New DCCC Ad for IL-10: How’s That Working Out For You?
ArchPundit
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3BuLtPo2ww[/youtube]
October 2008
Sidley & Austin: Dangerous Radical Law Firm
Parody stopped being possible long ago, but the McCain campaign keeps reaching for it…the nations sixth largest law firm employed both Dorhn and Michelle Obama so clearly there is a close connetion.
The McCain campaign is now broadening their attack on Obama’s past association with William Ayers to include Michelle Obama — even though McCain has repeatedly said spouses should be off limits during the campaign.
The attack? Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife and fellow former Weatherman, went to work in 1984 for the major Chicago-based national law firm of Sidley & Austin, and three years later, Michelle joined the mega-firm as well.
That’s the entire attack. We wish we were joking. But we aren’t.
By this standard at least any law school student at Northwestern is now implicated in being a terrorist sympathizer since 1992.
We’ve descended into Clinton Chronicles land with the McCain campaign–something neither Dole nor Bush did with Clinton.
Hell To Pay: Nominate Dan
Hell to Pay: Nominations 
by SusanG
Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 02:30:03 PM CDT
I’m going to make no secret about who I think should be nominated this week for tomorrow night’s Hell to Pay fundraiser: Dan Seals, IL-10.
Aside from being a worthy candidate on his own merits–and being a repeat nominee for Hell to Pay help–this week it got personal. Very, very personal. As in an attack by his scummy rival not only on Seals, but on Daily Kos itself. It all began October 5 when the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll showed our Orange to Blue candidate Seals trailing Republican incumbent Republican Mark Kirk by a mere six points.
And thus an absurd freak-out by the Kirk campaign began, with Kirk’s pollster going nuts, claiming that the “ultra left-wing Web site Daily Kos” had undersampled Jewish voters (of course, a well-known Republican voting bloc) intentionally:
It is no surprise that DailyKos, which has come under attack by Democrats like Harold Ford Jr. and Lanny Davis for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic content, chose to conduct its poll on the Jewish High Holy Day of Rosh HaShanah.
Some kind of near-instant karma must have been at work, because just a day later, a Roll Call/Survey USA poll was released showing Seals –gasp!–ahead of Kirk by eight points. Markos caught the hilarity of the bind the Kirk campaign now found itself in:
But what’s really hilarious is that the Kirk campaign spent the entire day accusing us of being anti-semitic and fighting hard to discredit a poll in which they led. Now, just a day later, they face a poll, from a non-partisan news operation, that shows them getting their ass kicked.
Aside from the challenge to our Daily Kos honor at stake, there are also the reasons to back Seals this week that were laid out in previous nomination threads: his office was broken into, and the notorious right-wing money machine known as Freedom Watch did a massive cable ad buy against him.
Now the notion behind Hell to Pay has been, from the beginning, to inflict fiscal pain on Orange to Blue candidates’ rivals who get out of hand and smear Democrats, our O2B candidate, liberals in general or progressives. Surely smearing Daily Kos falls into that category. Other nominations this week are welcome in the comments as usual, and a poll will go up this evening with those suggestions. But for now, I urge the selection of Dan Seals this week to send an immediate message to the Kirk campaign. Nothing precludes people giving to other candidates as well on Orange to Blue during these fundraising drives; indeed, the spillover effect seems to be wonderful for all candidates, with all boats being raised a little higher after Saturday nights.
Note: Hell to Pay is for Orange to Blue candidates, so guys, please make your nominations from that list. Also, previous recipients — Andrew Rice, Al Franken, Darcy Burner and Charlie Brown — for now will be ineligible until our other candidates are taken care of as well (although feel free to donate to any and all worthies over on the list).
Nominate away. Remember the criteria: the opponent of an Orange to Blue candidate has smeared, lied or underhandedly attacked in an inappropriate way liberals, Democrats or their challenger. Please provide links and a summary argument about why he or she should be considered this week. These will be used in the voting thread later today.
You can also donate now to help us reach our new $1.25 million goal for all our candidates.
Anti-semitic my ass. Go forth and bring hell to pay.
Bringing in Cheney? Really? That’s Takes Some Guts.
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO A reception honoring
Marty Ozinga
Republican Nominee, 11th Congressional District
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
Vice president dick cheney
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2008
The home of marty and ruth ozinga
12621 W Hadley Road, Homer Glen, Illinois
Please plan to arrive by 10:00 a.m. to clear security.
All guests must have photo identification to enter the event.
All bags, briefcases and purses are subject to search.
For more information and to make ticket reservations, please call
815-936-0900 or visit www.martyozinga.com
Paid For By Ozinga for Congress, 19001 Old LaGrange Rd., Ste. 430, Mokena, IL 60448 | Phone: 815.936.0900
You are receiving this email from martyozinga.com because you joined a mailing list through our website.
