AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Foxfyre wrote:

It isn't as blatant and in your face as them walking in and taking your furniture. But as soon as Senator Blow Hard or Congresswoman Gimme figure out that they can take your money and buy your vote or others votes with it, they are faced with opportunity that is way too tempting to resist. And hell, they can even make themselves look noble and fool themselves into feeling righteous by putting some high sounding title on the initiative.

Where's the confiscation?

Quote:

Why not? Because it's unconstitutional or just because it's bad policy?

We're in a gray area here because of common understanding and practice over a long period of time in which there was no serious challenge from the people or the courts. Based on the language and intent of the Constitution as defined by the Founders, I believe they saw no Constitutional authority to confiscate and expend the Taxpayers' money in a way that benefitted any individual or targeted group. The language is clear that they saw such as an immoral and corrupting influence on government and what would put our hard fought freedoms and liberties at risk.

I, Ican, and others would like to back us up as much as possible and regain appreciation for liberty and freedom from an oppressive government. I, and I think he, want to restore a reasonable concept of what is and is not appropriate for the federal government to do. I, and I think he, believe that if we do not do that, we will continue to spiral downward into economic mediocrity and will never again regain those qualities that made the USA the grand and successful experiment in freedom that it has been and all the positive benefits for us and the world that went along with that.

Because it is corrupting and bad for the economy and expensive for the people for the government to be in competition with private industry and commerce, and it is too tempting to use such powers to favor one over another.

Foxfyre wrote:

Again you'll have to be more specific. Under modern definitions of 'liberal', the effort is to favor the 'weak' and 'less advantaged' and thus 'level the playing field'. So the bar is lowered or the rules and regulations designed to give advantage to some groups at the expense of others. That is not the conservative way.

That's a strawman definition of "liberal." In this context, "liberal" would mean favoring government regulation over a more laissez-faire approach. But then even under your strawman definition, you're still being "liberal" when you advocate regulations that seek to level the playing field between investors and depositors on the one hand and bankers on the other. I'm sure genuine conservatives would be appalled at your heresy.

Foxfyre wrote:

If not 'forced, they were absolutely threated and coerced. Here is just one capsulized summary of what happened. I have read other accounts in Forbes, Money Magazine (I think), et al that were far more specific about the kinds of pressure that was applied:

Well, Pat Buchanan just repeats the same vague allegations that you make. I don't see how that supports your position, it merely mimics it.

Obama seeks to mandate more risky, low-income loans by banks, in new financial rules
June 17, 2009
Hans Bader

The President has just announced proposals for a major overhaul of the financial system. The proposals would force banks to make even MORE risky loans to low-income people. Even liberal newspapers like the Village Voice have admitted that “affordable housing” mandates are a key reason for the housing crisis and the massive number of defaulting borrowers. But Obama will not accept this reality. Instead, he wants to create a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” to rigorously enforce regulations pressuring banks to make loans to low-income borrowers, such as the Community Reinvestment Act. (Obama once represented ACORN, which pressures banks to make risky loans).

In explaining why there is supposedly a need for this new agency, when other agencies already enforce the Community Reinvestment Act and fair-lending laws, his regulatory blueprint complains that “State and federal bank supervisory agencies’ primary mission is to ensure that financial institutions act prudently, a mission that, in appearance if not always in practice, often conflicts with their consumer protection responsibilities.” (Pg. 54).

In other words, the power to force banks to make low-income loans should be given to an agency that has no duty to ensure prudent lending or to take into account the effects of such requirements on banks’ stability or viability.

The President also wants to give financial regulators the power to seize key companies to prevent real or imagined “systemic risks” to the financial system. These are the same federal regulators who used the AIG bailout to give billions in unnecessary payments to Goldman Sachs, which neither needed nor expected that much money, and forced Freddie Mac to run up $30 billion in losses to bail out deadbeat mortgage borrowers.
http://www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC-SCOTUS-Examiner~y2009m6d17-Obama-seeks-to-mandate-more-risky-lowincome-loans-by-banks

Should I try to cure my friend's paranoid delusions inflicted upon her by the rightwing misinformation machine or just start deleting her emails?

Even liberal newspapers like the Village Voice have admitted that “affordable housing” mandates are a key reason for the housing crisis and the massive number of defaulting borrowers.

Hard to take you seriously when you obviously don't understand the context in which the CRA was referenced.

And I'll answer your question when you answer mine.

It is a true sentence and the person stating it has the credentials to state it with some authority. You, however, seem to have no credentials in government, economics, or fiscal policy whatsoever and are therefore expressing your own opinions. You can either discredit my source with a valid source of equal credentials, or you can't.

Study Blames Lenders, Not Borrowers for Mortgage Mess
Homeowners more likely to default with subprime loans

October 15, 2008

• More ...
Risky mortgage products, not risky borrowers, are the root cause of the mortgage default crisis, according to findings from a new study of default rates among low-income and minority home buyers conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capital.

The results of the study show that home loan borrowers with similar risk characteristics defaulted at much higher rates when they borrowed subprime mortgages than when they received loans made primarily for Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) purposes.

