John F. Harris, Jonathan Martin: POLITICO

RICHMOND, Va. — Eager to drain the 2009 elections of drama and import, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs claimed Tuesday night that President Barack Obama was “not watching returns.”

You can be sure that he is studying them closely now:
The off-year elections were, in two big races, an unmistakable rebuke of Democrats, reshuffling Obama’s political circumstances in ways likely to have severe near-term consequences for his policy agenda and larger governing strategy.

Independents took flight from Democrats. They suffered humiliating gubernatorial losses in traditionally Democratic New Jersey, where Obama lent his prestige in a pair of eleventh-hour campaign rallies Sunday, and in Virginia, which had been trending leftward and just last year was held up as an example of how Obama was redrawing the political map in his favor.

Tuesday night’s trends were emphatically not in Obama’s favor. Among those paying closest attention are dozens of Democrats who won formerly Republican congressional districts in 2006 and 2008 and are up for reelection in 2010. Many of these pickups that powered the Democrats’ recapture of Congress came in Southern and border states, or in the Ohio River Valley, where political conditions are similar to those in Virginia.

Obama now faces a much tougher challenge persuading these mostly moderate Democrats to put themselves further at risk by backing such liberal priorities as expanding government’s role in heath care or limiting greenhouse gases.

It was a consolation prize — cherished by national Democrats urgently looking for some good news — that Democrat Bill Owens won a special election for the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York. What’s more, there is an argument that these off-year elections may not have produced an ideological or partisan verdict so much as revealed a deeply aggrieved electorate — ready to rough up incumbents of all varieties.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who previously had been perceived as a highly popular independent, barely fended off a listless and badly outspent Democratic challenge from City Comptroller William Thompson Jr.

The results in the New York House race — in a remote, historically Republican bastion — came after a bitter intramural fight among Republicans in which Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and his backers effectively ran GOP establishment pick Dede Scozzafava out of the race.

“I think all incumbents need to be on full alert,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told POLITICO in a telephone interview.

The election campaigns were followed swiftly by post-game campaigns to shape perceptions of the results. The Democratic line, from the White House on down, is to plunge into nuance — making the case that the big 2009 contests were effectively local races waged by two weak candidates in incumbent Jon Corzine in New Jersey, beaten by Republican Chris Christie, and state Sen. Creigh Deeds in Virginia, who was clubbed like a harp seal in his 17-percentage-point loss to GOP nominee Bob McDonnell.

It is true enough that both Democratic candidates had severe limitations — Deeds was a notably unprepossessing candidate compared with the polished McDonnell, and Corzine was deeply unpopular and at the helm of a state suffering through difficult economic times. Neither race should be viewed as strictly a referendum on Obama. But if there is a danger in over-interpreting off-year elections, it is also a mistake to under-interpret.

Particularly in Virginia, the rout of three Democrats running for three separate statewide offices, as well as the loss of several legislative seats, sent an unambiguous message. The independent voters who helped Obama in 2008 become the first Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years to carry the Old Dominion have swung wildly in a different direction. The swing from Obama’s win last year to McDonnell’s Tuesday: 23 points.

Exit polls showed Republican McDonnell won 63 percent of independent voters. Likewise in Democratic-trending Northern Virginia, the Republican carried the three largest suburban counties of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William — all counties Obama won handily last year.

In New Jersey, likewise, Christie won 58 percent of independents.

“This is a shot across the bow to the moderates and Blue Dog Democrats as they decide votes on health care” and other issues, said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine — who as current Virginia governor had previously won plaudits for making his state more competitive for his party — saw his reputation scuffed. But he cautioned against drawing national trends, saying opinion polls show Obama still winning majority support among independents nationally.

“These two races each had their own spin,” Kaine told POLITICO.

Notably, one of Virginia’s most prominent Democrats, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder — the nation’s first elected African-American governor — sided more with Cantor.
“It’s a wake-up call for Democrats across the country,” said Wilder, who did not endorse Deeds.

He said independents are worried about what they see as careless spending by Obama and his Democratic allies in Washington, and he advised Obama to reorganize his White House to rely less on campaign operatives and focus more on governing.

Mississippi Gov. and Republican Governors Association Chairman Haley Barbour compared Tuesday’s results with 1993, when Republicans also won Virginia and New Jersey, saying the party’s success would spur more GOP candidates to run next year.

