Thursday, October 09, 2008
A Tangled Web of Housing Grants
Since 1978 "NeighborWorks has been helping create opportunities for homeownership through NeighborWorks® America, local NeighborWorks organizations and Neighborhood Housing Services of America." Considering the amount of money they've been pulling down, I'm surprised anyone is left to recruit for the program! Just teasing. The money goes to fund their offices and salaries just as in most government programs.Why, just last year NeighborWorks received a big chunk ($180 million) of the $360 million funds appropriated by Congress for 2008 to increase the availability of foreclosure counseling services across the country, and they're getting another $180 million from the newest bailout. Grants are being made to fund foreclosure counseling and legal assistance to homeowners at risk of foreclosure to housing counseling intermediaries approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Of course, if you sign up to take one of their classes so you can counsel people in foreclosure who were probably counseled by one of NeighborWorks home ownership counselors, you'll have to pay over $1,000 to take the class. It's only $610 to learn how to prequalify potential buyers. Who knows where the $360 million goes--the courses certainly aren't free--maybe to pay your salary after you become a counselor?
And look who helps NeighborWorks--research and input from ACORN, and La Raza, the militant organization that wants to return our southwestern states to Mexico is on their Advisory Board. Not that advocacy groups like NeighborWorks much. Seems to be a parting of the ways when slicing and dicing the poorer communities.
And you should see the career opportunities in this organization. Big time. I don't know how many poor get into homes, but there are bunches of high level administrative jobs for bureaucrats like DIRECTOR OF FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION, Senior Corporate Partnership Development Manager, and PRESIDENT/CEO! And you can work in the nice trendy suburbs of DC (except for that one with the Navajos--you need to go to NM and have a brokers license).
How buyers were lured into home ownership they couldn't afford
In June 2005, Black Enterprise was encouraging potential minority home buyers with the following article, which contained a chart (scroll to the bottom of the article) of private and government programs to assist with low or no down payment home ownership:- With interest rates still near historic lows and the growing popularity of low down payments and "no money down" mortgage programs, more families and individuals are taking the plunge into first-time homeownership. . . many people are still delaying building wealth through homeownership because they think they must already have the money in the bank to do it. "People assume they'll need 15% to 20% down to get their first home, which is simply not the case these days." [said Pierre Dunagan, president of The Dunagan Group].
Fannie Mae, while not a lending institution itself, is a government-sponsored enterprise that buys loans from lenders to make mortgage financing available to more borrowers. A number of financing programs that don't require the standard 20% down payment -- or any down payment at all -- are available through approved Fannie Mae lenders and mortgage companies. One of them is the Flexible 100 program, which is especially popular with first-time home buyers. Borrowers need only contribute $500 toward the down payment and/or closing costs. The Flexible 97 program, which allows borrowers to put up just 3% of the cost of the home, is also available through Fannie Mae. Banks have created similar programs to help new home buyers. . .
SPECIAL PROGRAMS MAKE IT EASIER
Many of the new loan products for first-time home buyers have been created specifically to make homeownership easier, says Fannie Mae spokesperson Sandy Cutts. "In addition to our Flex programs, we have the Expanded Approval/Timely Payment Rewards program for people with less than perfect credit. With this program, the homeowner makes on-time payments for two years, then after that time, their interest rate automatically lowers," she explains.
Cutts also says Fannie Mae has rolled out a new pilot product called the Payment Power program, which allows borrowers to defer two monthly payments a year -- but no more than 10 over the life of the loan -- in exchange for slightly higher interest rates. The loan reamortizes, meaning that the skipped payments are recalculated into the remaining payments. This program may be especially beneficial for people who hold seasonal jobs, such as teachers and construction workers who may not have an income during certain times of the year.
Dunagan says there are also 100% financing programs available for first-time home buyers but, in some cases, they have higher interest rates and higher private mortgage insurance costs. He says deciding whether having a higher interest rate is better than long-term renting is an important decision prospective home buyers will have to make.
