mae. Just touching the surface:

• Executive Department workers: 1.8 million (they retire)
  
• State and local workers: 16, million (earning $36 per hour over private industry's #24)
• Unpaid taxes by federal workers in 2006: $2,799,950,165.
• State and local government unfunded, retiree medical benefits: $1 trillion or more
• Federal unfunded obligation to pay medical costs for retired federal workers and military personnel: has a $1.2 trillion
  
• Medicare and Social Security push the nation’s unfunded promises above $52 trillion.” (Recall, the Democrats removed the lock box, the trust money we put in, and said the general revenue will pay social security. "General Revenue" means your grandchildren.)
  

All this and no one is held to any standard of performance. Oh, Obama just added some $17 trillion in debt. Forgot that. There is really no need to attempt to be accurate here, is there?

Vote against every incumbent, keep you children away from public schools, and remove yourself from the trough. That's it, other than moving away. Let it collapse.

It will come to pass the more people work, the less you keep, so get out the back, jack, and make a new plan. Don't forget, get out of the dollar.

Europe has tried this new "change" generations ago and are yelling, now, at the U.S. to stop. As the retired Check President put it, the new stimulus plan is the road to hell. But, what would someone who grew up under Marxist rule know?

------

Irene has been busy, so I will file some of her work here. SO YOU CAN STOP, NOW! All you need to know about Freddie and Fannie is below.

I am even behind on this reporting job. Too much going on.

First, requiescat in pacem:

Chicago's Sun-Times Media files for Chapter 11

By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch

Last Update: 8:43 AM ET Mar 31, 2009

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Sun-Times Media Group Inc. has become the second newspaper publisher in the Chicago area, and the latest among several around the U.S., to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at a time of unprecedented advertising revenue declines in the newspaper industry. [Say, why does advertising decline, I wonder? I thought it was people were not buying the paper, but it could be Bush's fault.]

Rival Tribune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun, filed for bankruptcy last December....

I give even odds that Nancy Peliosi will now recommend bailing out leftists papers. Why not? What's a few billion, anyway, if you can keep the propoganda arms open?

"We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect," Pelosi wrote.

The game is this: get the U.S. Attorney General to say that TV, radio, and Internet are part of the news game; hence, they are big bad anti-trust bears causing her base to collapse. It is the rich people, herself excluded, who are causing newspapers to lose readers by providing free news. You know the next steps are to go after radio and give money to the papers so thay can continue to provide" the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect." The problem is, they know what to expect and are going elsewhere.

Now, there was some disbelief that any Democrat could have done anything bad that resulted in the collapse of the economy, so...

FREDDIE, FANNIE, CONGRESS, CLINTON, et al.

Here is a quick video covering the history of Fannie and Freddie. If you listen and do not come away with the opinion that Big Brother is not manipulating information and opinion, then I hope enjoy the choir.

If you are still in doubt that Clinton (Cuomo), Emmanuel, and Raines killed off the economy, you could read here. You may not be up on this as it is not politically correct to mention truth, because Bush did everything bad, like try to rein in Fannie Mae in 2005.

There has been no free market in housing or finance. Government has long exercised massive control over the housing and financial markets--including its creation of Fannie Mae... -leading to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.... {Forbes}

What is the source of the explanation of the Democrats' philosphy and action in this matter? The New York Times.

Oh, its the NYT of 1999, not today, as they now say the Clinton era actions could not have caused anything bad. Of course not.

So, there being no longer any argument over what they did, the left has to adopt the argument that it didn't matter. It is hard keeping shifting arguments straight, no? If you didn't check it out, at the top if the page is a link to the beginning of 1984. Check it out, there is nothing new under the sun, as Terence said.

At least, Dodd's amazing lying history is bubbling to the surface, now that the dull-witted media is sratching its collective butt and wondering what happened.

-----

Quoted here, spokesperson from American Economic Institute in the 1990's,

From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.

Forbes has a recent article called The Government Did It.

...All this overlooks a crucial fact: There has been no free market in housing or finance. Government has long exercised massive control over the housing and financial markets--including its creation of Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) (which have now amassed $5 trillion in liabilities)--leading to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today....

Below is from the American Thinker, just recently published. Recall Raines is Obama's confidant and was appointed by Cuomo.