“It served as a springboard for the 1994 elections,” Barbour told POLITICO, alluding to the precursor to the GOP’s capture of the congressional majority. “We elected 73 Republican freshmen in the House of Representatives. More than half of them made the decision to run for Congress after the November 1993 election.”
Further, Barbour said, the wins Tuesday would boost the spirits of a party that has been deeply demoralized since not long after Bush’s 2004 reelection.

“It energizes and excites our volunteers, our organization people and our donors,” he said.

Christie ran in heavily Democratic New Jersey, faced an engaged and popular president, was badly outspent by the self-funding Corzine — who ran a barrage of negative ads, some suggesting the former prosecutor was too fat to lead — and also fended off a former Republican running as a third-party candidate who gave anti-Corzine voters an alternative to the GOP nominee.

Yet Christie still defeated Corzine by 4 percentage points — the largest victory by a New Jersey Republican in nearly a quarter-century.
Christie’s margin marked a 20-point swing from Obama’s performance.

The New Jersey race was especially painful for the White House, which, sensing a loss in Virginia, sought to prop up Corzine in the campaign’s final weeks.
The president came to the state for get-out-the-vote rallies on the Sunday before the election, where he called Corzine his “partner” in an effort to fire up the Democratic base.

“We will not lose this election if all of you are as committed as you were last year,” Obama told a heavily black crowd in Newark.

Obama also appeared in an ad for Corzine aimed at Hispanic voters and recorded robocalls for the governor.

But if Democrats were disappointed in New Jersey, Republicans were elated by Virginia. The landslide of McDonnell, a former state attorney general, appears to offer the GOP a model for victory in swing states. A graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University who made his name in the state Legislature as a social conservative, McDonnell downplayed social issues in the campaign and focused intently on winning back the Virginia suburbs that fueled the Democratic resurgence in recent years.

“He focused heavily on the issues that are on voter’s minds: jobs, transportation, taxes and spending,” said Barbour.

Democrats took solace in the Owens victory in New York’s North Country, where they picked up a GOP seat previously held by John McHugh, now the Army secretary. Republicans seemed to lock up the seat on Saturday when their struggling nominee, Scozzafava, dropped out, giving the Conservative Party nominee, Hoffman, a one-on-one race in a historically Republican district.

But Scozzafava endorsed Owens on Sunday, and some of her moderate supporters from her state Assembly district appear to have followed suit and delivered their votes to the Democrat. Van Hollen held up their success in New York as indicative of what could happen in the future when the conservative and moderate wings of the GOP clash.

“The Republican Party spent close to a million dollars to lose a seat they had held since the Civil War, and in the process launched a civil war of their own,” he said.

Former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, an outspoken moderate who is often frustrated by his party’s rightward tilt, said the message of the Christie and McDonnell wins — and the Hoffman loss — is that his party should own the center on economic issues. But he said the lesson for Democrats is even more urgent.

“Any Democrat from a border or Southern or even a rural district has got to take a deep breath and look for some ways to get some distance from from Obama,” Davis said.

Jonathan Martin reported from East Brunswick, N.J.

By Zane F Pollard, MD

I have been sitting quietly on the sidelines watching all of this national debate on healthcare. It is time for me to bring some clarity to the table by explaining many of the problems from the perspective of a doctor.

First off, the government has involved very few of us physicians in the healthcare debate. While the American Medical Association has come out in favor of the plan, it is vital to remember that the AMA only represents 17% of the American physician workforce.

I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group left in Atlanta , Georgia that accepts Medicaid. For example, in the past 6 months I have cared for three young children on Medicaid who had corneal ulcers. This is a potentially blinding situation because if the cornea perforates from the infection, almost surely blindness will occur. In all three cases the antibiotic needed for the eradication of the infection was not on the approved Medicaid list.

Each time I was told to fax Medicaid for the approval forms, which I did. Within 48 hours the form came back to me which was sent in immediately via fax, and I was told that I would have my answer in 10 days. Of course by then each child would have been blind in the eye.

Each time the request came back denied. All three times I personally provided the antibiotic for each patient which was not on the Medicaid approved list. Get the point — rationing of care.

Over the past 35 years I have cared for over 1000 children born with congenital cataracts. In older children and in adults the vision is rehabilitated with an intraocular lens. In newborns we use contact lenses which are very expensive. It takes Medicaid over one year to approve a contact lens post cataract surgery. By that time a successful anatomical operation is wasted as the child will be close to blind from a lack of focusing for so long a period of time.

