Archive for the ‘Barney Frank’ Category

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said he advised President Obama against taking up health care reform following a special election in 2010 that changed Democrats’ fortunes in the Senate, saying that he should have instead turned his focus to financial reform.
From National Journal:

Frank referenced former President Bill Clinton and his failed health care plan from the 1990s. “Obama made the same mistake Clinton made,” Frank said in a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine. “When you try to extend health care to people who don’t have it, people who have it and are on the whole satisfied with it get nervous.”
The outgoing representative from Massachusetts added that after Republican Scott Brown won former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat, breaking Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority, Obama should have backed down: “I think we paid a terrible price for health care. I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after Scott Brown won, I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform but certainly not health care,” Frank said.
He said that if the president had followed his advice, “you could have gotten some pieces of it.”
Republicans seized on the comments, with the National Republican Congressional Committee issuing a release to several Democratic-held districts on Monday: “Even Barney Frank admits that ObamaCare has been a disaster,” the statement read. On Tuesday, Frank pushed back against the growing storm, saying that the GOP is “twisting my words,” and arguing that he was making a comment on the politics of the bill, not its “subject matter.”
“I have no issue with the subject matter or the bill itself,” Frank said in an interview with Talking Points Memo. “I was just commenting on the politics. And I was saying it was a mistake to have done it first.”
He further argued that he believes the bill will become more popular as time goes by. “I think, for instance, as the health care bill goes forward, it will be less and less plausible that it was doing any damage to anybody, and more and more people will be seeing the benefits of it,” Frank said.

I’m sure most of you recall when then-incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that her Congress would be “the most ethical Congress evah!”. O.K., perhaps she actually said “ever” instead of “evah”, but you get the point. This was supposedly in response to all of the ethics issues occurring while Republicans were in control of the House, such as dealings with uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the Mark Foley scandal. But truly, how could any House of Representatives that still contained Barney Frank, William Jefferson and Alcee Hastings be considered anything remotely close to ethical.

Speaking of Alcee Hastings, do you know about him? This Florida Congressman was once a Federal Judge before being impeached for accepting bribes. Go back and read that last sentence. If you read “was once a Federal Judge before being impeached for accepting bribes” then you read it correctly. Alcee Hastings was impeached in 1988 by the Democrat-controlled House before being removed by the Senate the next year after he was charged (though acquitted after his co-defendant refused to testify) of accepting around $150,000 in bribes.

Fast-forward a few years and former Judge Hastings was elected to Congress to represent a heavily-gerrymandered minority district in South Florida which was newly created (some argue specifically for him, but we all know that such things never happen) in 1992. Since then he’s done very little, not offering much in the way of actual legislation and generally enjoying such perks as a taxpayer-funded Lexus.

Shockingly, Congressman Hastings has found himself caught up in yet another ethics scandal, this time involving claims of sexual harassment made by a former staffer who claims:

For over two years, from January 2008 through February 19, 2010, Ms. Packer was forced to endure unwelcome sexual advances, crude sexual comments, and unwelcome touching by Mr. Hastings while serving as the Representative of the Commission to the United States Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Although Ms. Packer repeatedly rejected Mr. Hastings’ sexual attention and repeatedly complained about the harassment to the Commission Staff Director, Fred Turner, Mr. Hastings refused to stop sexually harassing her. Rather, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Turner began to retaliate against Ms. Packer—including making threats of termination—because she continued to object to Mr. Hastings’ conduct.

If this is an example of “the most ethical Congress ever”, we are relieved that former Speaker Pelosi didn’t promise that it would be the most fiscally conservative Congress ever.
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Wednesday, 15 Jun 2011 09:56 AM

By Forrest Jones

The housing crisis that began in 2006 is now worse than the meltdown in the Great Depression, with home prices having fallen 33 percent since then compared to 31 percent in the 1920s and 1930s, according to data from Case-Shiller, which tracks the sector.

“The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression,” says Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, according to CNBC.

The figures come at a time when unemployment numbers hover stubbornly high around 9.1 percent, while economic growth figures remain sluggish to the point that Fed officials say expansive monetary policy will stay in place.

There is one bright spot for the sector, however.

“The only comfort is that the latest monthly data show that towards the end of the first quarter prices started to fall at a more modest rate,” Dales says.

Still, he adds, expect a lost year.

“Nonetheless, prices are likely to fall by a further 3 percent this year, resulting in a 5 percent drop over the year as a whole.”

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the jobs market is running through a “loss of momentum,” and until hiring picks up and unemployment rates fall, the economy will continue to limp along.

“Until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established,” Bernanke said recently in Atlanta, Georgia, according to AFP newswire.
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Read more: CNBC: Housing Crisis Officially Worse Than Great Depression

I saw a political cartoon today that has Patrick Henry saying, “Give me liberty or give me civility.” The apparent point being that civility is a limit on liberty. There is a saying that people in the old west tended to be rather polite, because everybody was armed; to the degree that is true, people voluntarily limited the offensiveness of their speech as a matter of prudence. The reality is that anything that governs any action is a limit on liberty, which is why the Founding Fathers held the idea of limited government as a basic tenet of the foundation of our republic.

