Hill & Bill have made million$ - so what?

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I have to give GOP hack Matt Drudge credit for one thing - he's brilliant at coming up with new reasons for totally despising him.

Splashed across his site when I got home tonight - the above headline - which probably marks the 988th time he's taken the GOP lead in attacking the Clintons. If I could get good enough odds from a sucker, I'd bet a few c-notes that this dominates the news over the weekend, especially the Sunday morning talk shows.

After I saw this headline, I got into 1990s mode all over again - frothing at the mouth with partisan outrage. Both Hillary and President Clinton have disappointed me immensely and on more than one occasion during this presidential campaign, but I have no problem at all with this and I really wonder what the big deal is.

Why? Well, first of all, all modern presidents get rich when they leave office. Reagan certainly did. Bush Sr. hasn't been hurting for cash, that's for sure. Neither has Clinton. Quickly now, look into your crystal ball - how many millions do you think Dubya and Laura will be worth? Each successive president cashes in, and Clinton is no exception.

I remember a time not so long ago that people were outraged and outright LIVID that President Clinton raised in the neighborhood of $500 million for his presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas. His political opponents to this day are furious that the list of donors have not been disclosed, and they do have a point. I don't like the fact that outgoing presidents can do all sorts of favors (ahem, pardons) in return for a fat wad of cash for the monument under construction to himself, i.e., the presidential library.

But guess what?

President Bush hasn't disclosed the hundreds, if not thousands of donors to his presidential library. Current estimates have the cost of his self-serving monument costing in the neighborhood of $1 billion. When the day comes that Bush discloses all of his donors and how much they have given, I will be the first to condemn President Clinton and give kudos to Bush on this Website. Guess what? It's not gonna happen. No, let me rephrase that - look right - THAT'S when Bush will come clean with all of his political favors.

I'm not happy about political favors in exchange for money or political donations on the part of any politician in our country. But, it happens, and it's been part of the system for so long, it's impossible to single out any politician for particular scorn, unless it's a hugely corrupt politician or a very special case.

The bottom line is that our Natural Embarrassment, the clown currently in the Oval Office, is the most secretive president since at least Nixon, and I'd make the case the most secretive ever. We probably won't even ever know the extent to his secrecy and under-handed dealings, but I do know this - Kenneth Lay, before the rape and pillage fall of Enron, donated hundreds of thousands to Bush's inaugural ball in January 2001. Following 9-11, guess which company got tens of millions in tax breaks? C'mon, I don't really need to write it, do I?

Here's another cheerful thought - the Clintons were millions and millions in debt when they left office due to legal bills from the GOP witch hunt to get them at all costs. And by the way, Drudge played no small part in that.

One final thought - I wonder if Mitt Romney or America's Profiteer, Rudy Giuliani, would be getting this kind of financial scrutiny if they were still in the presidential race? In a word, no.

I can only hope and pray that McSame will be stupid enough to pick Romney or Giuliani as his running mate. Please, God, PLEASE.

Update:
It's already starting. I don't expect HuffPo to be as blatantly partisan as Drudge is, but really, Arianna?

Spitzer & the mortgage crisis: linked?

I've got five bucks Euros (the bet should have value, at least) that this story gets virtually no play in the national, mainstream media.

Noted journalist & author Greg Palast has a take on deposed New York Governor Eliot Spitzer that's getting virtually no play at all; the short of it is that Spitzer's fall and the mortgage crisis are directly linked. (Two of Palast's books are well-known - Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy; the former is sitting on one of my bookshelves, waiting for me to read it.)

His latest column, entitled Eliot's Mess: The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked is on his Website and appears in today's Baltimore Chronicle. Some excerpts (my comments follow):

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an "escort" $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's a BIG difference. The governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks' mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers' bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer's lynching and the bankers' enriching are intimately tied.

How? Follow the money.

The press has swallowed Wall Street's line that millions of U.S. families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn't afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That's blaming the victim.