Again, extreme rationing. Solution: I have a foundation here in Atlanta supported 100% by private funds which supplies all of these contact lenses for my Medicaid and illegal immigrants children for free. Again, waiting for the government would be disastrous.

Last week I had a lady bring her child to me. They are Americans but live in Sweden , as the father has a job with a big corporation. The child had the onset of double vision 3 months ago and has been unable to function normally because of this. They are people of means but are waiting 8 months to see the ophthalmologist in Sweden . Then if the child needed surgery they would be put on a 6 month waiting list. She called me and I saw her that day. It turned out that the child had accommodative esotropia (crossing of the eyes treated with glasses that correct for farsightedness) and responded to glasses within 4 days, so no surgery was needed. Again, rationing of care.

Last month I operated on a 70 year old lady with double vision present for 3 years. She responded quite nicely to her surgery and now is symptom free. I also operated on a 69 year old judge with vertical double vision. His surgery went very well and now he is happy as a lark. I have been told — but of course there is no healthcare bill that has been passed yet — that these 2 people because of their age would have been denied surgery and just told to wear a patch over one eye to alleviate the symptoms of double vision. Obviously cheaper than surgery.

I spent two year in the US Navy during the Viet Nam war and was well treated by the military. There was tremendous rationing of care and we were told specifically what things the military personnel and their dependents could have and which things they could not have. While I was in Viet Nam , my wife Nancy got sick and got essentially no care at the Naval Hospital in Oakland , California . She went home and went to her family’s private internist in Beverly Hills . While it was expensive, she received an immediate work up. Again rationing of care.

For those of you who are over 65, this bill in its present form might be lethal for you. People in England over 59 cannot receive stents for their coronary arteries. The government wants to mimic the British plan. For those of you younger, it will still mean restriction of the care that you and your children receive.

While 99% of physicians went into medicine because of the love of medicine and the challenge of helping our fellow man, economics are still important. My rent goes up 2% each year and the salaries of my employees go up 2% each year. Twenty years ago, ophthalmologists were paid $1800 for a cataract surgery and today $500. This is a 73% decrease in our fees. I do not know of many jobs in America that have seen this sort of lowering of fees.

But there is more to the story than just the lower fees. When I came to Atlanta , there was a well known ophthalmologist that charged $2500 for a cataract surgery as he felt the was the best. He had a terrific reputation and in fact I had my mother’s bilateral cataracts operated on by him with a wonderful result. She is now 94 and has 20/20 vision in both eyes. People would pay his $2500 fee.

However, then the government came in and said that any doctor that does Medicare work cannot accept more than the going rate ( now $500) or he or she would be severely fined. This put an end to his charging $2500. The government said it was illegal to accept more than the government-allowed rate. What I am driving at is that those of you well off will not be able to go to the head of the line under this new healthcare plan, just because you have money, as no physician will be willing to go against the law to treat you.

I am a pediatric ophthalmologist and trained for 10 years post-college to become a pediatric ophthalmologist (add two years of my service in the Navy and that comes to 12 years).A neurosurgeon spends 14 years post -college, and if he or she has to do the military that would be 16 years. I am not entitled to make what a neurosurgeon makes, but the new plan calls for all physicians to make the same amount of payment. I assure you that medical students will not go into neurosurgery and we will have a tremendous shortage of neurosurgeons. Already, the top neurosurgeon at my hospital who is in good health and only 52 years old has just quit because he can’t stand working with the government anymore. Forty-nine percent of children under the age of 16 in the state of Georgia are on Medicaid, so he felt he just could not stand working with the bureaucracy anymore.

We are being lied to about the uninsured. They are getting care. I operate at least 2 illegal immigrants each month who pay me nothing, and the children’s hospital at which I operate charges them nothing also.This is true not only on Atlanta, but of every community in America.

The bottom line is that I urge all of you to contact your congresswomen and congressmen and senators to defeat this bill. I promise you that you will not like rationing of your own health.

Furthermore, how can you trust a physician that works under these conditions knowing that he is controlled by the state. I certainly could not trust any doctor that would work under these draconian conditions.

One last thing: with this new healthcare plan there will be a tremendous shortage of physicians. It has been estimated that approximately 5% of the current physician work force will quit under this new system. Also it is estimated that another 5% shortage will occur because of the decreased number of men and women wanting to go into medicine. At the present time the US government has mandated gender equity in admissions to medical schools .That means that for the past 15 years that somewhere between 49 and 51% of each entering class are females. This is true of private schools also, because all private schools receive federal funding.

