From an outraged Associated Press:

4 students in Ore. confess to hanging Obama cutout

9/30/2008
By RYAN KOST      

NEWBERG, Ore. (AP) — George Fox University says four students have been punished for hanging a likeness of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from a tree on campus last week.

The Christian school broke the news to students and staff Tuesday afternoon at an all-campus meeting. About 1,000 people attended, said Rob Felton, a university spokesman.

The four students were punished with public service and immediate long-term suspensions, though Felton said federal privacy laws prevent him from saying how long the suspensions would last and who the students were.

Meanwhile, the FBI continued its criminal investigation into the matter to determine whether the students had violated any civil rights when they tied fishing wire around the neck of the life-size cardboard cutout, a commercial product, and hung it from a tree last Tuesday along with a message that read, “Act Six reject.” The note referred to a scholarship and leadership program for minority and low-income student leaders at Christian colleges primarily located in the Northwest.

“A criminal investigation is much more rigorous than an academic one, obviously,” said Beth Anne Steele, an agency spokeswoman. She couldn’t say when the investigation would be complete.

It was the university’s own internal investigation that led officials to the four students, who later confessed to having hung the effigy, Felton said. “To the best of our knowledge these are the only people involved. We’re not pursuing it any further.”

Felton wouldn’t comment on the students’ motive. Instead he cited a quote from Brad Lau, the vice president of student life, in a university statement.

“Regardless of the students’ intent, the image of a black man hung from a tree is one of the most hurtful symbols of racism in American history,” Lau said in the release. “Displays such as this have no place on a campus that is dedicated to living out the teachings of Jesus.”

We hope they throw the book at them.

Just like they have all of the people who have threatened our elected leaders.

(And yes, that woman is holding a painting of President Bush’s severed head on the Mall in Washington, DC. Why do you ask?)

Guess what Vice President debate moderator has a book coming out in January from Random House:

The Breakthrough – Politics and Race in the Age of Obama

Written by Gwen Ifill

* Category: Current Affairs – Political; History – United States – 20th Century; History – United States – 21St Century
* Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
* On Sale: January 20, 2009
* Price: $24.95
* ISBN: 978-0-385-52501-5 (0-385-52501-X)

(Available January 20, 2009)

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In THE BREAKTHROUGH, veteran journalist Gwen Ifill surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama’s stunning presidential campaign and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power.

Ifill argues that the Black political structure formed during the Civil Rights movement is giving way to a generation of men and women who are the direct beneficiaries of the struggles of the 1960s. She offers incisive, detailed profiles of such prominent leaders as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and U.S. Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama, and also covers up-and-coming figures from across the nation.

Drawing on interviews with power brokers like Senator Obama, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vernon Jordan, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and many others, as well as her own razor-sharp observations and analysis of such issues as generational conflict and the “black enough” conundrum, Ifill shows why this is a pivotal moment in American history.

THE BREAKTHROUGH is a remarkable look at contemporary politics and an essential foundation for understanding the future of American democracy.

About the Author

GWEN IFILL is moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before coming to PBS, she was chief congressional and political correspondent for NBC News, and had been a reporter for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and Boston Herald American. She lives in Washington, D.C.

What media bias?

From his July 29, 2008 speech before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) conference:

[2:45 minutes in:] … "We marched together in the streets of Chicago to fix our broken immigration system. And it’s because of that twenty year record of partnership with your communities that you can trust me when I say I will be your partner in the White House and I will be your champion in the White House. And that is what you need now more than ever.

For eight long years Washington has not been working for ordinary Americans and for hardworking Latino-Americans. Few have been hit harder than Latino-Americans and African-Americans. You know what I am talking about. You know the people like the couple I met in Las Vegas who were tricked into buying a house they couldn’t afford and are at risk of facing foreclosure…"

(Indeed, his remarks preceding these are pretty appalling as well.)

Apparently, this claim even become a part of Mr. Obama’s standard stump speech:

Remarks for Senator Barack Obama: AFL-CIO

Philadelphia, PA | April 02, 2008

… Think about it. The top mortgage lenders spend $185 million lobbying Congress, and we wonder why Washington looked the other way when they were tricking families into buying homes they couldn’t afford…

So which is it?

Do we need to give everyone a chance to buy their own house?

Or is the government tricking people into buying houses?