Here's what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the "sub-prime" mortgage and it's variants including loans with teeny "introductory" interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called Countrywide became America's top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these "sub-prime."

Here's how it worked: The Grinning Family, with U.S. average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 a month payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain't worth a can of Spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the "discount" they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Now, what kind of American is "sub-prime"? Guess. No peeking. Here's a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans, versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren't stupid – they had no choice. They were "steered," as it's called in the mortgage sharking business.

"Steering," sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called "fraudulent conveyance" or "predatory lending" under U.S. law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.

But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hardy – it was OK now to steer'm, fake'm, charge'm and take'm.

But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.

[Snip]

It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:

"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which he federal government was turning a blind eye."

Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime." The president, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.

Spitzer wrote, "When history tells the story of the sub-prime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."

I really wonder when the American people (or at least the moderates, who in recent history are largely determining the outcome of elections) will every truly "get it," and by that I mean that Republicans are so anti-government, it makes little sense to put them in charge of something they are determined to minimize and dismantle at every opportunity.

President Reagan, whose debilitating, deliberate oversimplification of our federal government, "Government is the problem," or the closely related and ever popular "The nine most terrifying words of the federal government are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help,'" have really come home to roost during Dubya's administration run amok.

In the last 25-30 years, just about every industry that has been deregulated has done two things: it has enriched the companies via Wall St. (and of course their government-sponsored backers), and it has screwed the consumer. A few examples:

1. The Airline Industry (Actually, President Carter deregulated them, I know, and that has proven disastrous on a number of fronts, so Repubes get a pass here. But, I don't mind bringing up in the spirit of partisanship that Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, and this idiotic and drastic decision's effects are still felt today. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that one of Washington, D.C.'s airports is named after him? But, I digress.)

2. Cable TV - Quickly now, this is not a trick question - has your cable bill gone down or up in the past 15 years? If you are one of the few who have realized a decrease for the same services, then run, don't walk, to your local gas station or convenience store and buy a lottery ticket.

3. The Power Industry - I've got one word - Enron. Anyone remember the faux California Energy Crisis? (I never tire of reminding people that Kenneth Lay's ties to Bush were indeed very close - he donated $500k to Bush's first coronation inaugural ball. As for Big Coal and Big Oil, forget it - their respective claws are dug so deep into our political system, and in these two cases, the Republican Party, the full extent may never be known.

4. The Telecommunications Industry - fewer and fewer telecomms now own more and more. I'm yet to read an adequate explanation as to why this is good for anyone, except for rich corporate investors. Hey, look at the bright side, though - pretty soon there will be one cell phone company left, and one cable news channel, Fox News.

I remember in years' past, when the government used to break up monopolies, while actually giving a damn about the American consumer (what a concept!). The break-up of the Bell System (finally took place under Reagan, but the initial lawsuits began in the 1970s) and the government's case vs. Microsoft for its monopolistic practices are the two most notorious examples of how these high-profile cases in the end benefited consumers.

And that brings us back to the mortgage industry. I wonder when this crisis finally hits bottom (which, evidence says, has not happened yet) if the true story will every come out. I firmly believe that predatory business practices and piss-poor government regulation are a pretty big part of the problem, exacerbated by the "hands off" approach by the Bush administration, as its wont to do in just about any federal regulatory situation, except when it can line the pockets of its donors.

Government regulation and intervention are both not always the best course of action, but they can often protect the consumer.

Ken may be Layed to rest, but some propaganda won't die

I learned a long time ago to simply ignore (or try my best to) most of the idiotic Internet rumors that show up in my Inbox from time to time, because a vast majority of them contains lies, half truths and outright bullshit. However, I got one a few weeks back from someone I respect and admire - a Republican in my family - about Enron. With the passing of former CEO Ken Lay, I figured it was apropos enough to write about.

The e-mail forward was a ham-handed attempt to deflect attention away from the fact that Lay was a Bush chum and HUGE political benefactor before the fall of Enron, after which Bush all of a sudden bumped his head, developed amnesia, and couldn't remember if he even knew Lay.