The average career of a woman in medicine now is only 8-10 years and the average work week for a female in medicine is only 3-4 days. I have now trained 35 fellows in pediatric ophthalmology. Hands down the best was a female that I trained 4 years ago — she was head and heels above all others I have trained. She now practices only 3 days a week.

Mr. Obama:

I have had it with you and your administration, sir. Your conduct on your recent trip overseas has convinced me that you are not an adequate representative of the United States of America collectively or of me personally. You are so obsessed with appeasing the Europeans and the Muslim world that you have abdicated the responsibilities of the President of the United States of America. You are responsible to the citizens of the United States. You are not responsible to the peoples of any other country on earth.

I personally resent that you go around the world apologizing for the United States telling Europeans that we are arrogant and do not care about their status in the world. Sir, what do you think the First World War and the Second World War were all about if not the consideration of the peoples of Europe? Are you brain dead? What do you think the Marshall Plan was all about? Do you not understand or know the history of the 20th century?

Where do you get off telling a Muslim country that the United States does not consider itself a Christian country? Have you not read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States?

This country was founded on Judah-Christian ethics and the principles governing this country, at least until you came along, come directly from this heritage. Do you not understand this? Your bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia is an affront to all Americans. Our President does not bow down to anyone, let alone the king of Saudi Arabia. You don’t show Great Britain, our best and one of our oldest allies, the respect they deserve yet you bow down to the king of Saudi Arabia.

How dare you, sir! How dare you!

You can’t find the time to visit the graves of our greatest generation because you don’t want to offend the Germans but make time to visit a mosque in Turkey. You offended our dead and every veteran when you give the Germans more respect than the people who saved the German people from themselves. What’s the matter with you? I am convinced that you and the members of your administration have the historical and intellectual depth of a mud puddle and should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you. You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr.. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it.

What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members – on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer. You haven’t said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn’t!

Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that’s $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million – not a bad take. Who authorized that and why haven’t you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now.

I resent that you take me and my fellow citizens as brain-dead and not caring about what you idiots do. We are watching what you are doing and we are getting increasingly fed up with all of you. I also want you to know that I personally find just about everything you do and say to be offensive to every one of my sensibilities. I promise you that I will work tirelessly to see that you do not get a chance to spend two terms destroying my beautiful country.

It is unknown who actually authored this letter. It has been attributed to a fourth grade teacher in Missouri, however, she claims to have not written it. It is published here because its premise is appreciated…

By Dan Casey

Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times’ metro columnist.

dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-4423

Sooner or later I will leave this job at The Roanoke Times.

And lately, I’ve been thinking about the future after a long and fun newspaper career. I will go into business for myself. It will be a consumer lending (ahem) store. I’ll call it “Casey’s Rip-off Loans.” The motto will be “The Loan Shark You Will Love.” And our advertising slogan will be, “We cheat you honestly, unlike those other chiselers.”

Of course, none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for the Virginia General Assembly and former Gov. (and now U.S. senator) Mark Warner, so let’s thank them right now.

Once upon a time, Virginia was incredibly stingy about the interest a small lender in Virginia could charge a mark (sorry, I meant ”customer” ). It was something like 36 percent a year.

Then in 2002, the dopes (sorry, I meant ”brilliant lawmakers”) in the General Assembly fell hook, line and sinker for a con game rigged by loan sharks (sorry, I meant ”the fringes of the consumer lending industry”).

To make a long story short, they raised the cap on small, short-term “payday” loans to up to 782 percent per year.

In other words, they legalized loan sharking in Virginia.

It took lawmakers six years to do anything substantial about this.

In the meantime, sharp operators opened up in storefronts and plunked down office trailers all over the place, just like they had done in other states.

Their numbers swelled from about 200 outlets in Virginia, mostly around military bases, to more than 800, according to Jay Speer, director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center. Most of the new ones were located in poorer urban areas.

They ran ads on TV and the radio for easy-to-get and convenient “payday” loans. Bad-credit borrowers were welcome.

These cost only $15 per $100 borrowed — per week, if you got paid weekly, or per every two weeks, if you got paid with that frequency, or per month, if you were making payments from your Social Security checks.

While mafia loan sharks blushed at such profits, these legal outfits raked in the cash and passed some of that around in the form of campaign contributions.