From a two year old article from the Associated Press:

Freddie Mac pays record $3.8 million fine

Settles allegations it made illegal contributions between 2000 and 2003

April. 18, 2006

WASHINGTON – The home loan giant Freddie Mac has agreed to pay a record $3.8 million fine to settle allegations it made illegal campaign contributions.

The fine announced Tuesday is by far the biggest ever levied by the Federal Election Commission. Because the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, widely known as Freddie Mac, agreed to pay the fine and stop breaking the law, the FEC said it would not take further action against corporate officials.

“We’re hoping this will catch people’s attention,” Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said, noting that campaign watchdogs have often called the FEC a do-nothing agency. “You don’t want to be the person who beats this fine.”

Freddie Mac was accused of illegally using corporate resources between 2000 and 2003 for 85 fundraisers that collected about $1.7 million for federal candidates. Much of the fundraising benefited members of the House Financial Services Committee, a panel whose decisions can affect Freddie Mac.

The fundraisers were organized by then-Freddie Mac lobbyists Robert Mitchell Delk and Clark Camper, who described them to the corporation’s board of directors as “political risk management,” the FEC said.

The lobbyists told Freddie Mac officials the fundraising effort was needed to help the corporation achieve its lobbying goals. Delk wrote in his 2001 performance appraisal that Freddie Mac had held more than 40 fundraisers for House Financial Services Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio.

The FEC also found Freddie Mac officials used staff and resources to raise money from company employees to give to candidates, and that in 2002 the corporation itself gave $150,000 to the Republican Governors Association. The RGA ultimately returned the money.

U.S. law bans federally chartered corporations such as Freddie Mac from contributing to campaigns, and prohibits companies from using corporate resources and employees to help raise money for congressional and presidential candidates.

The fine is the commission’s largest since the FEC was created after Watergate. The previous record was held by Audiovox, which in 2003 was fined $849,000 in a corporate contribution case.

The FEC opened an investigation of Freddie Mac’s fundraising after the private group Public Citizen filed a complaint in 2003 accusing Delk, his wife Amanda, the Washington restaurant Galileo and the political consulting firm Epiphany Productions of making illegal political contributions.

Public Citizen’s complaint said the Delks made contributions higher than federal limits and the restaurant and Epiphany made illegal corporation donations by providing services for the fundraisers. The FEC decided against taking action against the Delks, Camper, Galileo or Epiphany.

Freddie Mac is one of the two largest U.S. buyers of home mortgages. Its campaign finance settlement comes after the corporation disclosed in June 2003 that it misstated earnings by $5 billion for 2000-2002, bringing calls for tougher government oversight.

Mind you this complaint was brought to the FEC by Public Citizen, which is the group founded by Ralph Nader.

Unsurprisingly, it is rabidly partisan, and targets Republicans exclusively.

As Discover The Networks notes:

Though Public Citizen claims to be officially “nonpartisan,” its political criticisms are aimed disproportionately at Republicans. In 2003, for instance, PC launched the website Whitehouseforsale.org, which accuses President Bush of accomplishing “his mission of destroying the presidential public financing system.” Public Citizen has also initiated BushSecrecy.org, which blames the Bush administration for post-9/11 civil liberties violations, lax regulation of allegedly carcinogenic products, cover-ups of auto-safety violations, and inadequate food-inspection standards.

All of which may help explain why the particular years 2001-2003 were chosen. Since the Republicans happened to hold sway during that time.

From a 2006 Public Citizen’s Congress Watch report (a pdf file):

For example, former Freddie Mac lobbyist Mitch Delk, who has contributed $41,950 to lawmakers since 1998, claimed that fundraisers he coordinated steered nearly $3 million to members of the House Financial Services Committee from 2000-2003.

That’s a million dollars a year. And we wonder why there was so little oversight.

More from the same Public Citizen Report:

Freddie Mac, and its cousin Fannie Mae, have been under fire from critics who contend they receive favorable treatment over competitors because their government backing amounts to a subsidy. In May 2005, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan accused Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae of padding their profits with high-risk investments backed by government protection.

Freddie Mac has faced other travails in recent years, largely stemming from its use of campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures as levers to secure favorable treatment:

• In early May 2006, Freddie Mac filed amended lobbying forms that added several lobbyists who had not been included in its original forms.

