Category Archives: Fascism

Freddie & Fannie Come Calling … Ad Infinitum

Affirmative Action, America, Bush, China, Debt, Economy, Fascism, Sarah Palin, Socialism

“Spare some change, please? Forget that. Hand over another $8.4 billion to “Fannie Mae and sister company Freddie Mac.” “The Obama administration,” reports “My Way,” had “pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for Freddie and Fannie, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion.”

This via Jeff Tucker, in case you forgot who and what contributed to this affirmative-action driven downturn, here’s a New York Times’ story from 1999:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans….
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

Back in 2008, some analysts had quipped that only North Korea and Cuba were more socialist than the US in the wake of the Fannie and Freddie bailouts. This space has regularly excoriated Republican hacks for referring deceptively to our cherished “American freedoms.” (Also see BAB’s “Fascism Rising” series of posts.)

As Jim Rogers pointed out, you have a free market in housing in China. If you watch this clip, be reminded not only of Bush socialism, but of the socialism of Palin, “Bush In A Bra.” Rather than shutting F&F down, a solution to which Repbulicans are now paying lip service, Palin wanted to fine tune the mortgage miasma; make it smaller and smarter.

I would add that, as a prelude to the discussion of our economic woes, it has become fashionable for commentators to condemn socialism for the rich; this makes one look benevolent. As execrable as corporatism is, it is no reason to ignore the massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to the poor in the context of F & F, a commitment that has contributed immeasurably to the economic meltdown.

Update II: You Can Check-Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave!’

Economy, Europe, Fascism, Government, libertarianism, Natural Law, Private Property, Taxation

Swiss bankers can no longer perform a function which in Switzerland is legal and commendable: helping private property owners shield their assets against legalized theft. The Swiss are not allowed to uphold victimless laws that contradict their ultimate sovereign: Uncle Sam.

YourMoneyInfo.com: “The Swiss laws do not consider tax evasion as a criminal offense. [They recognize that a man’s property is his and his alone?! Is this possible?!] The Swiss banks do not release the identity of the account unless the foreign government proves that the account holder has committed a crime. [Or unless pressured by big bully US, the protector of freedom the world over.]

The US has managed to dispense with the venerated traditions in the financial sector of an ostensibly sovereign state. I repeat myself, but next time you hear Messrs Hannity, Steyn and others of their ilk wax about the US being the last bastion of freedom, fire off a corrective email. Point out that our government lawyers have been prosecuting UBS AG, a Zurich and Basel-based financial establishment, and its American clients, for tax evasion. (You’ll probably be told that we should have declared war, or bombed Basel…)

When they are not bailing out failed financial institutions, our statists are bankrupting viable ones.

Recommended reading: “The War on Tax Havens”

And “Hotel California“:

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘Relax,’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’

Update I: A “Robin Hood tax” they are calling it, and, no doubt, BHO will be on board: Under the guise of “sparing the taxpayers another massive public bailout of the financial sector,” the International Monetary Fund has “called for a financial stability contribution (FSC), which should be paid by all financial institutions, not just banks, and used to bail out weak and failing firms.”

Now note how these statists who are corralling us all into a big pen cleverly build their new scheme on a faulty premise: the idea that bailouts are a financial fait accompli. Since when? And who dictatorially decides to commandeer taxpayers monies to bail out financial institutions that ought to be allowed to fail? They do!

Update II (April 22): A correction to our reader hereunder: Neal Boortz is a “liberventionists”; “a statist, not a libertarian.” Anything he supports is usually an indication to the contrary

Grounds For A Constitutional Challenge Of H.R.4872

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation, States' Rights

In an interview with NewsMax.com, Judge Andrew Napolitano outlined the grounds upon which the Supreme Court of the United States ought to repeal major portions of Obama’s overweening health care legislation:

“The Constitution does not authorize the Congress to regulate the state governments,” Napolitano says. “Nevertheless, in this piece of legislation, the Congress has told the state governments that they must modify their regulation of certain areas of healthcare, they must surrender their regulation of other areas of healthcare, and they must spend state taxpayer-generated dollars in a way that the Congress wants it done. …

That’s called commandeering the legislature,” he says. “That’s the Congress taking away the discretion of the legislature with respect to regulation, and spending taxpayer dollars. That’s prohibited in a couple of Supreme Court cases. So on that argument, the attorneys general have a pretty strong case and I think they will prevail.” …

The Supreme Court has ruled that in areas of human behavior that are not delegated to the Congress in the Constitution, and that have been traditionally regulated by the states, the Congress can’t simply move in there,” Napolitano says. “And the states for 230 years have had near exclusive regulation over the delivery of healthcare. The states license hospitals. The states license medications. The states license healthcare providers whether they’re doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. The feds have had nothing to do with it.