But over the years, the horror stories of poor people trapped in debt cycles became so widespread that a majority of our brilliant lawmakers felt too embarrassed not to do something. So in 2008, and again this year, the General Assembly enacted some payday lending reforms that drove many of these outfits out of business.

But there is always a catch, you know? And that is where Casey’s Rip-off Loans fits in.

You see, car title loans are still legal in Virginia. And so are open-ended consumer loans. And get this: There is no interest rate cap on either. Even better, there is virtually no state regulation.

Whee!

Not only that, but there is this nifty electronic process called “Automatic Clearing House” used by these goons (sorry, I meant ”loan store operators”) . It is advance permission to electronically tap borrowers’ bank accounts, just as a debit card works.

So Casey’s Rip-off Loans won’t even have the expense of muscle (sorry, I meant ”collectors’ ‘) to assure repayment.

We will join the proud Predatory Lending Association (you can find them online). They will help squelch other reforms now under discussion.

As you can see, our future is bright. And yes, I am accepting investors.

Ain’t the free market a grand thing?

. “The consumer-credit industry can dream up any sneaky product it wants and no one polices it for harm.”

Commentary by Jane Bryant Quinn

June 3 (Bloomberg) — Pity the neighborhood loan shark.

The credit-card companies have stolen his customers by taking a softer approach to charging outrageous interest rates. During the subprime lending boom, mortgage banks shouldered into shark territory, too.

Loan sharks are called mobsters. Thieving legitimate lenders are called capitalists — free to impose any terms short of kneecapping on their troubled borrowers. Washington treated capitalist sharks as role models and beloved campaign contributors — that is, until the economy collapsed and debtors (aka voters) emitted a collective scream.

Now, maybe, borrowers might catch a break. There is serious talk in Congress and the White House about creating a Financial Products Safety Commission, charged with protecting consumers and the country from the depredations of irresponsible lending.

Creators of financial products have been running ahead of the hangman for many years. Every other market has had to accept consumer-safety rules, mandated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission or some other government body. Laws regulate the ingredients that go into cosmetics, the buckles on children’s car seats, the freshness of meat shipped to supermarkets and the safety of prescription drugs. You can’t buy firecrackers in many states. If car tires explode, they can be recalled.

Exploding Mortgages

Yet no law required the recall of the exploding mortgages that drove tens of thousands of borrowers into foreclosure and bankruptcy. No one recalled the dangerous subprime credit cards that arrived in the mail already loaded with high-rate debt from application fees. The consumer-credit industry can dream up any sneaky product it wants and no one polices it for harm. As it turned out, the harm went viral.

“This financial crisis started one mortgage at a time, one household at a time, and it destabilized the world economy,” says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University law professor. She is chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which aims to bring accountability to the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Warren proposed a Financial Product Safety Commission two years ago in an influential article written for “Democracy: A Journal of Ideas,” a progressive publication. Recently, her idea was endorsed by the White House and introduced as legislation in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Industry Opposition

The powerful financial industry will oppose it at every turn, but Warren isn’t discouraged. “They said we’d never get food labeling because of the influence of the food lobby,” she says. “But now you can walk into any supermarket and see how much sugar is in each type of cereal.”

Today, almost every borrower has an enraging credit-card or mortgage story — if not their own, then a story from a child or friend. The political moment for ending legalized loan sharking may finally have arrived.

As Warren sees it, a safety commission could have jurisdiction over all consumer-credit products: mortgages, credit cards, payday loans, installment loans, car loans, consumer-credit reports and also consumer privacy.

The commissioners would have two principal jobs. One is true disclosure. They would require simple, standardized price and interest-rate disclosures so you could compare the cost of one credit product with another. If a pricing mechanism was too complex to explain simply, and trapped consumers into paying more than they expected, it would be banned.

Fine-Print Billing

A good example of complexity is double-cycle billing on credit cards. Under this system, you were charged interest on debt that you had already paid off in the previous month. You didn’t owe the money anymore but were charged interest anyway. Double-cycle billing was disclosed in the fine print but few consumers understood it. Once they did, public anger — plus, finally, Congressional action — put a stop to it.

The commission would also have the right to ban practices considered unsafe. One example: the mortgage prepayment penalties that prevented homeowners from getting out of subprime loans when interest rates went shooting up. Prepayment penalties are a way of charging more for loans than borrowers expect. If lenders need those fees to make the loan profitable, they should charge them upfront, where consumers can evaluate them.