The Black Enterprise article has links to some other programs--Austin, Sacramento, Washington, DC, etc. but I haven't looked at all of them. Some sites I googled no longer exist--I suspect the companies have gone under with their clients.
Cheers for GWB for eliminating AmeriDream, but I suspect it will resurrect itself after Maxine can show her face in public again. Miller and Shays serve on the House finance and banking committee, and Shays is up for reelection.
Creating the meltdown
--a rousing cheer for the Democrats
Fannie, Freddie, Sallie,Barry, Nancy, Harry,
Barney, Chris and good ol' Joe
Watch our pensions as they go
Yeah team Democrats!
Boomers, Yuppies and the old
On team Democrats!
Watch our pennies not our gold.
A house of very shaky cards
with old junkers in the yards,
On the backs of working poor
Now you're checking us for more.
Yeah team Democrats!
Boomers, Buppies and the cool
On team Democrats!
More control for which you drool.
Their dream, our nightmare
Ordinary people get it. Why doesn't Congress?In one month, we've lost more value in our retirement funds than the value of the mortgages of many of the home buyers the government is trying to bail out. Why are we being punished for the misdeeds of Congress, who actually alotted $20,000,000 a year to protect buyers from "predatory lenders" while forcing banks to make risky loans.
We played by the rules--bought our first house in 1961--didn't exceed credit limits or go into consumer debt, lived in a crummy neighborhood, got fixed rate mortgages, fixed up our homes and never missed a payment. We weren't the ones who thought low income workers had to have "the American dream." We actually understood from 47 years of home ownership that a home isn't an investment, it's a place to live that you care about more than the place you rent. Period.
But Congress thought it was a good idea to provide NINJA loans (no income, no job, no assets) and push low income people into the suburbs to fill up cheaply built houses where they had no network of friends, services or church and a long drive to work. Not the best place to be when gasoline prices started to soar due to more diddling by Congress with e-regulations.
All this was encouraged by the other dream--"wealth redistribution" and "justice" (just-us) pushed by the left, by church groups and "organizers" with their hand out, like ACORN, and the clever entrepreneur real estate home flippers, and wealthy CEOs atop the Fortune 400 who never miss a chance to make a buck with government loop-holes.
Now you want to hand out below market rates to rescue these mortgages, and that's what got my retirement account where it is? Are you guys crazy? Why do you want to rescue people who couldn't make it the first time, but not me who did?
Let's stop grilling CEOs
For now. I don't care if they make $90 million a minute, if it's legal and their stockholders don't object. Franklin Raines (formerly of Fannie Mae) made far more than Hillary Clinton and Barney Frank who both make way more than I do, and after the first million or so, I lose track of who is being greedy.First, let's serve up some toasted Congress for public heckling, disgrace, fines and prison.
So just how did a little ACORN bring down the mighty oak of our economy? By manipulating some very vague regulations about how banks should treat low income applicants for mortgages in a social engineering law of the 1970s. Doesn't this sound innocent enough? But it's a recipe for blackmail once ACORN started realizing they could rake in big money from the government by spinning off smaller groups to get government grants (millions and millions from HUD) and big pay-offs from the banks (more millions in hush money).
- The OCC encourages community and civic organizations, government, and other members of the public to express their views about a bank’s CRA performance to the bank and the OCC at the earliest possible time. This allows the bank to address any concerns and the OCC to take the public’s views into account in evaluating the bank’s CRA record and reaching conclusions about its performance ratings. If those comments are sent to the OCC, the OCC will also consider them when reviewing applications covered by the CRA. OCC Link
“Critics of the notion that CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) had a major impact on the subprime crisis ask how a law passed in 1977 could have caused a crisis in 2008? The answer has a lot to do with ACORN — and the critical years of 1990-1995.”
