Wednesday, November 2, 2011
“How would you like to have both of your arms cut off?”
======== “How would you like to have both of your arms cut off?” | |||
Net Worth of Lawmakers Up 25 Percent in Two Years,
Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members' financial disclosure forms.
Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress.
Two years ago, Roll Call found that the minimum net worth of House Members was slightly more than $1 billion; Senators had a combined minimum worth of $651 million for a Congressional total of $1.65 billion. Roll Call calculates minimum net worth by adding the minimum values of all reported assets and subtracting the minimum values of all reported liabilities.
According to financial disclosure forms filed by Members of Congress this year, the minimum net worth in the House has jumped to $1.26 billion, and Senate net worth has climbed to at least $784 million, for a Congressional total of $2.04 billion.
These wealth totals vastly underestimate the actual net worth of Members of Congress because they are based on an accounting system that does not include homes and other non-income-generating property, which is likely to tally hundreds of millions of uncounted dollars. In addition, Roll Call's tally is based on the minimum values of assets reported by Members on their annual financial disclosure forms; the true values of those assets may be much higher.
While wealth overall is scattered fairly evenly between the two parties, there is an interesting divide in the two chambers. Democrats hold about 80 percent of the wealth in the Senate; Republicans control about 78 percent of the wealth in the House.
Feel-Good Big Government The Origins of Economic Catastrophe
In 1992, the Clinton Administration ordered the Boston Federal Reserve Bank to undertake a study of racial discrimination in mortgage lending and appointed the investigative staff to undertake the study. The study showed that blacks and Hispanics were rejected for mortgage loans more frequently than whites. On that basis the Clinton Administration launched the most costly and far-reaching social crusade in American history. New precedents were set in the exercise of government power over private lenders and their underwriting criteria.
Private banking analysts and economists quickly established that the study was flawed in the extreme The Clinton Administration study did not take into consideration the net worth, debt burden, and employment record of applicants. Also omitted from the study were factors such as the size of the down payment and the loan to value ratio. Moreover, it did not consider whether borrower submitted information could be verified. When this missing data was factored in, it was found that the mortgage lenders were exercising normal business judgment rather than the alleged racial discrimination.
Nevertheless, in early 1994, the Clinton Administration claimed that racial and ethnic discrimination by mortgage lenders had caused racial disparity in homeownership rates and declared political war on “racist lenders.” On April 15, 1994, the White House issued an ultimatum backed by all the power of the Federal Government that mortgage lenders had to ease credit standards for lower income minorities or face investigations of racial discrimination, adverse publicity, denial of access to secondary mortgage markets, fines, and other penalties. In short, the Clinton Administration bullied the banks and mortgage lenders into lowering—in fact, practically eliminating—credit standards for minorities.
This unprecedented Federal license for bullying and despotism was codified in a 20-page document called “Policy Statement on Discriminatory Lending.” Clinton also set up an interagency Task Force on Fair Lending backed by no less than ten federal agencies. Signing this edict were such notables as Attorney General Janet Reno, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Henry Cisneros, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) warned the banking industry that they should be proactive in making “multicultural” loans, and that even unintentional discrimination was against the law. It also warned lenders that they must be prepared to prove to federal regulators and prosecutors that rejection of minority applicants, even those with high debt ratios and low credit scores, was not racial discrimination. This was accompanied by a Justice Department statement threatening “the full range of its enforcement authority.”
Some of us older folks remember the days when our liberties were held in higher esteem. We remember when the burden of proof was on the government to prove a crime and when running a business was not burdened by government regulations that made a crime of what were formerly important economic freedoms.
Thus the Federal Government, in the name of “affirmative action,” virtually intimidated the banking industry out of exercising sound credit and business practices. In 1996, only about three percent of Fannie Mae mortgages were made with down payments of five percent or less. By 2007, it had risen to over 25 percent. HUD’s so-called “affordable-housing loans” as a percent of total mortgages went from less than 40 percent to 55 percent in the same period. There was rejoicing in Washington that government housing and lending policies were lifting the poor into the middle class. Wiser voices were silenced by a full-court-press of legislation, regulations, government propaganda, and mandated political correctness. The actual results have been to perpetuate poverty and crush middle class prosperity.
A tree is still best known by its fruit, and bad policies eventually have bad consequences. Like termites, the accumulating damage of foolish government policies may take years to become visible to most of the public—government secrecy, propaganda, and ardent campaigns of political correctness often suppress the truth of their results. Unfortunately, the G. W. Bush administration elected in 2000 embraced Clinton’s misguided affirmative action lending mandates as a sacred cow until their malignant results became impossible to ignore.
Eventually, government mandated sub-prime loans began defaulting in numbers that should have been expected by sound banking analysis. But to politicians who seem never to anticipate consequences beyond the immediate, it was shocking. The bankers were decried as the greedy villains who must be punished. They were actually accused of exploiting the poor by giving them the loans that the government demanded be given to them. Those who exploited the public by selling them bundles of highly risky mortgages were guilty of terrible business judgment and ethical irresponsibility, but it was primarily political vote buying and government bullying that seeded the financial disaster. The panic that followed led to spending trillions of dollars on bailouts and stimulus plans that did not work. Honest and reasonable economic analysis would have predicted their failure and subsequent more serious economic consequences. Now we are in a terrible economic mess that has cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in individual investment savings.
Throwing gasoline on the fire, we have a President schooled only in Marxist political tactics and rhetoric, who is clueless on how a capitalist economy works and why it works much better than a socialist economy. We have a President who is determined to replace economic freedom with bigger and more coercive government.