The federal government could have stopped at least some of these abusive practices. Under the 1994 Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act, the Federal Reserve had the power to end unconscionable mortgage lending, including loans made without regard to whether borrowers could repay. Under the Truth in Lending Act, the Fed also has the authority to address credit- card abuse. It didn’t bother until the roof came crashing down.

Consumer’s Friend

The Fed will fight to hang on to its authority over mortgages and credit cards. But it has forgone any right to be trusted as the consumer’s friend. So have the banking agencies, which could have helped with credit cards, and the toothless Federal Trade Commission.

Last month, President Barack Obama signed the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which will end some (not all) of the abuses in the credit-card business. But legislative action always comes long after the damage has been done. And it can’t anticipate what sharkish product the financial industry will dream up next.

That’s another reason for setting up an independent Financial Product Safety Commission. It would be on the job all the time, requiring cost disclosure and monitoring risks.

What passes today for consumer protection not only failed consumers, it failed the country. Time for a new approach.

(Jane Bryant Quinn, a leading personal finance writer and author of “Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. She is a director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jane Bryant Quinn in New York at jbquinn@bloomberg. net

Oh, that’s right, he’s Socialist/Fascist President Obama’s right hand man and Treasury Secretary. What’s next, socialized medicine, nationalization of banks and business, government control of oil and energy, or maybe they’ll be done with business for a while and turn their attention to ways of isolating you as a threat if you are against abortion or a member of a conservative group.

Come to think of it, they’re already working on all of the above….

My goodness; how far we have fallen.

In case you missed it, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress Tuesday to give the White House unprecedented powers to seize large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, leaping beyond its present authority to seize only banks.

Geithner argued for such authority during the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing on the handling of bonuses paid to executives at American International Group.

“As we have seen with AIG, distress at large, interconnected, non-depository financial institutions can pose systematic risks just as distress at banks can. The administration proposes legislation to give the U.S. government the same basic set of tools for addressing financial distress at non-banks as it has in the bank context,” Geithner told the committee.

Specifically, the Treasury secretary asked for powers similar to those of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which has authority to seize control of banks, take over their bad assets and sell good ones to competitors.

“AIG highlights broad failures of our financial system,” Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee. “We must ensure that our country never faces this situation again.”

Once again, it’s the “The Sky is Falling” defense that has always been executed very well by leftist fascists that have but one goal, to nationalize America.
I know it’s not popular with an administration hell-bent on government take-over of, well, everything, but perhaps the solution is not to spend trillions of dollars on bail-out’s of private enterprise while ignoring the credit problem that created this fiasco in the first place.

Then again, it was the Democrats that screamed from the mountain tops to open the sub-prime market in the first place. I guess if I were them I would want to deflect as much attention as I possibly could.

Geithner has no Constitutional argument for his request, no free market rationalization that makes any sense, and no precedent that would explain his agenda. He only has his ideology and deep desires to champion the greatest change in American history; from democratic free market principles the country was built on, to Mussilini fascist nationalization of all that he surveys. That’s the agenda of this administration.

That’s the plan Obama and his cronies have been cultivating for decades. It’s SOCIALIST America making way for FASCIST America led by a community activist who’s never held a job-turned President.

Stephen Winslow is the executive editor of Conservative Viewpoints.

We voted for change because the sky was falling and people were sick of seeing the same face at the head of the table. Change came in the form of screaming political leaders from the Democratic Party who lamented about being left off the dinner list for far to long.

Democrats blamed Republicans. Republicans glanced at cameras with sheepish stares claiming how misguided change was if it came in the form of big government. The big government party represented by Andrew Jackson’s jackass promised that they weren’t interested in spending us out of trouble, but a trillion dollars later no one can believe them.

Now what? We spent a lot of energy and a lot of resources looking for change so now that the change has come in the form of a debt that my grandchildren will have to pay, who do I blame?

Taxpayers for Common Sense has released its latest list breaking down the top 20 Earmarking Senators in the latest $410 Billion Spending Bill set to come up for a vote by the end of the day.

Who is the biggest earmarker of them all? According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., takes the cake, with 60 earmarks worth $123 million in the latest spending bill before the Senate.

He’s hardly alone. The budget watchdog group has released its latest list breaking down the earmarks, lawmaker-by-lawmaker, in this spendalicious bill. The bill would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, with an 8.5 percent increase over last year and billions of dollars in pet projects.