There is a balance that should be maintained between complete freedom to say and behave in any way a person chooses and in civility and polite behavior. Politeness and civility come from a person’s upbringing and the social culture of society.

When I was a child, in the 1950’s, society was considerably more polite than it is today, not only in speech, but in grooming, dress, and general behavior. Men were careful of their personal appearance, were chivalrous, tipping their hats (everyone wore a hat), stepping aside to allow others to pass on the sidewalk, holding doors for women, children, and the elderly, and watching their language in public.

The big change to this came from the younger members of my generation in the late sixties and seventies. Inspired by left-leaning professors, it started with college students who refused to honor the draft, developed into opposition to the Viet Nam war; running counter to traditional patriotic support of our soldiers during time of war. This bloomed into the hippy era, drug culture, free love, abortion rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, and a general anti-establishment philosophy. They rose up in a mass rebellion against pretty much every social and moral more of the time.

From the close of World War II, the Soviet Union was very actively working to foment this type of unrest through agents and contacts in the American Communist Party, the Socialist Party, labor unions, the universities, and the media. These have elevated extremism to mainstream politics via left wing groups from followers of Alinsky, SDS, Acorn, and various other “community organizations” and radical groups.

The McCarthy hearings of the early fifties identified some of this activity, but concentrated most on the film industry, where they were fairly successful in disarming that propaganda effort. The irony of the Soviet success in placing socialist plants and creating civil unrest was that, while they ended up succeeding beyond their original hope, it did not cause a push for Soviet style communism, but instead a push toward greater liberty; almost, but not quite, an anarchy type of freedom.

There were some very good things that came from all this. Freedom of speech and expression were given a greater emphasis than ever before. Women gained equality in the workplace and a greater say in the political and civic arena. Citizens became openly hostile toward public corruption and cronyism. Industrial pollution and toxic waste has been reduced by probably 90%.

Business has been changed from the type X labor/management conflict model to a more win/win approach. Families have switched from a rigid patriarchal style, to more of a partnership with greater parental involvement with children. All these are examples of the good that came out of this period of unrest.

However, there were almost an equal number of bad things that came from this period; it was a sort of a “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” situation. The polite civility of our parent’s generation didn’t completely disappear, but it was badly damaged and greatly reduced.

The use of slang, poor grammar, and of aggressive, offensive, and threatening language greatly increased. Self-discipline and personal accountability have been replaced with selfish hedonism and victimization. The concept of earning respect was replaced with deserving respect. Our children have been raised to believe that competing is bad, and winning isn’t important; everybody deserves the same reward regardless of personal effort and performance.

Political correctness has created a society unable to address differences between cultures, races, or other social distinctions, while at the same time destroying the concept of the American social “melting pot.” We now have Afro-, Hispano-, Asian-, etc. Americans who believe the culture and values of their homeland or racial group is more important than their identity as Americans. We have inadvertently created a new type of segregation.

So in addition to the many good things, the history of the Baby Boomers and their children has created all kinds of bad fall-out. Examples are extremely high rates of birth out of wedlock, huge numbers of abortions, huge numbers of single parent families, widespread use of drugs, illogical environmental and social laws, great loss of heavy industry, tremendous growth in government and the taxes required to support it, and a less civil, more crude society.

A second irony is the left accusing the right of using violent rhetoric when the use of extreme aggressive violent language, hyperbole, rhetoric , and imagery has been an invention and mainstay of the left; they are now accusing a much more mild right, in particular the Tea Party and talk radio, of abusing freedom of speech with excessive use of violent language. For any liberal to make such an accusation is not only ironic, but also hypocritical.

Personally, I would like for people on all sides of the political spectrum to avoid aggressive language and instead endeavor to express their ideas and opposition with more accuracy and less emotion. I don’t think this will really happen, because the left is steeped in the concept of using every crisis to drive an emotional following to a loud attack on their opposition.

I recently stated that I dislike seeing the Republicans “playing nice” with the Democrats; and I definitely feel that way. I think the Republicans need to respect the right of the Democrats to their opinions, but I also think Republicans need to strongly counter those damaging and anti-American ideas.

Modern politics is more clearly than ever aligned between not just conservative and liberal, but right and wrong. The conservatives are simply right, and the liberals are simply wrong, and there is nothing in that to compromise. I would rather see congress unable to ever pass another law than to pass one more law that will hurt our country.

An example of left-wing civility

Rumor has it that Barney Frank quit the Senate and hired on to his dream job at TSA

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, in an intensifying clash with GOP upstart Sean Bielat, has pledged not to take campaign cash from lenders that got federal bailouts — yet has raked in more than $40,000 from bank execs and special interests connected to the staggering government loans, a Herald review found.

Frank vowed in February 2009 that he wouldn’t accept campaign donations from banks that received money under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) or political action committees tied to such institutions.

But Frank has hauled in thousands from top execs at Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Wainwright Bank, JP Morgan Chase and other institutions that received billions in TARP money.