---

The study, "Risky Mortgages or Risky Borrowers: Disaggregating Effects Using Propensity Score Models," compared the default rates of home mortgage borrowers with similar credit characteristics who received different loan products.

One group received loans through an affordable home mortgage program, called the Community Advantage Program (CAP), designed to expand homeownership among lower-income and minority homebuyers. The other group received subprime mortgage loans.

Researchers compared the default rate (90-day delinquency) within two years of origination. Borrowers with comparable characteristics who had subprime loans were three to five times as likely to go into default as those with CAP loans, the study found.

"By isolating different features of the loan products, we identified major causes of higher default rates," said lead author Lei Ding, a senior research associate at the center. The features most strongly associated with higher subprime defaults were adjustable interest rate, prepayment penalty and broker origination.

"The more you layer these features, the higher the likelihood of default," says Ding. By contrast, he says, CAP loans typically are fixed-rate, 30-year-amortizing loans without prepayment penalties, and are originated by banks using significant underwriting regarding the borrower's ability to repay.

Read more: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/subprime_defaults.html#ixzz0PUnPkFU8

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income neighborhoods where they take deposits. Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA. University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr testified back in February before the House Committee on Financial Services that 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. As former Fed Governor Ned Gramlich said in an August, 2007, speech shortly before he passed away: “In the subprime market where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision. It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat.”

Not surprisingly given the higher degree of supervision, loans made under the CRA program were made in a more responsible way than other subprime loans. CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley (PDF file here).

I think the lady used the name Barack Obama because it was funny. It would have been funny had she used the name George Bush as well.

And the fact that you would judge a person's character based on something like that says a whole lot about your character and nothing about mine.

I still don't understand why you think that an unconstitutional transfer of wealth must be in some tangible form, whether in cash or some other thing, like gold or oil or frozen turkeys. Wealth can be transferred in any number of ways. Shouldn't your test be whether the person "paying" is worse off than the person "receiving," regardless of whether any cash or other tangible benefit changed hands?

What you posted didn't begin to address the point Bader was making, but I'm not going to try to explain that to you since you haven't been able to understand that in all these months and your track record suggests you wouldn't admit it if you actually did get a clue. If you should decide to address his point, then we can discuss it, otherwise I will not get into one of these pointless circular arguments with you.

The President has just announced proposals for a major overhaul of the financial system. The proposals would force banks to make even MORE risky loans to low-income people. Even liberal newspapers like the Village Voice have admitted that “affordable housing” mandates are a key reason for the housing crisis and the massive number of defaulting borrowers. But Obama will not accept this reality.

If you don't know why that skit was funny no matter what name the lady used, I lack the skill to explain it to you. I am not the least bit embarrassed to admit I thought it was funny and that I would have thought it funny no matter what name she had used.

The “affordable housing” mandates are a key reason for the housing crisis and the massive number of defaulting borrowers.

But nonetheless Obama is proceeding with these mandates. Affordable housing mandates by Fannie & Freddie during Bush's last term, are a major initiator of the current recession.

Obama, while allegedly trying to end the current recession, is hugely expanding "affordable housing" mandates. Apparently, Obama believes that repeating what does not work and expecting a different result, is sane.

Money that is legally and ethically earned or acquired is private property. Mandatory taxes--that which we are required to pay and for which there are material consequences if we do not pay--is a confiscation of our property. It is evenmoreso confiscation when our employer is required to withhold it and we never have use of it.

We're in a gray area here because of common understanding and practice over a long period of time in which there was no serious challenge from the people or the courts. Based on the language and intent of the Constitution as defined by the Founders, I believe they saw no Constitutional authority to confiscate and expend the Taxpayers' money in a way that benefitted any individual or targeted group. The language is clear that they saw such as an immoral and corrupting influence on government and what would put our hard fought freedoms and liberties at risk.

Conservatives do not object to government regulation necessary to promote the general welfare--that regulation that is necessary to keep us from doing violence to each other.

As the federal government, in the interest of the general welfare, is given the sole ability to print and distribute currency, it is absolutely necessary to regulate banks that receive the peoples' money or there can be no trust in the banks and the system can't work. There is nothing laissez-faire about that.

I have no idea what Pat Buchanan has said about it.

Foxfyre wrote:

Money that is legally and ethically earned or acquired is private property. Mandatory taxes--that which we are required to pay and for which there are material consequences if we do not pay--is a confiscation of our property. It is evenmoreso confiscation when our employer is required to withhold it and we never have use of it.

Your taxes aren't seized by the government. As a citizen, you've implicitly agreed to pay them. How can it be a "confiscation" if you've agreed to it?

joefromchicago wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

Money that is legally and ethically earned or acquired is private property. Mandatory taxes--that which we are required to pay and for which there are material consequences if we do not pay--is a confiscation of our property. It is evenmoreso confiscation when our employer is required to withhold it and we never have use of it.

Your taxes aren't seized by the government. As a citizen, you've implicitly agreed to pay them. How can it be a "confiscation" if you've agreed to it?

Even I have a problem with this part Joe.

There is no option to not pay taxes unless you simply choose to not earn any income.

What does someone born in America have to do to not pay American taxes? I'm not able to 'opt-out' of paying taxes, even if I were to forego any and all benefits that being a citizen would give me.