But smile, you can feel good about yourself and America. All the financial and economic pain we are suffering is for good causes—affirmative action mortgages, multiculturalist social engineering, and limitless government power.
Opulent homes of ‘the 99 percent’ [SLIDESHOW]
Representatives of “the 99 percent” have been camping out in lower Manhattan to protest economic inequality since late September, but the riches on display at some of their home addresses clearly came from “1 percent” families.
We searched Google Maps and the real estate Multiple Listing Service for the home addresses police collected during the arrests of less-than-law-abiding New York City “occupiers,” and found dream homes aplenty. These opulent houses include in-ground swimming pools, manicured lawns, and golf course access.
Frustrated with the rich? Tell a protester. Isn’t life rough?
Gaddafi’s Bitter (and Sore) End
VERBATIM POST
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Being a dictator must be an amazing intoxicant.
Given the choice between keeping his throne or living a life of lavish luxury in exile, Muammar Gaddafi chose to stay “in power” and live like a rat. When discovered, he was found in a sewer drain looking very undictatorlike.
That had to be tough for Gaddafi, the man who set the standard for dictator couture. Yet he surrendered all the glitter and glam to remain in Libya until the bitter end, clad in tatters and funkier than a fat man’s drawers.
But Gaddafi gave up more than his coif. He also chose to relinquish his bevy of beautiful babes. Though he had few wives by Muslim standards, Gaddafi was a ladies’ man. His nurse had been a voluptuous blonde Ukrainian woman named Galyna Kolotnytska. Until recently she was at his side 24/7. Kolotnytska abandoned Gaddafi in February when a Ukrainian defense ministry aircraft flew 185 people out of Libya.
“How do I know he was crazy? Because he hadn’t FLED THE COUNTRY WITH HIS AMAZON WOMEN and his BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”Her departure didn’t put a dent in his entourage, as Gaddafi always had gorgeous amazon bodyguards at his side. Can you imagine super-tough runway models surrounding you 24/7? Ladies, can you picture having deadly Chippendale dancers at your beck and call? Having that type of protection should compel the average dictator to retire in luxury. With all that pleasure, who needs power?
Gaddafi’s bodyguards were supposedly required to be virgins, and each would give her life to protect Gaddafi. These women were willing to sacrifice orgasms in order to protect that wrinkly old loon. Yet when Gaddafi was captured, his amazons had vamoosed.
I suspect they were somewhere getting laid, as they realized he was crazy, and they’d better make up for lost time. How do I know he was crazy? Because he hadn’t FLED THE COUNTRY WITH HIS AMAZON WOMEN and his BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!
Gaddafi was warned. But when the insurrection began, he was still hanging on like a hair on a biscuit.
The same is true of Saddam. He had more than enough warning to move mad money into other accounts and set up lavish residences almost anywhere, even if he had to use one of his crazy kids’ names. Yet at the end of his rule, there he was, hiding like a rat in a hole. Saddam went from using gold-plated toilets to copping a squat in the desert sand.
I don’t know how dictators think, and I would be a sorry dictator, as I can’t even get my dogs to sit longer than a pregnant woman can hold her pee. So far be it from me to get inside a dictator’s head. But can you really become that drunk with power?
What did Gaddafi expect to accomplish by hanging around? The chance of reclaiming his throne at age 80?
Let’s see what’s behind the two doors:
Door #1. Living in exile surrounded by luxury for the rest of my life.
Door #2. Being dragged out of a sewer hole, shot, and having a stick shoved up my butt in public. I also get to have the people I formerly oppressed drag me through the streets ridiculing me, spitting on me, and pummeling the crap out of me.
Tough choice….
America has a lot of Congressmen who act like Third World dictators. Many have held office beyond what should be a reasonable limit and certainly beyond their usefulness. But like Gaddafi, America’s Congressmen believe they can stay for life. The only possible way a Congressman resigns in America is from shame. Even those who we know have committed crimes are rarely sent to jail.
America could learn something from Gaddafi’s undignified end—pardon the pun. Voters may not put Congressmen in fear for their lives for their abuses of power. But there has to be something we could do to keep them in check.
Anybody got a STICK?
Tell President Obama to Fire Attorney General Eric Holder
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Muslims Stone Catholic Festival-Goers in France
You know that something is fundamentally wrong with the world when the President of the United States supports the supremacist movements that lead to incidents like this, and never says a critical word about the ideology of hatred and violence that forms their foundation. He turns a blind eye to the Muslim persecution of non-Muslims -- Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Bahais, Buddhists, and so many others -- wherever they are living in proximity to Musims, while at the same time pressuring the Jewish people of Israel to sacrifice precious land to Islamic invaders. Free people are besieged everywhere, and their former protector -- America -- has abdicated.
Muslims Stone Catholic Festival-Goers in France Islam versus Europe October 29 (hat tip Jack)
Muslims have attacked Christians attending a Catholic celebration in southern France.
The Joyeuse Union Don Bosco [Joyous Union Don Bosco] takes place in Nîmes, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady the Virgin of Santa Cruz, built by French people repatriated from the Algerian city of Oran following Algerian independence. These people were driven out of the place they grew up in by Muslim aggression. Now they face it in France too!After a day of welcoming and reunions, around 7 pm, the participants were leaving in their cars and vehicles when "young Arab immigrants" from the city started to throw stones at the vehicles descending from the sanctuary.
The local police, whose station is in this area, were immediately notified and the event organisers had to arrange a diversion to another route to protect the occupants of the vehicles from the savage attacks which continued.