Back To HB 4050
Marty Sandoval comments on the demise of HB 4050
State Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-12th), chairman of the Commerce and Economic Development Committee, also weighed in on the federal legislation, expressing the belief that it “is not enough to save jobs, help homeowners avoid foreclosures and restore credit to consumers.”
“It is evident that HB 4050 that House Speaker Michael Madigan and I sponsored, and which Gov. Blagojevich suspended, was ahead of this crisis,” he said, asserting that the pilot program that mandated credit counseling for homebuyers in certain circumstances “would have protected many of our neighborhoods on the Southwest Side of Chicago.”
Sandoval called the bailout “a small bandage on an enormous bleeding gash. What Congress approved…is not a permanent solution. Our economy is still hurting and further action is needed.”
It is “outrageous” that it is even needed, he added.
I’ve talked about HB 4050 before here and here.
Rich points out the connection between predatory lenders and some ministers, but in the bigger picture of what has happened to the housing market, Madigan and Sandoval were dead on target. When you look at the mortgages issued with credit counseling in metro areas, the default rate is 46 percent lower than non-credit counseled home buyers in lower income brackets (pdf)
Morons still insisting that Fannie and Freddie lending practices were the problem need a dose of reality: Fannie and Freddie did very little Subprime lending or Alt-A lending:
Fannie Mae owns or guarantees $51.2 billion of subprime loans, those given to borrowers with bad credit histories, a category that makes up about 2 percent of its total mortgage holdings, according to the company’s Web site. Subprime mortgages default at five times the rate of prime mortgages, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington.
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Less than 1 percent of its loans, or $20.6 billion, are payment-option adjustable-rate mortgages that let borrowers pay less than they owe each month, with the unpaid balance added to the principal.
And those loans that are subprime–typically are only issued with a credit counseling programs. Those who blame Fannie and Freddie for the subprime crisis are lying, stupid, or both. That doesn’t mean they were well run, but they aren’t the problem with subprime loans because they didn’t participate in such loans very much. The loans Fannie and Freddie had originated are in very good shape. What is not in good shape is described here:
MY COLLEAGUE points out Fannie and Freddie were not entirely at fault. That is absolutely correct. For things to go so epically wrong many factors must contribute. I should clarify—if you look amongst all the causes of this mess, Fannie and Freddie were the rot in the foundation.
The cause of market failure often plays out in a subtle manner. The mere existence of the GSEs did not cause market failure, but their size did. Their implicit government guarantee allowed them to create a portfolio of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) purchased in the market. This porfolio grew exponentially during the last fifteen years. Policy makers spent the last decade warning of the systemic risks a portfolio of this size posed.
Fannie and Freddie did not simply purchase and package loans. This part of their operation functioned well and under regulation appropriate for a GSE. The problem was the lack of oversight combined and the implicit guarantee that fueled growth in their asset portfolios. This growth was a recent phenomenon, which began in the mid 1990s. Alan Greenspan, warning of the systemic risks posed by Fannie and Freddie in a 2005 speech, noted:
When Freddie Mac became owned by private shareholders and began to realize the potential for exploiting the risk-adjusted profit-making of a larger portfolio, the message changed. Freddie stated in its 1993 annual report that “in short, to achieve our earnings objective, we are striving to increase our total portfolio at a rate faster than residential mortgage debt growth … [and] generate earnings growth in excess of revenue growth through focused management of credit and operating expenses.” By 2003, Freddie’s portfolio had grown tenfold, and Fannie and Freddie together held $1.5 trillion in assets, or 23 percent of the home-mortgage market.
Bold mine. The overall problems in the market have nothing to do with the CRA or Fannie and Freddie originated loans. The problems were generated from Alt-A and subprime loans that had little involvement in CRA or the GSEs on the front end. Even then the issue for GSEs was that the market lost a ton of money–not just temporary liquidity, but money was lost on bad investments in MBSs. So when Fannie and Freddie would have to borrow more money, the money was expensive and that squeezed their capital requirements and that is what led to their bailouts.
Who is to blame for this mess–those assholes predatory lenders that Blagojevich bowed to.
Sandoval and Madigan were doing the right thing. For all of his bluster about looking out for the public, Rod Blagojevich sold out the homebuyers in Illinois to a bunch of predatory lenders who didn’t want borrowers to know what they were doing. Remember that the next time he tries to criticize anyone, but especially John Fritchey who represented a payday loan company in a zoning matter. Fritchey isn’t the one who got in the way of educating consumers to make good financial decisions. Rod Blagojevich is.
CITIZENS FOR GIANNOULIAS 3-vs-3 BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT!
Usually I ask for campaigns to put up ads for this stuff, but I love the 3 on 3 tourneys for political campaigns–a close friend of mine in Saint Louis runs the same kind of event:
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Chicago, IL
CITIZENS FOR GIANNOULIAS 3-vs-3 BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT!