• The firm agreed in April 2006 to settle allegations that it made illegal campaign contributions by paying the FEC a fine of $3.8 million, dwarfing the commission’s previous record fine of $849,000. The investigation that led to the fine sprang from a 2003 complaint filed by Public Citizen that accused in-house Freddie Mac lobbyist Mitchell Delk, his wife Amanda, the Washington restaurant Galileo and a political consulting firm of making illegal political contributions.

• Also in April, Freddie Mac agreed to pay $410 million to settle class action lawsuits over accounting errors that led to a $5 billion earnings restatement.

• In March 2006, Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and John Sununu (R-N.H.) introduced an amendment to lobbying reform legislation citing a Washington Post report that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae combined to spend $23 million on lobbying in 2005 while Congress was considering legislation to tighten oversight of the companies. The amendment called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) “to study the lobbying activities of GSEs to determine whether these activities further their statutory housing mission.”90 The amendment was ruled non-germane.

Note the last point.

Two Republicans wanted an investigation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but they were shut out.

And we wonder why there was so little oversight.

Another four year old article from the archives which helps to chronicle how we got here.

From the very back pages of the November 2, 2004 edition of the Washington Post:

Willie Snell, a member of The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), holds a sign during a staged protest in front of the Federal Reserve Bank Building in Doral, Fla., Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008.

HUD Sets New Goals For Fannie, Freddie

Funds for Lower-Income Buyers to Rise

By David S. Hilzenrath
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page E02

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will have to increase their funding of mortgages for low- and moderate-income home buyers, under a new rule the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced yesterday.

Under the rule, for example, the goal for low- and moderate-income home buyers would be raised from the current 50 percent to 56 percent in 2008 — 1 percentage point less than the 57 percent goal HUD proposed in the spring. The goal for loans in so-called underserved areas would increase from the current 36 percent to 39 percent in 2008, instead of the 40 percent that HUD had proposed.

The department lowered the goals slightly because it decided to use a different source of data to measure the market’s overall performance, said John C. Weicher, assistant secretary for housing and Federal Housing Commissioner. To meet the new goals, Fannie and Freddie will need to buy over the next four years an estimated 400,000 more qualifying loans than the 10 million loans they otherwise would have bought, Weicher said.

The rule was intended to make the giant government-sponsored companies match or lead the mortgage industry in funding for the target markets, HUD officials said. The department has alleged that, despite their federal charters and government-conferred privileges, Fannie and Freddie have lagged the industry in the percentage of their business devoted to groups such as minority first-time home buyers.

Freddie Mac spokeswoman Sharon McHale said the new goals may be so high that the company will be forced to reduce its funding for other borrowers, potentially “making it harder for workforce families and working families with children to get a mortgage.”

Fannie Mae “will be working with HUD and our housing partners to minimize any unintended consequences for housing that may result from the new goals,” spokesman Charles Greener said.

Fannie and Freddie have said that it would be hard to meet the proposed percentages in years when there is a big demand for them to fund refinancings for people who already own homes. HUD said it will seek more public comment on that issue and consider addressing it with a separate rule.

The government chartered Fannie and Freddie to make sure that banks and other lenders have enough cash to meet the demand for home loans. The companies borrow money from investors to buy mortgages from lenders. In another development yesterday, Freddie Mac, still trying to upgrade its accounting systems and internal controls after correcting billions of dollars of errors last year, said it aims to report quarterly and annual financial results for 2004 by March 31, 2005. The company has not reported quarterly results on a timely basis since it said in January 2003 that it was working on a correction. The company said it aims to report results for the first two quarters of next year in August.

The tab for cleaning up Freddie’s accounting and systems continues to rise. This year, the company has spent about $200 million, on top of about $172 million in accounting and legal costs last year, a $125 million settlement with regulators and a $75 million reserve for investor lawsuits, Chief Financial Officer Martin F. Baumann said yesterday in a conference call with analysts.

A particularly ironic line:

Fannie Mae “will be working with HUD and our housing partners to minimize any unintended consequences for housing that may result from the new goals,” spokesman Charles Greener said.

Paging Mr. Greener…

From a four year old article from the Credit Union Journal:

Fannie Mae Uses Its PAC To Support Other PACs

Credit Union Journal  |  Monday, November 8, 2004

Secondary mortgage market giant Fannie Mae, fighting off congressional attacks over the last year, has used its newly formed political action committee to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions into the campaign funds of key congressional leaders.

In just the last eight months, Fannie Mae’s new PAC has made more than $150,000 in contributions to top congressional leaders, then at least as much again to those key lawmakers’ leadership PACs, according to records filed with the Federal Elections Commission and reviewed by The Credit Union Journal.