Here’s a breakdown of the top 20 earmarking senators and the value of their solo earmarks:

1) Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. — $122,804,900

2) Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. — $114,484,250

3) Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo. — $85,691,491

4) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. — $76,899,425

5) Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. — $75,908,475

6) Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — $74,000,750

7) Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa — $66,860,000

 Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. — $53,133,500

9) Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — $51,186,000

10) Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii — $46,380,205

11) Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. — $39,228,250

12) Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. — $36,547,100

13) Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. — $36,161,125

14) Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. — $35,577,250

15) Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. — $27,169,750

16) Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. — $26,628,613

17) Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. — $25,320,000

18) Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. — $23,832,000

19) Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — $21,952,250

20) Former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. — $19,588,625

Click here to read the full report from Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Stephen Winslow is the executive editor of Conservative Viewpoints.

The show of stupidity that is Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann continued Tuesday night. As respected Republican Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, was about to begin the Republican response to the President’s address an obnoxious “oh God” was heard spewing out of the mouth of one of the leaders of the characterless network that is MSNBC.

Click here to see the u-tube video.

The fact that Olbermann, a buffoon and ESPN reject, can continue to be on the air simply proves that MSNBC long ago forfeited anything resembling journalistic integrity. Matthews, on the other hand, is a tremendous disappointment.

Following President Obama’s first address to Congress on Tuesday night, one of the two embarrassing hosts or the producer was caught muttering “Oh God” on the air as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal walked toward the camera to deliver the GOP response. The remark was heard after “Countdown” host Olbermann interrupted the network’s political panel to introduce the Republican governor.

“Chris [Matthews], stand by, Rachel [Maddow], stand by, we’re getting that cue from Baton Rouge where Governor Jindal of Louisiana is set to deliver the Republican response to President Obama. It is entitled ‘Americans Can Do Anything.’ Here’s Governor Jindal,” Olbermann said. As the picture showed Jindal walking toward the camera, a hushed voice — believed to be Olbermann’s or Matthews’ — said, “Oh God” as others were heard laughing in the background.

Whether is was Olbermann or not has not been divuldged but it’s safe to say that he loves the shock value of his mouthy comments. He calls it entertainment and he is diluted enough to consider himself a rebel that ‘speaks his mind.’ The reality is he interjects uneducated opinions into every conversation and has the audacity to call it journalism or reporting.

It’s perfectly fine that he is a socialist radical liberal. There’s nothing wrong with any individual taking a position or articulating a philosophy no matter how reckless it is. It becomes unacceptable to do so when you are supposed to be charged with providing information to educate a viewership. Rather than letting everyone know that he bases his obnoxious on radical leftist positions, he chooses to shock people in a manipulative manner. Sadly, he can’t help himself. It is who he is.

MSNBC, on the other hand, chooses to support a level of irresponsible reporting that is unprecedented in American media. It is another example of how bankrupt of integrity and character MSNBC is.

Stephen Winslow is the executive editor of Conservative Viewpoints.

The News & Advance
Published: February 12, 2009

A House of Delegates committee has endorsed car title loans with exorbitant interest rates that can exceed 300 percent annually.

The House Commerce and Labor Committee effectively killed legislation last week that would have put a cap of 36 percent on the loans that are usually taken out by desperate families who are least able to pay the high interest rates. The committee, which tabled the measure by voice vote (thereby escaping a recorded vote for or against), seemed to say that it is perfectly acceptable in Virginia for lenders who have been characterized as loan sharks to impose such interest rates.

The committee includes Dels. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell County, and Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge.

Del. Joe Morrissey, D-Henrico, who introduced the legislation, likened the lenders to loan sharks, saying they prey upon those who can’t get traditional credit.

This latest form of predatory lending (the other is payday loans) works like this: A borrower who owns his or her vehicle can get a loan of up to 50 percent of its value by turning over the title and a duplicate of the keys in case the company wants to repossess it.

Now for the ugly details. The borrower is charged a membership fee of about $75 and $6 to record a lien on the vehicle. Nothing more is charged if the loan is repaid within 25 days. If not, the borrower pays about 5 percent of the principal and at least 25 percent interest each month.

If a borrower took out a $500 loan, for example, and took six months to pay it off, the borrower would pay more than $1,400. If the vehicle is repossessed, the borrower can either pay the amount that’s owed — plus fees — or the lender sells the vehicle.