Just yesterday, Frank made new campaign finance disclosures showing he received $17,000 from top executives of Bank of America — including $2,000 from CEO Brian Moynihan. B of A received $45 billion in bailout money. In all, Frank has hauled in at least $27,000 since 2009 from bank execs — and $13,000 from PACs — connected to banks that received TARP funding, including:

• $5,000 earlier this month from the Bank of America Corp. Federal PAC;

• $10,000 in August and September from the Bipartisan PAC/Bank of New York Mellon Corp.; Mellon received $3 billion from TARP;

• $2,000 in June 2009 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC, which counts TARP recipients B of A, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo among its members; and

• $1,000 in March from U.S. Bancorp PAC; the Minnesota-based bank received more than $6 billion in TARP funds.

“Now that he’s in the political fight of his life, Barney Frank tossed aside his phony pledge and lined his pockets with cash from his closest allies — Wall Street executives,” said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Tory Mazzola. “He made a promise to voters, but obviously he cares more about saving his career as a politician than with keeping his word.”

In a statement last night, a Frank spokesman said the congressman has declined to take contributions only from the top 10 TARP recipients, but he noted he would accept donations from those institutions once they repaid their debts. The spokesman said none of the donations cited by the Herald violated that policy.

Meanwhile, in a release responding to a Herald report yesterday that Bielat is tapping Wall Street bigwigs in a bid to force Frank into a Martha Coakley-style collapse, Frank said, “Mr. Bielat’s eagerness to serve as the agent of those wealthy Wall Streeters who seek to undo the financial reform bill explains why this race has become so expensive and why it is so important in order to prevent another economic crisis.”

The 15-term Democratic congressman pumped $200,000 of his own cash into his campaign this week and has spent $700,000 in the first two weeks of October. His war chest has $650,000 to Bielat’s $420,000. Bielat, a 35-year-old Marine, reported he has raised $650,000 so far in October, records show.

In a Feb. 23, 2009, article in the Washington publication Roll Call, Frank is quoted saying, “I won’t take any PAC money from banks that took TARP funds, nor would I take it from the top executive.” The article made no mention of the policy only applying to the top 10 TARP fund recipients. Frank said he floated the loan to his campaign to counter an expected flood of right-wing attack ads, including from the national Tea Party.

LETS GET RID OF THIS CROOK ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Apparently heckling is the new attack ad. Here’s the latest heckling vid to be making the rounds. After exiting a debatewith Barney Frank at the WGBH studios in Boston on Thursday GOP opponent Sean Bielat was in the midst of giving an interview outside the studio when he was heckled by a passerby. By all accounts the passerby was none other than Frank’s boyfriend James Ready.

Just to be clear, by heckling we mean that Ready (allegedly) walked up to Bielate in mid-interview with a handful of reporters (seemingly much to the amazement of everyone there) and started insulting him..

It’s time to get rid of this scoundrel and his friends

But this time he’s not taking the fall for “cooking the books” to help a friend’s bank qualify for a $12,000,000 taxpayer-funded bailout or trying to defend his staunch support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The fifteen term congressman has been caught red-handed accepting a ride on a private jet and a villa vacation to the U.S. Virgin Islands from a billionaire hedge fund manager and possible tax evader, who received $200 million in bailout money.

The Boston Herald recently reported that Barney flew to the Virgin Islands on a $25 million private jet owned by a billionaire hedge fund manager. The Weekly Standard also revealed that a company owned by Barney’s billionaire travel buddy might be improperly taking tax breaks by basing the business in… the Virgin Islands. But don’t worry. Barney reported the gift, as required by House ethics rules, at a value of $1,500.

A $1,500 Virgin Islands holiday getaway on a $25 million private jet? I’d sure like to know which travel agency Barney uses!

As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee which oversees the hedge fund industry, Barney is in the process of writing “reform” that would attempt to regulate the hedge fund industry. So who does he think he’s fooling by gallivanting around the Caribbean on a hedge fund manager’s tab?

Washington’s latest obstacle to a housing market recovery.
The Wall Street Journal  Opinion

Talk about a financial scandal. A consumer borrows money to buy a house, doesn’t make the mortgage payments, and then loses the house in foreclosure—only to learn that the wrong guy at the bank signed the foreclosure paperwork. Can you imagine? The affidavit was supposed to be signed by the nameless, faceless employee in the back office who reviewed the file, not the other nameless, faceless employee who sits in the front.

The result is the same, but politicians understand the pain that results when the anonymous paper pusher who kicks you out of your home is not the anonymous paper pusher who is supposed to kick you out of your home. Welcome to Washington’s financial crisis of the week.

In the 23 states that require judicial foreclosures, lenders seeking to seize property from a delinquent borrower must file a summary judgment motion in court. Typically, this document must be signed in the presence of a notary by a “witness” who has reviewed the relevant documents and confirmed that the borrower is in default and the lender owns the mortgage.