Read the whole story. Planting Seeds of Disaster; ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party. By Stanley Kurtz
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
The new racist vocabulary
The left just keeps embarrassing itself looking for new ways to cry "RACIST!" First it was "dressing a Moose," according to that Floridian Hastings, whose only regret is he wasn't clearer in how he called her a racist. Then "palling around" with a terrorist (Bill Ayers, a person of pallor) was a racist comment according to a hypersensitive AP writer. And now they've gone berserk over "that one." Obama can be "the one," but not "that one." And to think Hip Hopsters make millions with the "N" word. And yet, look at what his running mate called him and the left tolerated and even rewarded that.- Biden has a long history of making statements that get him in trouble. He was forced to apologize to Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. [Press Democrat]
Bill Ayers, proud terrorist, stands on the American flag, but Palin is called a racist for pointing out his long standing friendship with the Obamas.Sarah Palin and the rape kits
Here's another favorite lie of the left about Palin.- The Boston Globe editors opine about Sarah Palin and the rape kit allegations. The only problem is they ignore any facts that are inconvenient to their stated position, which is, apparently, that Palin is akin to the Anti-Christ, but more evil. Link.
It begins with the headline, "Wasilla Made Rape Victims Pay." Except that there's no evidence that any rape victim was ever charged by the town. In fact, the town has financial records indicating they did pay for rape kits during Palin's time as mayor.
The Globe writes, "The policy so outraged the Alaska Legislature that in 2000 it passed unanimously a bill forbidding such fees." As discussed earlier, in six separate hearings on the legislation, Wasilla was never mentioned. Other, much larger jurisdictions like Juneau were mentioned as places where victims were being charged. During those hearings, the deputy commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Public Safety testified that he had never found a police agency that had billed a victim.
The Effort Diet
Seth says that effort is more important than luck, and suggests you try his diet- . . . here's a bootstrapper's/marketer's/entrepreneur's/fast-rising executive's effort diet. Go through the list and decide whether or not it's worth it. Or make up your own diet. Effort is a choice, at least make it on purpose:
- Exercise for thirty minutes.
- Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
- Send three thank you notes.
- Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
- Volunteer.
- Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
- Give a speech once a month about something you don't currently know a lot about.
1. Delete 120 minutes a day of 'spare time' from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.
2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:
3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.
4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.
If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don't, you'd have a wider network and you'd be more focused.
It's entirely possible that this won't be sufficient, and you will continue to need better luck. But it's a lot more likely you'll get lucky, I bet.
Where have you been all my (blogging) life?
Today I found Dennis. He's a library director and theologian. Can't imagine I've not had him on my links, unless he fell off during one of my remodelings or has used a pseudonym.- "Dennis Ingolfsland: I usually write these commentaries in the evenings or weekends from my recliner (hence the name, Recliner Commentaries). I am a library director with masters' degrees in library science and theological studies. I also have a doctor of philosophy in religion and society. I've published about 30 articles, 50 book reviews, numerous scholarly conference papers and I have an insatiable interest in almost everything."
Obama votes pro-growth 0%; McCain 94%
Take a look at your portfolio if you are over 50. Does it have time to recover with a 0% growth President?These are pro-growth issues. These issues are what will keep you and yours employed, traveling, attending good schools, enjoying a night out, redecorating your home, buying that new car, having a nice retirement, keeping the lights on, reading new books, buying the grandkids some great toys at Christmas and birthdays, choosing what you want to listen to on the radio or watch on TV, what indoor temperature you prefer, what doctor you’ll go to, how much of your parents’ estate you’ll inherit, and a multitude of other things perhaps you’ve forgotten you’ll miss if they are taken away.
- Making the Bush tax cuts permanent
- Death tax repeal
- Cutting and limiting government spending
- Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts
- Expanding free trade
- Legal reform to end abusive lawsuits
- Replacing the current tax code
- School choice
- Regulatory reform and deregulation
Americans for Tax Reform ask Obama
Here.Most small business profits are taxed at the top marginal tax rate. Is now the time to raise this rate? In what way will your tax hikes on small businesses help Main Street?
The capital gains and dividends tax rate help set the value of the stock market. With the Dow under 10,000, is now the time to raise these tax rates?
Specifically, which of your policies will increase the value of the average American’s 401(k)?
Sen. Biden has said paying higher taxes is “patriotic”. Do you agree with him?