...Fannie and Freddie became big contributors to the Democratic Party. The sub-prime business paid off-at least while the bubble was growing. And the Kerry, Hillary and Obama campaigns have numbered among the leading recipients of the largess of the two mortgage lenders.

Franklin Raines, the Fannie Mae C.E.O. from 1999 to 2004, had been budget director in the Clinton administration. The left would not like you to be reminded that Raines has been a consultant to the Obama campaign, according to the Washington Post, and that Freddie and Fannie number among the top 5 contributors to Obama's run for the presidency. Raines is being sued for the recovery of 50 million in compensation acquired by the alleged manipulation of Fannie's books. Now, that's not change we can believe in. That's Washington as we have come to know and "love" it.

The Bush administration in 2003 tried to change the system, to no avail. Congressman Barney Frank, (D, MA ) was in the forefront of stopping the Bush proposal to take control out of Fannie and Freddie and put it into a third overseeing organization. Frank too has emerged in the current crisis as one of the major critics of the administration.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan continued to raise the alarm over Fannie's and Freddie's weak capitalization. His concerns were ignored.

Former Congressman Michael Oxley (R,OH), then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, introduced a bill in 2005 in response to the growing problem, but Fannie and Freddie put their lobbyists to work and the bill died.

Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, who is now Chairman of the Banking Committee and who appears along side Majority Leader Harry Reid on television to discuss the current bailout negotiations, has had harsh words for the Bush administration for its alleged role in the crisis.

But the rest of us should have some harsh words for Senator Dodd. After all, the Bush administration in 2003 and Senator Phil Gramm even earlier, in 1999, had been working to change the system. Dodd, like Obama, has been a big recipient of campaign funds from Fannie and Freddie, organizations that Dodd oversees. Dodd has apparently been more consumed with campaign contributions from the mortgage giants than the responsibilities of oversight...

NY Post:

...Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

Who was that virtuous lender? Why - Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, recently in the headlines as it hurtled toward bankruptcy....

I don't know what else can be said. There are facts and there is the Obama Nation. Those of us who follow the factual path have to, now, deal with the coming train wreck. It is inevitable.

You know, I even feel sorry for the deer on the track watching the train with hope. The Bible has Jesus saying, "Forgive them, they know not what they do."

You should forgive the sinner, but never the sin. Ignorance will bring destruction to those who watch the train light approaching, but the train wreck can take out those who are trying to get away. Again, get away.

AIG

I just wrote a long response to email comments upon an article in the Business Review, which I add below. Actually, the response is to mass stupidity as demonstrated by the article and one comment in particular. I don't think you need to read the piece, but if you are interested: here

I really need to stop all this activity, but it there is no longer any place to hide. I will get back to what to do to prepare, as a topic. Right now, I am making maple syrup.

Oh, on that note that gun manufacturer' are out of inventory. There is a hot used gun market. If you want to see a crowd, this weekend in Saratoga Springs is the gun show. Apparently, some people are paying attention. (It is a fascinating show.)

Also, I don't think people understand the what is going on. They are playing one game, not aware of blatant disinformation and subversion all around, which is a nice trait in a safe world. This is not a safe world.

Finally, I just like the picture above. Let us say it represents the coming mega tsunami. Yeah, that's the story.

I read the comments to the above and am moved to respond to the rampant stupidity being given voice today. Mr. Campo says the government - we - own AIG, so "we" should be able to do whatever we want. A thought so simplistic and erroneous defies explanation in a country more than 200 years old built upon Anglo-American law, especially after two millenia of the study of logic.

Socialism requires an ignorant, or in our case dumbed-down, populace. The Obama/Cuomo game about being peeved at bonuses is childish and they know it; this is callous posturing for the unsophisticated voters who give them power.

Don't you recall Cuomo senior?

If you are grunting: "Yeah, what the hell are they getting bonuses for?" Then you are among the manipulated drones.

The inmates run the institution.

Here is the reality: AIG screwed up and in our system should have been allowed to die. The shareholders are not innocent - they are the owners who dind't stop the recklessnes because they were greedy. Just about everyone was greedy. In a sense that is normal. see Federalist Papers #10.