Recently GMAC Mortgage, whose parent Ally Financial is majority-owned by the U.S. government, suspended foreclosures in those 23 states after acknowledging that in some cases notaries may not have been present and the signers may have relied upon others to review the documents instead of doing it themselves. Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase then halted their own foreclosures in those 23 states to ensure they are following the letter of the law, and yesterday BofA announced its moratorium is now nationwide.

We’re not aware of a single case so far of a substantive error. Out of tens of thousands of potentially affected borrowers, we’re still waiting for the first victim claiming that he was current on his mortgage when the bank seized the home. Even if such victims exist, the proper policy is to make them whole, not to let 100,000 other people keep homes for which they haven’t paid.

In their zeal to find and prosecute the great bank defendant, state Attorneys General aren’t waiting to see if anyone within their borders was actually harmed. In a civil suit, Ohio’s Attorney General Richard Cordray has even charged an Ally employee with fraud for signing the documents without reading them. In a Journal interview, Mr. Cordray compared the employee to Nazis at Nuremberg who claimed they were just following orders.

As far as we know, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t compared any bank employees to Nazis, but this week she demanded an investigation by the Department of Justice. The next day Attorney General Eric Holder announced that his Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is examining the issue. But even if one believes this is more than a technicality, the issue is whether the banks violated state laws, not federal ones.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid jumped into the fray by demanding a halt to all foreclosures in Nevada, though Nevada is not one of the 23 states affected and therefore presents not even a theoretical violation of the law. The same day, Representative Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.) demanded a national foreclosure moratorium, which Mr. Reid then endorsed on Friday. Even normally sober Republican Senator Richard Shelby has called for a federal probe of bank regulators.

Yes, the same crew (Mr. Shelby excepted) that ran roughshod over its own transparency rules—not to mention the established customs of the House and Senate—to restructure American medicine is now appalled that some paperwork at private businesses may have been incorrectly processed. To be clear, bank employees appear guilty of sloppy work, and problems in the back office should be corrected, but freezing activity in a $2.8 trillion financial market is the last thing this economy needs and is in no way proportional to the problems reported so far.

Now President Obama is refusing to sign a previously noncontroversial measure to have states recognize notarized documents from other states. Among other things, the bill would have streamlined the process of moving people out of homes they can’t afford and therefore would have helped to allow housing markets to clear and begin to heal. Allowing supply to meet demand in housing must not be one of the “progressive agendas” that Mr. Obama recently told Rolling Stone he is committed to advancing.

If evidence emerges of policies or actions that wrongly threw people out of their homes, by all means investigate and prosecute violations of law. But allowing people to live in homes without paying for them is not cost-free. That cost will be borne directly by investors in mortgage-backed securities and mortgage servicing companies, and ultimately by American taxpayers, who now stand behind 90% of new mortgages, thanks to guarantees by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

The bigger damage here is to the housing market, which desperately needs to find a bottom by clearing excess inventory and working through foreclosures as rapidly as possible. The moratoriums further politicize the housing market and further delay a housing recovery. In an economy and a financial system engulfed in Washington-created uncertainty, the political class has decided to create still more.

George Soros, Obama, and all their Socialist and Communistic friends Believe this

Manifest Destiny as is practiced today is a term used by the Progressives, Socialists, Elites and Communists that there is a widely held underlying belief among them , that they are the “chosen people,” had a divinely inspired mission to spread the fruits of their beliefs to the less fortunate and unwashed masses.
The idea of an almost religious Manifest Destiny is a common staple in the speeches and newspaper articles of the Progressives. Most of the exponents of Socialism were Democrats.

Critics see the Manifest Destiny rationale as a thinly veiled attempt to put an acceptable face on taking freedom from other peoples. Motives are often described as well-intentioned efforts to improve the lot of backward masses, but in truth the motivators were greed, power and control. The Manifest Destiny crowd are thinly disguised in wonderful names – such as Center for American Freedom.
The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality and freedom, that we have, in reality, but little connection with anyone trying to take our freedom away. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity with individual freedom.

George Soros 15 Commandments for his puppet Barak Obama
Commandment #10
10.) Advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending

Barney Gets the Word from Obama and George Soros
And this comes from Barney
Barney Frank’s Panel Recommends $1 Trillion in Defense Cuts. Think It’ll Happen?
By Susie Madrak
Holy cow, they even recommended cutting the V-22 Osprey. What do you suppose the chances are of anyone actually following through on these recommendations? My guess is, they’ll cut military salaries and skip everything else:
A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.
The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.
Measures presented by the task force include making significant reductions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates; delaying the procurement of a new midair refueling tanker the Air Force has identified as one of its top acquisition priorities; and reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships instead of the 313 eyed by the service.
Shipbuilding has strong support in the congressional defense committees, which write the Pentagon bills. Efforts to reduce the number of ships would run into resistance from the Pentagon and the shipbuilding lobby.
Frank on Friday warned that if he can’t convince Congress to act in the “general direction” of the task force recommendation, “then every other issue will suffer.” Not cutting the Pentagon’s budget could lead to higher taxes and spending cuts detrimental to the environment, housing and highway construction.
The acceptance of the recommendations would depend on a “philosophical change” and a “redefinition of the strategy,” Frank said at press conference on Capitol Hill.
He said the creation of the deficit reduction commission offers the best opportunity for the reduction recommendations. Frank wants to convince his colleagues to write to the deficit reduction commission and warn that they would not approve any of the plans suggested by the commission unless reduction of military spending is included.