To be clear, Enron (along with Lay and other Enron execs) contributed millions to both political parties, but it's pretty clear where most of the cash went. Let me spell it out for you: G-O-P.

A simple half hour of research revealed some pretty interesting findings about Enron's giving before the company collapsed.

In 2001, right up until the company collapsed in December of that year, Enron contributed nearly $173,000 to candidates and parties, almost 90 percent to Republicans. From the 1989-90 election cycle to November 2001, Enron made nearly $5.8 million in campaign contributions, 73 percent of which went to Republicans. Oops.

Then-candidate Bush raised nearly $114,000 in Political Action Committee and individual contributions from Enron in 1999-2000, making the company one of his biggest donors. Enron also donated $100,000 to the Bush/Cheney inaugural gala in January 2001, a contribution that was matched by then-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and his wife. The Lays contributed a total of almost $883,000 to candidates and parties between 1989 and November 2001, of which 90 percent went to Republicans.

Lay was a longtime friend of the Bushes and was one of the president's top contributors during the 2000 presidential election and Bush's two gubernatorial campaigns. Lay was listed by the Bush/Cheney campaign as a Pioneer who raised at least $100,000 for the 2000 election, reportedly was one of the president's closest advisors between Jan '01 and Enron's fall late that year.

Anyone other than me remember Lay meeting with VP Dick Cheney in the White House to discuss energy policy? When the press wanted to know what topics were discussed, it was private. In so many words, the public and press were told, "None of your business."

I also clearly remember in November 2001, the economic stimulus package that was rammed through Congress, which included a whole buffet of tax breaks for big business, including oil and gas interests.

Yes, the Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, but the GOP had a better PR effort, and the Dems didn't want to be portrayed as pussies, so they simply passed whatever was proposed. After all, in December of that year, VP Dick Cheney accused dissenters leading up to the vote on the Patriot Act of "siding with the terrorists," if they didn't vote for the bill. So, remember the political and social climate of the time. In so many words, it was pass something, do something, show people we are busy doing something to secure American and to keep people safe.

Anyway, big business, realizing the political climate and the public's eagerness to see Congress do something, unleashed an army of lobbyists on Washington to have some favors paid back. Take a look at these figures:

$1.4 billion for IBM; $833 million for General Motors; $2 billion for Ford Motor Co.; $671 million for General Electric; $572 million for Chevron/Texaco; $254 million for energy giant Enron. Oops again.

And I don't feel like it, but do the research on which party gets the lion's share of campaign contributions from the above corporations, and tell me how ya make out. I don't even need to look - you'd find Republicans awash in campaign cash. And those are favors that need to be repaid when these candidates (and president) reach office. ...


Bush and Lay at an economic conference in January 2001, shortly before Bush took office.

I've blogged about it before, but during the phony energy crisis in California, Enron completely and totally manipulated the energy market, creating a shortfall when there was none. Bush did not lift one fingernail to intervene, not wanting to help out Democratic Governor Gray Davis. If it weren't for Enron, and to a much lesser extent, Bush not helping out Californians by capping energy costs during the crisis, there would be no Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. But, who gave a shit about Californians getting screwed? It was Bush's chance to help his buddies (Enron), and fuck a Democratic governor. Bush succeeded on both counts.

To be clear, Enron did contribute to Democrats, too. That would be called covering your bases, which any smart corporation will do with the campaign finance laws as they exist now. That way, whoever gets elected, the company will be owed favors. But, Enron (along with Lay and other Enron executives) clearly wished for Republicans to win every damn race, since the GOP is so much friendlier to oil and gas interests.

Rest in hell, Mr. Lay. Even better, to the recycle bin those bullshit anti-Democrat e-mails go. It's easy to try to rewrite history when no one paid attention at the time during things like the Enron collapse, etc. But, I did and do pay attention.

Oh, and I didn't just invent the figures in this story. Many were pulled from these sources: The Orlando Weekly, Mother Jones Blog, opensecrets.org and the Federal Election Commission. And the research didn't take long.