Since February, campaign contributions went to: Keep Our Majority PAC (House Speaker Dennis Hastert) $5,000; Americans for a Republican Majority PAC (House Majority Leader Tom DeLay), $5,000; Rely on Your Beliefs Fund (House Majority Whip Roy Blunt) $5,000; Volunteer PAC (Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist) $5,000; Defend America PAC (Senate Banking Chairman Richard Shelby), $5,000; Leadership PAC 2004 (House Financial Services Chairman Michael Oxley) $7,000; Growth and Prosperity PAC (House Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Spencer Bachus) $5,000; PAC to the Future (House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) $2,500; and AmeriPAC (House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer), $5,000, among others.

Leadership PACs allow interests like Fannie Mae to contribute the maximum allowable $10,000 to an individual lawmaker’s campaign fund, then again to his or her leadership PAC, which that lawmaker can use for a wide variety of purposes, including contributions to allied candidates.

Of course there are some conspicuous Republicans on that list, as well. Indeed, Mr. Oxley, the chairman of the Financial Services Chairman under the Republicans, got quite a lot over the years.

And we wonder why there was so little oversight.

From ACORN’s website:

A ACORN, The Association of Community Organizations for Reform NOW, member holds a sign, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008, as the political action group stages a protest in front of the Federal Reserve Bank Building in Doral, Fla. The group was protesting the ‘failure of the Bush administration and Chairman Ben Bernanke to include lifelines for homeowners facing foreclosure in its big bank bailout.

Bailout Failure an Opportunity to Improve Package

September 29, 2008

More Relief for Homeowners Would Stem Crisis More Effectively

On Sept. 29, ACORN National President Maude Hurd released the following statement about the House of Representatives’ 205-228 vote in opposition to the Wall Street bailout package:

“ACORN welcomes the opportunity to renegotiate a package that will actually do something for homeowners on Main Street and not just bail out Wall Street. Ninety-five Democrats voted against the bailout bill because it did not do nearly enough for families struggling to pay the mortgage and who are teetering on the brink of foreclosure. If a better plan comes back that will do more to assist struggling homeowners, it stands a chance of passing.

“The foreclosure crisis, which began not last week but more than a year ago, will continue unabated by the current bailout proposal. To really solve our broader economic woes, we must address the underlying problem of unnecessary foreclosures. One critical way to do this is to include bankruptcy shelter in the bailout package, which was dropped from the negotiations over the weekend.

“Another way to stem foreclosures is to include tighter language directing the Treasury Secretary to prioritize purchasing those distressed assets like whole mortgages where the Treasury would have the authority to modify the mortgages and avoid unnecessary foreclosures. Additionally, the Treasury could be directed not to purchase any securities or other assets that lack such authority to modify. This would ensure that the public’s investment in Wall Street’s bad assets actually results in a reduction in foreclosures, so that we can stabilize home prices and restore liquidity in a permanent way to our markets.  That’s the recipe for a bailout in which both Main Street and Wall Street can benefit.”

In other words, they want Mr. Paulson Mr. Obama’s Treasury Secretary to have the power to give their constituents free houses.

Chutzpah, thy name is ACORN.

The rant from the “gentle woman from California” that helped turn the tide against the “bailout bill”:

Pelosi: “When was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion?

It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies—policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.

Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos…”

Ms. Pelosi is either too stupid or partisan (or both) to be in such an important position of national responsibility.

By the way, to address just one of the speaker’s myriad lies, check out The Myth Of The Clinton Surplus.

The bill has not been approved:

Indeed, the last minute arm-twisting by the Democrats seems to have cost the bill two more votes.

The final tally was 205 – 228.

First, here is the news report from Missouri’s CBS affiliate KMOV-TV that got so much attention:

Today we have this from the reporter who did the on-camera report for KMOV-TV:

Analysis: Who’s afraid of the big bad truth?

McCain has a truth squad, but Obama’s makes big news

Monday, September 29, 2008

By John Mills
KMOV-TV

John McCain’s campaign has a truth squad which includes prosecutors who support his candidacy, according to reports and a campaign source.

Last Tuesday without any fanfare, the Barack Obama campaign announced Jennifer Joyce and Bob McCulloch, the top prosecutors in St. Louis city and St. Louis County, were joining something called an Obama truth squad.