Jay Speer, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, told the committee that the legal aid attorneys working with his center have been deluged with car title cases over the past few years.

He told the story of one man who took out a loan for $1,500, missed some payments and had his car repossessed. The man has paid $3,700 and got his car back, but he still owes $1,800.

Scott Johnson, who represents Community Loans of America, one of the two largest car title lenders in Virginia, said only about 6.2 percent of the loans end up with the vehicle being sold. But since the industry is not regulated, there are no industrywide figures on the number of loans or repossessions.

Morrissey pointed out that state Department of Motor Vehicle records show that last year the lending companies received at least 6,500 repossession titles, which are required to sell a repossessed vehicle.

Speer said the declining economy will only exacerbate the problems raised with car title loans. Referring to the committee’s vote, he said, “By not dealing with it, they are in fact endorsing it,” he said. “These places are set up on the street corner and people think that the government has looked at this and said it’s OK, so that gives them a level of comfort and it gets more people into the loans.”

Maybe the Senate will be less supportive of the usurious car title loans. A similar bill is expected to come up for a vote this week. For the sake of the victims of this predatory lending practice, let’s hope the measure advances through the full Senate.

If so, will the House Committee and Labor Committee have a change of heart? We’ll see.

Hasn’t Obama and the Democrats on Capital Hill heard of the KISS philosophy?

Obama and his Democratic Party had a simple task to complete. Unfortunately, their obsession with excessive government spending and their need to prove to the world how right they are may lead to a fiscal challenge of unprecedented difficulty.

Keep It Simple Stupid! That’s the KISS philosophy and there may have never been a better time to follow it than right now. In this case, keeping it simple means you don’t let a doctor treat you for a broken leg when all you have is the flu.

Our economy is broken at the moment. The task at hand is to find out what is at the root of the problem. For some time now both parties, and plenty of fiscal experts have pointed out, gone over, and thoroughly vetted the sub-prime lending market and the negative effects it has had on our economy; specifically the closure of the credit markets to mainstream America and small businesses.

So why would Obama and his minions brush aside the mortgage challenge in favor of passing a spending bill that does nothing to solidify the credit market, does even less to save foreclosed homes, and spends less than 5% on the infrastructure that he stated was the lynchpin of his plan for economic success?

Why would Obama, Barney Franks, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their ilk, take such an arrogant position? That is to say, why wouldn’t they complete what they started? Why wouldn’t they spend 400 billion dollars on buying bad mortgages, refinancing them at a 4% fixed rate to the struggling home owner, while freezing federal income taxes on all Americans and small businesses for twelve months? It would cost less than they’re spending now and it would have immediate impact.

Instead, they are going to pass a bill that does nothing but secure reckless spending on pet projects. They are going to place American families at risk with an additional 1 trillion dollars of debt and not touch the fundamental problem that hinders our economy. Are they that incompetent and arrogant, or is it simply one more step toward total nationalization of business, health and welfare, and energy?

This may not be the last of the government bailouts either. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodyseconomy.com, said he thinks the White House will need to ask for another $350 billion down the road for the bank bailout.

That potential has Tennessee’s Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander in a furor over the decision to go for the economic recovery program while still dealing with the financial bailout. He told FOX News that if the administration knew it was going to ask for more for housing and banks, it should start there rather than seeking $800 billion for an array of spending programs that he says won’t solve the credit crisis.

Republicans “wanted lower mortgage interest rate for most credit-worthy Americans and tax credit for home buyers. We had other ideas. (Democrats) have ideas. Let’s do that first,” Alexander said. “We know we’re going to have to spend several hundred billion dollars on the bank problems, on the troubled assets. Then we might have had less appetite, just to waste money on passing spending projects that really have nothing to do with stimulus.”

Obama delivered a partisan speech full of combative rhetoric and condescending jabs directed toward Republicans. During the speech he said people can’t come to the table with the same old solutions of the past and expect our economy to turn around.

How ironic it is that he is selling America out with the same stale arguments Democrats have been making since they gave up there conservative roots for a far left, socialist, liberal agenda that believes you should pay the state. Obama has abandoned his promises to the American people of a new Washington. Instead, he is embracing the same old notion that all economic problems are solved with higher taxes and more government spending no matter how contrary to free market principles that is; no matter how abrasive that will be to the middle class budgets of the very households he has the audacity to suggest he wants to help.

Stephen Winslow is the executive editor of Conservative Viewpoints.