“The Congress can’t simply wake up one day and decide that it wants to regulate this. I predict that the Supreme Court will invalidate major portions of what the president just signed into law.”…

Napolitano believes the federal government lacks the legal authority to order citizens to purchase healthcare insurance. The Congress [is] ordering human beings to purchase something that they might not want, might not need, might not be able to afford, and might not want — that’s never happened in our history before,” Napolitano says. “My gut tells me that too is unconstitutional, because the Congress doesn’t have that kind of power under the Constitution.”

The sweetheart deals in the healthcare reform bill used that persuaded Democrats to vote for it – the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, Gatorade Exception and others – create “a very unique and tricky constitutional problem” for Democrats, because they treat citizens differently based on which state they live in, running afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause according to Napolitano. “So these bennies or bribes, whatever you want, or horse trading as it used to be called, clearly violate equal protection by forcing people in the other states to pay the bills of the states that don’t have to pay what the rest of us do,” Napolitano says.

Exempting union members from the so-called “Cadillac tax” on expensive health insurance policies, while imposing that tax on other citizens, is outright discrimination according to Napolitano. “The government cannot draw a bright line, with fidelity to the Constitution and the law, on the one side of which everybody pays, and the other side of which some people pay. It can’t say, ‘Here’s a tax, but we’re only going to apply it to nonunion people. Here’s a tax, and we’re only going to apply it to graduates of Ivy League institutions.’ The Constitution does not permit that type of discrimination.” …

[SNIP]

In this televised interview, the Judge laid out more clearly the test for a constitutional challenge, namely that one is harmed by the legislation.

Note the comment on the impossibility of reading and making sense of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 (my experience) each section of which amends and alludes to other laws in the US Code, which in itself is large enough to fill a house with paper stacked to the ceilings.

Update II: Fascism Rising (Henry ‘Nostrilitus’ Waxman)

Bush, Business, Democrats, Economy, Fascism, Government, Republicans

A couple of day ago a number of major companies came out with the preliminary assessment of the costs to each of the “Manna From Mount Olympus” bill, namely Obama’s healthscare legislation. The fascist state that America has become responds sternly to economic forecasts that go against the government’s grain. You may be called on to justify yourself if your assessment of your books diverges from the government’s.

“Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation’s top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment,” reports the Washington Examiner.

Waxman wants “the executives to explain themselves at an April 21 hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative subcommittee.”

As Byron York points out, “Waxman’s demands for documents are far-reaching. ‘To assist the Committee with its preparation for the hearing,’ he wrote to Stephenson, ‘we request that you provide the following documents from January 1, 2009, through the present:

“(1) any analyses related to the projected impact of health care reform on AT&T; and (2) any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform on AT&T. We also request an explanation of the accounting methods used by AT&T since 2003 to estimate the financial impact on your company of the 28 percent subsidy for retiree drug coverage and its deductibility or nondeductibility, including the accounting methods used in preparing the cost impact statement released by AT&T this week.”

“Waxman’s request could prove particularly troubling for the companies. The executives will undoubtedly view such documents as confidential, but if they fail to give Waxman everything he wants, they run the risk of subpoenas and threats from the chairman.”

AN enterprise’s freedom of speech, right to privacy, prerogative to disseminate information about its finances and accounting—this government is asserting ITS right to infringe all these and more.

The Republicans had similar witch hunts when in power (which is why I’m perplexed that some conservative commentator are convinced, and keep repeating, that only now, under Obama, have they lost these freedoms). The “Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” signed into law by President Bush, was government’s response to The People hoisting their pitchforks against business. Also known as the Corporate Corruption Bill, it singled out a much-maligned minority for the kind of persecution that, if visited on women, blacks or Jews, would be considered actionable, hate-filled discrimination. Hearings were all the rage at the time too.

Update I (March 30): Related: “Dems fear honest Obamacare accounting”:

Democrats, in their zeal to raise revenues and improve Obamacare’s claimed effect on the federal deficit outlook, took away a tax break these companies needed in order to supply prescription drugs to their retirees. The tax subsidy, itself a government accounting ruse crafted in 2003 by the Republican Bush administration to dissuade corporations from dumping their retiree drug benefit programs on the then-new Medicare Part D, becomes taxable under Obamacare. Corporations are now being reminded of the harsh truth: What Big Government giveth, Big Government taketh away, too.

Update II (March 31): Henry “Nostrilitus” Waxman (thanks for the laugh, Greg):