They plan to respond immediately to any misleading advertisements and statements that might violate Missouri ethics laws.

“We want to keep this campaign focused on issues,” Joyce told me. “Missourians don’t want to be distracted by these divisive character attacks.”

The truth squad’s plan is to indentify false attacks and respond immediately with truthful information, Joyce and McCulloch say.

Truthful information like: Obama is a Christian who plans to cut taxes for anyone making under $250,000 a year.

The Obama campaign says prosecutors from the Kansas City area and some rural areas are also joining the truth squad, and Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer was also expected to be part of the team.

“Whether it is directly attributable to the campaign or one of the soft money operations,” McCulloch told me, “if they’re not going to tell the truth, then somebody’s got to step up and say ‘wait a minute, that’s not true, this is the truth.’”

For reasons that are still not fully clear, prosecutors promising to tell the public the truth have sparked outrage among supporters of John McCain.

Three days later, I got a call from KMOX radio talk show host Mark Reardon. (I’ll paraphrase.)

That story you did last night is really getting a lot of attention, Reardon said.

I was off yesterday. What story? I asked.

The one about the Obama truth squad, he said.

Oh, that story I did Tuesday at 6, I responded.

Well, Rush Limbaugh just talked about it, and the blogoshpere has it, and it’s getting big. It’s really going to get big, Reardon said.

Reardon was correct.

More than 90,000 people from across the country watched my report on KMOV.com. Click here to watch the report

When I returned to the office on Saturday, I spoke with callers from New York to Florida who had heard about Obama’s truth squad and were outraged about it.

One caller said he was angry, because people were going to be “prosecuted” and “indicted” for stating their political views.

Another caller said Obama was planning to send police to the homes of elderly women because of their political statements.

A third caller said he wanted information about Obama’s “storm troopers.”

Members of law enforcement never said anyone would be prosecuted, indicted or punished for saying anything, only that they were prepared to tell the public the truth.

By Saturday afternoon, outgoing Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, a McCain supporter, was also outraged and accused Obama of “police state tactics” that would “intimidate people and kill free debate.”

In a written statement on the governor’s official Web site, Blunt said the basis for his statement was prompted by “news reports.”

“The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill open debate,” Blunt said in the statement.

Prosecutor Jennifer Joyce said: “We’re here to respond to any character attacks, to set the record straight.”

“Barack Obama needs to grow up,” Blunt continued. “Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations, because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them.”

If you look at the clip, the anchor introducing the story is the person who brought up the threats of prosecution:

“Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign. Reporter John Mills is with us live in the capitol. He has been learning which members of law enforcement are getting involved in this. John, tell us more…”

Also, on the KMOV website the clip is still described thusly:

Obama campaign cracks down on misleading TV ads

September 23rd, 2008

The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”

Oddly enough, Mr. Mills did not mention either of these misleading actions on the part of his station.

From Mr. Obama’s first autobiography, Dreams From My Father, pp 50-1:

When [Obama's drug using and dealing illegal Pakistani pal] Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he’d expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. Whenever Sadik tried to talk me into hitting a bar, I’d beg off with some tepid excuse, too much work or not enough cash. One day, before leaving the apartment in search of better company, he turned to me and offered his most scathing indictment.

“You’re becoming a bore.”

I knew he was right, although I wasn’t sure myself what exactly had happened. In a way, I was confirming Sadik’s estimation of the city’s allure, I suppose; its consequent power to corrupt. With the Wall Street boom, Manhattan was humming, new developments cropping up everywhere; men and women barely out of their twenties already enjoying ridiculous wealth, the fashion merchants fast on their heels. The beauty, the filth, the noise, and the excess, all of it dazzled my senses; there seemed no constraints on originality of lifestyles or the manufacture of desire-a more expensive restaurant, a finer suit of clothes, a more exclusive nightspot, a more beautiful woman, a more potent high. Uncertain of my ability to steer a course of moderation, fearful of falling into old habits, I took on the temperament if not the convictions of a street corner preacher, prepared to see temptation everywhere, ready to overrun a fragile will.

My reaction was more than just an attempt to curb an excessive appetite, though, or a response to sensory overload. Beneath the hum, the motion, I was seeing the steady fracturing of the world taking place. I had seen worse poverty in Indonesia and glimpsed the violent mood of inner-city kids in L.A.; I had grown accustomed, everywhere, to suspicion between the races. But whether because of New York’s density or because of its scale, it was only now that I began to grasp the almost mathematical precision with which America’s race and class problems joined; the depth, the ferocity, of resulting tribal wars; the bile that flowed freely not just out on the streets but in the stalls of Columbia’s bathrooms as well, where, no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence between niggers and kikes.