Below is an editorial that appeared in the New Hampshire Union Leader that talks about Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer and their roles in the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Here is the editorial in it’s entirely:
One month from tomorrow, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., will be the keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner. It is a coveted and high-profile role previously filled by such notables as Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. The Democrats’ choice of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is, therefore, very revealing.
The party announced Frank as the keynote speaker on Sept. 11 — three days after the U.S. government took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, costing taxpayers untold billions. That takeover probably could have been prevented had Frank not worked to thwart every attempt to limit the risks taken on by the two government-sponsored mortgage giants.
For 16 years reformers in Congress have tried to improve oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and prevent the government-chartered companies from putting the housing market and the whole economy at risk. All that time, Frank was involved in efforts to block those attempts, and in the last eight years he was a leader of those efforts.
In 2002, shortly before accounting irregularities were exposed at both companies, Frank said, “I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems,” The Wall Street Journal reported. After the Freddie Mac accounting scandal in 2003, Frank said, “I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis.”
But there was a crisis, thanks in large part to Frank, Sen. Charles Schumer and others on the leash of these companies. In Congress, they made sure there was no additional oversight, no additional limit on executive behavior and compensation, and no further restraint on the growth of the companies’ mortgage-backed-securities portfolios, among other changes.
(All of these needed reforms, by the way, have been championed for years by Sen. John Sununu.)
In fact, Frank & Co. made matters worse by pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take on greater risk. They wanted more loans to people who might not qualify for traditional bank financing. And, as The Wall Street Journal has pointed out, Frank “pressured regulators to ease up on their capital requirements — which now means taxpayers will have to make up that capital shortfall.”
Even now, after the government took the companies over (which Frank repeatedly said over the years was not a possibility), Frank opposes limits on the amount of money they can risk on mortgage backed securities — the one reform that might have done the most to prevent the current meltdown and probably would do the most to keep it from happening again.
Barney Frank is the very symbol of Washington’s deliberate refusal to prevent the collapse — the predicted collapse — of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And this is the guy the New Hampshire Democratic Party showcases at its most prestigious annual event. That ought to tell you a lot right there.
Besides their total ignorance about the troubles that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were headed towards is the fact that these two men, and other Democrats, helped to make the problem worse.
In fact, Frank & Co. made matters worse by pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take on greater risk. They wanted more loans to people who might not qualify for traditional bank financing. And, as The Wall Street Journal has pointed out, Frank “pressured regulators to ease up on their capital requirements
These companies were forced to loan money to people who couldn’t afford it in the interest of “being fair.” Rules were relaxed and money was loaned and predictably low income families defaulted on loans that they never had any business getting in the first place and now you and I have to pay for it.
Another liberal policy and another liberal failure. And now we must all pay for it. But hell, they meant well.

By Nicole Belle
Rep. Barney Frank said he plans to file a bill to legalize “small amounts” of marijuana.
Frank announced his plans late Friday on the HBO show “Real Time,” hosted by Bill Maher.
“I’m going to file a bill as soon as we go back to remove all federal penalties for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Maher.
Frank didn’t define “small amounts.” Efforts to reach Frank on Saturday were not immediately successful.
Frank said he’d filed a similar bill in the Massachusetts Legislature in the 1970s, but hasn’t tried since he was elected to Congress.
“I finally got to the point where I think I can get away with it,” he said.
Frank said he thinks “its time for the politicians in this one to catch up to the public. The notion that you lock people up for smoking marijuana is pretty silly.”
I am totally for legalization of marijuana, but I have to differ with Frank on this: to think that at this time with this administration that you could get away with a bill legalizing pot actually is what sounds silly.

Naturally. Of course. Not surprised. Wouldn’t have expected anything less.
The same guy who led us down the primrose path on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is now out there as ACORN’s loudest supporter.
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, may have pulled off the most widespread voter fraud in American history last year. They’re being investigated or have already been convicted in 14 states.
In response, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman proposed an entirely reasonable amendment that would have barred any organization under federal indictment from receiving funds from the mortgage reform bill.
But blatantly Barney Frank, ACORN’s congressional sugar daddy, saw to it that the amendment was removed, defeated, condemned to the ash heap of history. Remarkably, ACORN will now have access to up to $8.5 billion (with a “b”) from President Obama’s various “stimulus” schemes.

Frank claims ACORN isn’t eligible for any of the moneyOf course, this is the same guy who defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and had a prostitution ring operating out of his condo.
Apparently the prostitution ring is still operating, but has moved its headquarters to Washington, DC.

Democratic House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former ‘spouse’ was Fannie Mae executive.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute

Are journalists playing favorites with some of the key political figures involved with regulatory oversight of U.S. financial markets?