Historically, trade protectionism has served to cause and deepen economic recessions. As president, are you prepared to buck the labor unions and work for bilateral and regional free trade agreements?
Do you support the expansion and new creation of domestic nuclear power plants as a clean, safe and reliable source of energy?
As president, would you protect a worker’s right to a private, democratic ballot when deciding on whether or not to join a union?
As a top recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, do you feel that you have a conflict of interest in fixing the housing mess?
Looking into the camera, could you explain to the family of every police officer in America why it is okay to associate with William Ayers?
Just because the debate is over, you don't need to stop asking about his tax-us more plan.
Good source for conservative news
Check here for some headlines. OK, so they missed me, but I did get an offer the other day to join some blogger service for pay. I thanked him and said No. If I did this for pay it wouldn't be fun. Although if my Democratic dumbed down investments go further into the basement, I might have to reconsider. I wonder where I put that?Annoyed Librarian has gone over to the other side. She's actually going to blog for ALA. Couldn't believe it.
Whose tax plan gets us where we need to go?
"According to the Tax Policy Center, around 78% of the McCain tax cut would accrue to the top fifth of income earners, with almost 30% going to the highest 1%. This seems inequitable on its face, a point the Obama campaign and the press focus on.As it happens, the top fifth of earners currently pay 67% of all federal taxes -- including not just income taxes, but payroll taxes, corporate taxes and death taxes. The top 1% of earners pay 26% of all federal taxes.
If the McCain proposal were passed, the top fifth would actually pay a greater share of total federal taxes and the top 1%'s share would decline by only 0.3%. In other words, high earners carry the vast majority of the federal tax burden and, despite what the media portrays as a shift from Scandinavian egalitarianism to Latin American inequity, would continue to do so under Mr. McCain's plan. . .
As it happens, the McCain proposal would maintain current income tax rates and lower corporate taxes to help American businesses -- which ultimately provide American jobs and pay American wages -- compete in a global economy"
The Rich pay their fair share
No preconditions for the tea party with Ahmadinejad
And we’re not talking about misinformation passed out by Joe Biden at last week's debate, either. No, it's the religious Left (and some not so religious, and a few not so Left). The Christians, of course, were simply following their community organizer's command some 2000 years ago to "Go therefore and eat together and hold a dialogue, but forget about worshiping me and baptizing them; just use your own plan."- “In a fourth encounter over two years, American church officials shared an Iftar meal with the visiting Iranian president on September 28 in New York City. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier in the day had delivered his usual rant against Israel and the United States at the United Nations. But hosting religious officials, anxious for dialogue, were undeterred. Nor were they were intimidated by boisterous demonstrators outside their Manhattan hotel, where some placards demanded: "No Feast with the Beast."
- The Mennonite Central Committee, the Americans Friends Service Committee (Quakers), the World Council of Churches' UN Liaison Office and Religions for Peace. About 300 religious representatives attended, mostly American church officials, but also including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, leftist Jewish Renewal movement chief Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a Zoroastrian priest, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik, a Lutheran minister.” . . .“The other denominations that sent representatives to the Iftar dinner included the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), all of which, along with the UCC, have recently rejected anti-Israel divestment initiatives, thanks partly to appeals from American Jews.”
Then there was the usual, naive woman asking questions later.
- “United Methodist Women's chief Harriett Jane Olson told Reuters afterwards that she wished Ahmadinejad had talked about "practical issues" such as the treatment of women and children in Iran instead of abstract theology."