It was as if all middle ground had collapsed, utterly. And nowhere, it seemed, was that collapse more apparent than in the black community I had so lovingly imagined and within which I had hoped to find refuge. I might meet a black friend at his Midtown law firm, and before heading to lunch at the MoMA, I would look out across the city toward the East River from his high-rise office, imagining a satisfactory life for myself — a vocation, a family, a home. Until I noticed that the only other blacks in the office were messengers or clerks, the only other blacks in the museum the blue-jacketed security guards who counted the hours before they could catch their train home to Brooklyn or Queens.

I might wander through Harlem-to play on courts I’d once read about or to hear Jesse Jackson make a speech on 125th; or, on a rare Sunday morning, to sit in the back pews of Abyssinian Baptist Church, lifted by the gospel choir’s sweet, sorrowful song-and catch a fleeting glimpse of that thing which I sought. But I had no guide that might show me how to join this troubled world, and when I looked for an apartment there, I found Sugar Hill’s elegant brownstones occupied and out of reach, the few decent rental buildings with ten-year-long waiting lists, so that all that remained were the rows and rows of uninhabitable tenements, in front of which young men counted out their rolls of large bills, and winos slouched and stumbled and wept softly to themselves.

I took all this as a personal affront, a mockery of my tender ambitions — although, when I brought up the subject with people who had lived in New York for a while, I was told there was nothing original about my observations. The city was out of control, they said, the polarization a natural phenomenon, like monsoons or continental drift. Political discussions, the kind that at Occidental had once seemed so intense and purposeful, came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union or the African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem and Brooklyn during the summers-a few of the many diversions New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center. With a bit of money, I was free to live like most middle-class blacks in Manhattan, free to choose a motif around which to organize my life, free to patch together a collage of styles, friends, watering holes, political affiliations. I sensed, though, that at some stage-maybe when you had children and decided that you could stay in the city only at the cost of a private school, or when you began takings cabs at night to avoid the subways, or when you decided that you needed a doorman in your apartment building-your choice was irrevocable, the divide was now impassable, and you would find yourself on the side of the line that you’d never intended to be on.

Unwilling to make that choice, I spent a year walking from one end of Manhattan to the other. Like a tourist, I watched the range of human possibility on display, trying to trace out my future in the lives of the people I saw, looking for some opening through which I could reenter.

Mr. Obama hates capitalism. He thinks it is wicked.

Capitalism, Wall Street, creates a world irrevocably divided into heartless rich people and hopeless winos.

Mr. Obama learned this from his anti-capitalist mother, his “father,” his mentors such as Frank Davis and Reverend Wright.

And of course he was not told anything by his professors at Occidental, Columbia, Harvard or the “socialist conferences” he attended that would have ever challenged his deeply entrenched anti-capitalist beliefs.

Quite the contrary.

From from the great Stanley Kurtz, via the New York Post:

O’S DANGEROUS PALS

BARACK’S ‘ORGANIZER’ BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES

By STANLEY KURTZ

September 29, 2008

WHAT exactly does a “community organizer” do? Barack Obama’s rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here’s a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes – and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act – a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in “subprime” loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA – and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.

Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.

ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an “affirmative-action lending policy.” The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the “community support requirements” of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting – for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s program as “affirmative-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks “kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed – Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.”

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae – which had agreed to buy up the loans. “If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.”

Well, the pilot program “worked,” and Fannie Mae’s message that risky loans to minorities were “OK” was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

IT would be tough to find an “on the ground” community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early ’90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama’s legal services for a “motor voter” case and partnered with him on his 1992 “Project VOTE” registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago’s Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation’s board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers – and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee’s report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama’s organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott’s ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report acknowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN – whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public’s eye. The Woods Fund’s claim to be “nonideological,” it says, has “enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship.”

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott’s way – ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN’s overall efforts.

In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama’s first campaign for state Senate, saying, “We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.”

IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mortgage crisis, look to ACORN’s Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Then you’ll truly know what community organizers do.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

Much of this is already known to regular readers of these pages.

But it is still a wonderful compendium of Mr. Obama’s relationship with this highly dangerous group.