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews launched several vitriolic attacks on the Republican Party on his Sept. 17, 2008, show, suggesting blame for Wall Street problems should be focused in a partisan way. However, he and other media have failed to thoroughly examine the Democratic side of the blame game.

Prominent Democrats ran Fannie Mae, the same government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that donated campaign cash to top Democrats. And one of Fannie Mae’s main defenders in the House – Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., a recipient of more than $40,000 in campaign donations from Fannie since 1989 – was once romantically involved with a Fannie Mae executive.

The media coverage of Frank’s coziness with Fannie Mae and his pro-Fannie Mae stances has been lacking. Of the eight appearances Frank made on the three broadcasts networks between Jan. 1, 2008, and Sept. 21, 2008, none of his comments dealt with the potential conflicts of interest. Only six of the appearances dealt with the economy in general and two of those appearances, including an April 6, 2008 appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes” were about his opposition to a manned mission to Mars.

Frank has argued that family life “should be fair game for campaign discussion,” wrote the Associated Press on Sept. 2. The comment was in reference to GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. “They’re the ones that made an issue of her family,” the Massachusetts Democrat said to the AP.

The news media have covered the relationship in the past, but there have been no mentions since 2005, according to Nexis and despite the collapse of Fannie Mae. The July 3, 1998, Reliable Source column in The Washington Post reported Frank, who is openly gay, had a relationship with Herb Moses, an executive for the now-government controlled Fannie Mae. The column revealed the two had split up at the time but also said Frank was referring to Moses as his “spouse.” Another Washington Post report said Frank called Moses his “lover” and that the two were “still friends” after the breakup.

Frank was and remains a stalwart defender of Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation along with its sister organization Freddie Mac, American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) and Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) – all recently participants in government bailouts. But Frank has derailed efforts to regulate the institution, as well as denying it posed any financial risk. Frank’s office has been unresponsive to efforts by the Business & Media Institute to comment on these potential conflicts of interest.

While the relationship reportedly ended 10 years ago, Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee the entire 10 years they were together. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises.

He has served on the committee since becoming a congressman in 1981 and became the ranking Democrat on the committee in 2003. He became chairman of the committee, now called the House Financial Services Committee, in 2007.

Moses was the assistant director for product initiatives at Fannie Mae and had been at the forefront of relaxing lending restrictions at the company for rural customers, according to the Feb. 23, 1998, issue of National Mortgage News (NMN).

“Herb Moses, who helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs, has left the mortgage industry,” Darryl Hicks wrote for NMN. “Mr. Moses – whose last day was Feb. 13 – spent the past seven years at Fannie Mae, most recently as director of housing initiatives. Over the course of time, he played an instrumental role in developing the company’s Title One and 203(k) home improvement lending programs.”

Hicks explained in his story how Moses orchestrated a collaborative effort between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture.

“The Dartmouth grad also played a crucial role in brokering a relationship between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture,” Hicks wrote. “This led to the creation of Fannie Mae’s rural housing program where the secondary marketing agency agreed to purchase small farm loans insured through the department.”

While Moses served at Fannie Mae and was Frank’s partner, Frank was actively working to support GSEs, according to several news outlets.

In 1991, Frank and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., lobbied for Fannie to soften rules on multi-family home mortgages although those dwellings showed a default rate twice that of single-family homes, according to the Nov. 22, 1991, Boston Globe.

BusinessWeek reported in its Nov. 14, 1994, issue that Fannie Mae called on Frank to exert his influence against a Housing & Urban Development proposal that would force the GSE to focus on minority and low-income buyers and police bias by lenders regardless of their location. Fannie Mae opposed HUD on the issue because it claimed doing so would “ignore the urban middle class.”

Moses left Fannie in 1998 to start his own pottery business. National Mortgage News called Moses a “mortgage guru” and said he developed “many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. Moses ended his relationship with Frank just months after he left Fannie.

Even after the relationship ended, however, Frank was a staunch defender of Fannie Mae even as other experts suggested there were serious problems building in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to an article by Kathleen Day in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that “could pose risk to the taxpayers.” He told the Post he worried the Treasury Department “would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks.”

Just a month before, Frank had aggressively thwarted reform efforts by the Bush administration. He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s problems were “exaggerated,” a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs estimated to be in the hundreds of billions.

“These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank said to the Times. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Frank has also reaped campaign contribution benefits from Fannie Mae and its counterpart Freddie Mac. According a front page story in the Sept. 19, 2008, Investor’s Business Daily by Terry Jones, Frank has received $40,100 in campaign cash over the past two decades from the GSEs.

Frank is ranked 16th on a list that includes both houses of Congress and fifth among his colleagues in the House. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org, political action committees financed by both Freddie and Fannie have contributed $3,017,797 to members of Congress since 1989. And according to the July 16 issue of Politico, the two entities have spent a whopping $200 million to buy influence – including not only campaign donations to members of Congress, but also presidential campaigns and lobbying efforts.