9:00 a.m. Check-in
Mozart Park * Armitage & Pulaski * Chicago
$300/Team * 4 Members/Team
Ad book pages: $100/full page * $500/silver page * $1000/gold page
RSVP Required – please call 312/738-6190 for more information and for registration forms.
Giannoulias Update on Illinois State Finances On The News Hour With Jim Lehrer Tonight
TREASURER’S OFFICE SAFEGUARDING INVESTMENTS
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The recent financial crisis on Wall Street is now being felt on Main Streets across the country.
Although we won’t know the long-term impact on the state’s portfolio, Illinois has avoided taking a hit during the recent market meltdown by not investing in the failed investment firms or in the sub-prime mortgage market.
As the state’s chief investment officer, my goal has been to pro-actively protect taxpayer money, diversify investments and employ sound policies that emphasize safety and security. Many other states that have chased high yields and exotic returns have gotten into trouble. They’ve been left with big losses and taxpayers in those states may have to pay for it.
Still, as investors dump risky equity instruments, they have been buying up treasury and agency securities that are safer because they are backed by the federal government. This has resulted in a “flight to quality,” which causes the prices of the securities to go up, while rates and yields go down.
The economic downturn will likely produce a smaller surplus of state funds available to invest. That coupled with declining rates of return will result in a significant reduction of investment income in the next few years.
Moving forward, Congress needs to demand protective oversight and accountability to limit financial firms from accumulating large amounts of bad debt and subprime mortgages.
ALEXI ON NATIONALLY TELEVISED “NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER”
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Watch Alexi tonight during PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” as he discusses how the current credit crunch is impacting Illinois’ economy and state budget. The segment will air tonight at 6 pm (CST) on Chicago’s WTTW-Channel 11.
Minor note–there are more PBS stations than just WTTW in Illinois. It’s the downstater in me.
I’ll get the video of the segment tonight one way or another.
Even The Tribune Understands Dart’s Move
I wasn’t sure what would be there when I opened up the editorial, but for all the crap I give the Trib Editorial Board this is a very good editorial on Dart’s move to delay some evictions
Our first instinct was to tell Dart he can’t take the law into his own hands—his job is to carry out the orders of the circuit court. But as we look at this, Dart has a reasonable case to make—for a short time.
This isn’t simply the sheriff riding up on a white horse to protect down-and-out citizens from losing their homes. Dart understands that his office is charged with enforcing lawful evictions. But he’s tired of his deputies showing up to serve eviction papers, only to find tenants who had been paying the rent faithfully, with no clue that the building was in foreclosure and no warning that they’d have to find another place to live.
In other words, he’s tired of his deputies doing the lenders’ grunt work and the taxpayers getting the bill for it.
State law that took effect Jan. 1 requires that renters be given 120 days notice before being forced to move by a foreclosure. But Dart says the banks often don’t bother to determine who is living in the house when obtaining an eviction order. When deputies go to the house and find a tenant who isn’t named on the papers, they have to halt the eviction and go back to court—at which time the banks are happy to take the names of the current occupants, add them to the order and start the 120-day clock.In the past, if deputies found no one home when they arrived with an eviction order, they often entered the house and hauled the contents to the curb (where they were frequently looted by neighbors). But the department stopped that practice because it’s impossible to know if the occupant was notified legally. Now if deputies find nobody home, they leave.
All those wasted visits and all that time running back and forth to court cost taxpayers about $100,000 a year, a sheriff’s spokesman said. And that number will likely rise. The department was on pace to do 4,500 evictions this year —more than twice what it did in 2006—before Dart hit the brakes.
Good on LaHood
Often times Ray LaHood is called a moderate. That’s not true, he’s quite conservative, but in our stupid discourse, decent gets confused with moderate. LaHood demonstrates the difference today by being decent:
| CHICAGO — A seven-term Republican Congressman from Illinois is taking issue with fellow Republican Sarah Palin, saying some of the vice presidential candidate’s rallies “don’t befit the office she’s running for.”
Republican Congressman Ray LaHood represents the 18th District: central and western Illinois, including Peoria. He’s retiring in January. LaHood supports the McCain ticket, but doesn’t like what he sees at some of the McCain-Palin rallies: When Barack Obama’s name has been mentioned by Sarah Palin, there are shouts of “terrorist,” and LaHood says Palin should put a stop to it. “Look it. This doesn’t befit the office that she’s running for. And frankly, people don’t like it.” Congressman LaHood says it could backfire on the Republican ticket. He says the names that Obama is being called, “Certainly don’t reflect the character of the man.” |
Bill Wirtz Writes Report Proving Hawkvision Was Popular With Hockey Fans
And along with Franco, he’s still dead.