In our mommy culture, no one is supposed to suffer the consequences of their actions. If you can't pay for the lunch you thought was free, then attack the store owner.

When a company goes bad it is the fault of the owners who vote for the Board.
However, AIG was so large and so involved with government-related back-room stuff, like Congress' pension, the government in its gutless, self-serving manner, decided to save it.

The current Treasurer of the U.S. under Obama worked the deal and WITHOUT STRINGS sent AIG money to CONTINUE business. "We" didn't buy it. That action is fine if your goal is to just save the company - there was no buy in and no hooks, like any low-level investment banker would require. The government is run by dilattante amateurs.

To now pretend to be amazed by AIG continuing to run and follow the law, would be laughable except so many people cheer the false outrage.

Mr. Obama should come to the front of the stage and nationalize businesses, as he wants, and not play a coward's game of subversion. Be an honest Marxist, like Bernie Sanders of Vermont. This subversive attitude is enough to reject anyone in any business, unless you are part of the subversion.

So, AIG had a contract with people who made it money. The company is providing them with their contractual compensation, from what the CEO says. Is this hard to fathom?

If Geithner did not want this to happen, he could have let the company go bankrupt, have a court vitiate contracts, then move in. He didn't. Either on purpose or he is stupid. If he were executing Mr. Bush's directive, just say so.

Duh.

Why don't we tell Rodriquez he is making too much money at third base (I agree, but its not my business) and cap his salary at, say, $500,000, the magic amount according to the socialists.

Julia Roberts certainly doesn't deserve $20 million per picture. How about $500,000? If you are shocked - why?

You inherently know we are a society held together by mutual respect for contracts. This is not what Mr. Obama wants, if you believe his outrage. Your Anglo-American respect for work and contract is being destroyed by government which is pointing at a part of society and inciting socialist/fascist outrage.

As to AIG, it became the largest insurer because of Hank Greenberg, who built it from ground up. (He is pissed at the bonuses, too.)

Anyway, Greenberg was replaced by the Board of Directors because NY Attorney General Spitzer went to the media and claimed he was going after AIG and Greenberg. He didn't, when Greenberg called his bluff and would not pay extortion money, but it appears the new CEO ultimately permitted the bonuses be signed. So, whose fault is this? Why is government always given a pass for its, frankly, evil?

Now, NY's mouth, the man who installed the people and philosophy that crippled Fannie MAe and Freddie Mac, says he demands the names of those who earned the bonuses. If that doesn't scare the hell out of the vast majority of us, then it is time for rational people to investigate New Zealand.

What right does he have? For what end other than getting idiots worked up? What is he going to do, take it away from the employees who earned it? Confiscation? There is no logic to it other than he is either inciting people to socialism or playing the lowest form of demagoguery.

This is exactly the same as saying teachers get too much, so let's take it away. He won't do that because teachers vote socialist, as they are voting for their own salaries. There is no longer any pretense that the Democratic party is now America's socialist party.

What we are seeing is class warfare - tell the vast majority of people that you are going to take money from those who earn a great deal and give it to the masses, as controlled by Big Brother. Sounds good to the low-brow, but anyone who managed to avoid a public school education and avoid mass media sees this game for what it is. See - Grachii brothers in ancient Rome. Terence said, "There is nothing new under the sun," in Latin, of course.

I hope some readers can come to understand how their unsophisticated anger is being used to strip them of their rights.It is as simple as that.

However, I think we have gone over the cliff and the "masses," as we have become, will just vote themselves money by taking it from those they don't like (i.e. can't compete with.) This is true "democracy" as the Greeks called mob rule. They feared it.

By the way, can you name anyone in control of our country who ever worked in a real business or met a real payroll?

If you want to understand how socialistic group think destroyed Europe read Hayeck (http://hayekcenter.org/) and Hoffer (http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Eric_Hoffer).

Europe only recently has realized, as the Supreme Court Chief Justice in Canada recently said, that equal access to care does not mean equal access to a list.
Get their lead books, if you recall what books are, as they are among the most important thoughts you will read - at any time.

Otherwise, you will vote for someone who promises no tax increase for 95% of us while removing things like a mortgage deduction, as is propsed now.

Once lost, freedom is seldom regained. This will be especially true where we have an huge Big Brother tracking everyone and taxing everything.