In a July 23 op-ed, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot put the blame for the GSEs’ collapse firmly on the members of the liberal establishment who took money from Freddie and Fannie. “Fan and Fred also couldn’t prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left… This includes Mr. Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. [Paul] Krugman and the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein in the press.”

Frank was asked by CNN’s John Roberts on the Sept. 22, 2008 “American Morning” about this and his opposition to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Originally, he claimed he didn’t think the two GSEs were facing any problems when the issue first surfaced in 2003. He instead blamed the Republican-controlled Congress for their ultimate fall, failing to mention his friendly relationship with Fannie Mae and the contributions it had made to his campaign over the years.

“Yes, I did not think we were facing a crisis in 2003, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have to have reform,” an animated Frank said when confronted with the question. “Here’s the deal, the Republicans controlled Congress from 1995 through 2006. They did zero to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

However, on Sept. 17, 2008, former Bush administration Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove elaborated on the Bush administration’s efforts to curb abuses at the two GSEs in 2003. He told Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” that Frank was among the most aggressive opponents of White House attempts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“All of this bad stuff on Wall Street happened because people got greedy and the greed started at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Rove said. “And I know this because five years ago, the administration was alerted by the regulator, James Lockhart, that there was insufficient authority and that these institutions – particularly Fannie – were out of control.”

Rove said the Bush administration’s efforts to reform Fannie and Freddie were opposed by congressional Democrats – specifically Frank and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

“And I got to tell you, for five years, I was part of an effort at the White House to fight this and our biggest opponents on the Hill who blocked this every step of the way were people like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. And Fannie and Freddie are the $200 billion contagion at the center of this.”

Frank has been quick to blame deregulation for some of the problems in the financial environment, as he did on Bloomberg television’s Sept. 19 “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” However, as earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. pointed out – it’s not deregulation, but it was the structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that had been guarded by Frank and other members of Congress.

“Some people point at deregulation,” Flake said to the Business & Media Institute on Sept. 23. “It’s not deregulation at all. We have for far too long shielded Fannie and Freddie for example, with the implicit and now explicit guarantee. I just found it humorous.”

Flake specifically named Frank as one of the members behind letting allegations of transgressions at the two GSEs for slipping by without oversight from Congress.

“Just a few minutes ago, a reporter was asking me about this and saying, ‘Barney Frank is saying that’s just – because there were allegations,’ correct ones – ‘that Fannie and Freddie have been the playground for politicians for years and now the other side is saying Fannie and Freddie were just a small part of this and this goes far beyond.’ It does, but these same people a couple of weeks ago said, ‘You got to bail out Fannie and Freddie because they touch everything out there. They touch nearly every mortgage out there.’ And because of that explicit guarantee – that we would come and bail them out, nobody has been subject to market discipline.”

Frank claims differently, according to a letter to the editor published in the Sept. 17, 2008 Wall Street Journal. Frank noted that in 2005 he supported regulating compensation for Fannie and Freddie executives.

“In fact, my reform efforts had begun when we were still in the minority. In 2005, I joined Michael Oxley, then chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in supporting legislation to increase the regulation of Fannie and Freddie that passed the House by a vote of 330 to 90,” Frank wrote. “When former Congressman Richard Baker proposed to examine the compensation structure of Fannie and Freddie’s top executives, and some members of Congress tried to block him, I explicitly spoke out in support of his right to do that and our right, as a Congress, to examine the GSE’s compensation practices.”

The red flags were raised long before the government bailed out the two GSEs in August 2008. The first egregious scandal involving Fannie Mae occurred in 2004. A 2004 Wall Street Journal editorial was first to point out claims in an OFHEO report that showed accounting malpractices by the GSE.
“For years, mortgage giant Fannie Mae has produced smoothly growing earnings. And for years, observers have wondered how Fannie could manage its inherently risky portfolio without a whiff of volatility, the Oct. 4, 2004, editorial, “Fannie Mae Enron?” said. “Now, thanks to Fannie’s regulator, we know the answer. The company was cooking the books. Big time.”

By John Amato
Barney Frank took the gloves off on the floor and called John Fund out for making up a story about a phony bill and then he outlined how the right wing noise machine works as a propaganda arm of the republicans to push that narrative into the mainstream.
Frank: You are entirely wrong about me and in the absence of your being able to show any basis which you made such a statement to ask you to acknowledge that fact. He’s not only a liar, he’s a coward. He wouldn’t do it. My staff member asked him, called him up and said, what was this based on? Well, I made a mistake. Well, have you made a retraction? Oh, yeah, he said. Can we see it? “I told a couple of people.” Mr. Fund makes it up. It’s a lie, it’s a myth. There was nothing there and it’s to discredit all democrats.
His right-wing cohorts echo it and echo it. The next thing is it will be on the floor in the next two weeks. This is the democrat disregard for the electoral process. And when we call Mr. Fund’s attention to the fact that this was a lie, what does he say? Whoops. but he’s not going to tell anybody about it. Mr. Speaker, this is not the only case of this and I know this has happened before. But because I was directly involved here, I was in position to document this. It begins with a lie from this editorial writer from “the Wall street journal.” it is then a lie repeated by his right-ring colleagues. He refuses to do anything about.
It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Frank posted the entire story on the web.
Frank responded to fabricated accounts of his supposed plans to introduce a bill on “universal voter registration.” The story began in November at the conservative Restoration Weekend conference in Palm Beach, Florida, where for $1,700 per person activists were able to hear talks by conservative opinion leaders on the theme, “Defending our Country and Culture.” At one session, John Fund, a writer for the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, claimed that Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chuck Schumer had hatched a plan to game the election system by registering felons, illegal aliens and others to vote:
Democrats were very rattled by the November 3rd election results. What do liberals do when they lose elections? They change the rules. In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration.
What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states, “Take everyone on every list of welfare recipients you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders, and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be.”
The allegation against Congressman Frank is absolutely false and has no basis in reality. The Congressman in fact heard about it for the first time after the story was launched in the conservative media.
On January 5th, Glenn Beck of Fox News, which like the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, repeated the same fallacious story, specifically citing John Fund as his source. The next day, Rush Limbaugh retold the story on nationwide radio, also quoting Fund. On January 7th, the Washington Times, owned by Reverend Sun Yung Moon’s Unification Church, ran an editorial titled “Letting Crooks and Illegals Vote.” None of the outlets called Frank’s office to verify the story.
In addition, right-wing web sites have also posted the story online, often embedding video of Mr. Fund’s talk, giving the fictitious story an even longer life-span.
Congressman Frank addressed a letter to John Fund on January 13th, asking the writer to either corroborate or publicly repudiate his statement. When called by a staffer who was seeking a fax number for Mr. Fund, Fund claimed that he had issued a retraction. When asked for a copy of the retraction, he stated that he had not actually issued a written correction, but that he had simply told a few inquiring bloggers that he had made a mistake. To date, Mr. Fund has still not issued a public retraction.
Fund’s idea of a retraction was to tell a few people. The Wall Street Journal should suspend him from their pages if they had any real integrity. Fund did his job well. Promote a lie and then watch it take off because he knows that once the story is out there—then it’s out there.

On Thursday’s Hardball show, Chris Matthews asked one of his typical long, poorly-worded questions and Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank responded with one of his typical long, poorly thought-out answers.
“What do you make of this big shift,” Matthews circumnavigated, “away from Bushism, if you will? Away from tax cuts, from people who make certain amount of money and to begin a health fund, you know, national health care?”
“I think it’s what people voted fo-wah,” Frank said rhotically. “There was no secwet that this was going to happen. John McCain kept pwedicting that if Obama won, this would happen, and I think Obama felt an obwigation to make an honest man out of John McCain, to keep him honest. One, John’s always been pwetty honest. Of course, the pwivate sectow is the engine to cweate wealth. But we also know, as Fwanklin Woosevelt knew and as othews have known, that the pwivate sectow works best when it’s got a set of wules and a coopewative set of awwangements with the public sectow.”
Barney Frank, the congressman who gives you get two for the price of one — a speech impediment and an economic impediment.

Barney Frank has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 4th District of Massachusetts, since 1981 (map). He is a Democrat, and is chair of the House Committee on Financial Services. Frank is the most prominent openly gay politician in the United States.
2008 Financial Crisis
In 2003, Frank said, “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
In 2004, Frank said at a hill hearing that a Office of the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversite (OFHEO) report of illegal activity by Fannie Mae does not “raise safety and soundness [of Fannie Mae investments] problems at issue”.
HUD Secretary
On May 9, 2006, Frank called for an investigation into comments made by Alphonso Jackson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in which he implied that he cancelled a contract because the recipient expressed a negative opinion about President George W. Bush.
Steve Gobie
In 1990, the House voted to reprimand Frank when it was revealed that Steve Gobie, a household employee he had hired in 1985, was running a prostitution business from Frank’s apartment. Frank had dismissed Gobie earlier that year after learning of Gobie’s activities.
The Boston Globe, among others, called on Frank to resign, but he refused. The House Ethics Committee recommended Frank be reprimanded because he “reflected discredit upon the House” by using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie’s parking tickets. Attempts to expel or censure Frank failed; instead the House voted 408-18 to reprimand him.
Politics and Frank’s sexuality
During an anti-gay GOP campaign, Frank threatened to out a number of gay-baiting Republican fellow congressmen. He stated that it is unacceptable to out a closeted gay person, unless that person uses their power or notoriety to hurt gay people. Many members of the LGBT community adhere to this rule in their own relationships with prominent individuals.
In 1995, Majority leader Dick Armey made a stir when he referred to Frank as “Barney Fag” in a press interview. Armey apologized and claimed it was a slip of the tongue. Frank later summarized the incident, saying “I think Dick Armey was a much better rank-and-file member than majority leader,” Frank said. “When he was rank-and-file, he was quite thoughtful. … Once he became majority leader he abandoned a lot of that and became a right-wing apparatchik.”