Fritz Hoffman
The central Ohio art scene lost a wonderful friend Sunday with the death of Fritz Hoffman. Every day we enjoy two of his wonderful watercolors (he was AWS and OWS) that hang in our dining room and my husband was in an artist luncheon group with him as well as community organizations. In recent years Fritz had changed to oils, and my husband thinks they may even be better than his watercolors, but I find that hard to imagine. Here is the obituary from today's Columbus Dispatch. He will be greatly missed.- HOFFMAN Frederick R. Hoffman "Fritz", age 78, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on October 5, 2008. He served in the Army during the Korean Conflict, was Vice President of Burkholder Flint and Nichols Advertising Agency, was also active in C.O.W.S., A.W.S and O.W.S. Fritz is preceded in death by his parents Frederick and Susie Hoffman. He is survived by his loving wife, Joanne of 50 years; daughters, Betsy (Steve) Leitwein, Kathy (Jerry) Cutler; grandchildren, Steven (Ashley) Leitwein, Drew Leitwein, Jessica Cutler, Kaitlin Cutler; great-grandchild, Olivia Leitwein; sister, Barbara Hoch; nieces, nephews and many friends. Family will receive friends at SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST CHAPEL 1740 Zollinger Rd., Friday, October 10, 2008 from 5-8 p.m. to celebrate Fritz's life. A private family service will be held at a later time. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the charity of ones choice.
John McCain's arms
I hate to watch John McCain. I usually have to leave the room or switch channels. My body just aches when I see his poor, damaged arms. I'm such a wimp. I should be asking myself, "I wonder how many hours or minutes Barack Obama would survive if tortured for his country and his beliefs?" When I see what McCain has given up in just being comfortable in his body, I wonder which pains him more, an electorate who thinks it doesn't matter if we run out again on our allies, or his own broken body.Recommended by a Canadian!
"As a pro-America conservative Canadian, I enjoyed this book so much. Lots of answers to some very confusing questions like Public Health Care, Defense and Foreign Policies, role of the US in the world and many more. If you're a liberal, you should read this to understand more about our point of views. If you're a right winger, you still need this great handbook to defend yourself against the Lunatic Leftists. Highly Recommended!" [Amazon Review]I haven't read too much of this title--already know a lot of it, but it's got some great notes, charts, definitions and web sites. Conservatives need something like this to come up against the in-your-face Alinsky-trained almighty Obamites. And can you believe this was actually at my very liberal public library branch? Throwing a bone to the conservatives in town who pay their salaries. I was so thrilled, but I noticed the titles with which it was keeping company (the ones not checked out but sitting on the new book shelf). I've probably missed a few left and right, but I'm going by cover and spine titles. It's a little like trying to take photos of all the out of state license plates where the Dems were registering voters this past week--gotta work fast.
- The political mind
Right is wrong
The wrecking crew
The trainwreck
The last campaign
A time it was
Know your power
The good fight
Bush's law
Fire breathing liberal
Step by step
Against the tide
A time to fight
Who killed the Constitution
Your government failed you
Guantanamo diary
I won't provide the links to these title--sometimes librarians just yawn and point when you ask a question (I never did, but I've seen it done). But in case you noticed how the list lists to the left, I'll remind you that among journalists, they are 5 to 1, liberal to conservative; out in Hollywood in the entertainment industry they are 11 to 1, liberal to conservative; but the library profession is 223 to 1, liberal to conservative. Dixie Chicks and Barbra Streisand have nothing on your local library staff selecting titles from LJ and PW while posting their banned books list.
The next bailout
says Sue Shellenbarger in today's WSJ is your adult children. Sorry Sue. Hate to break the bad news, but Americans have already done that. Boomers were bailed by their parents, and the boom-lets and boom-lights even more so by their boomer parents. No one in America is allowed to have a living standard less wonderful than their parents' it seems. That was a constant riff in the "this economy" theme we've heard the past seven years, and probably before that, because Democrats didn't invent that, I think Republicans did.My husband's parents (who were younger than mine) didn't help us much--all their disposable income that wasn't needed for the basics like housing, food, clothing went for alcohol, cigarettes and nice vacations. My husband during one stint in college lived with the parents of his best friend, not his own parents. This dear woman even fed him and bought him a winter coat. But my parents certainly chipped in. A lot. It was sort of a family tradition. My great-grandfather had helped my maternal grandmother, and on the other side, my great-grandmother had helped Dad buy his first home. Dad provided for my college education, of course, at least until I was married, then it became a loan to be paid back (and I did). He gave us $1,000 for our first home (a duplex) which didn't have to be paid back, and then took a second mortgage for us on his own savings account (that was paid back). He also sold us my mother's car, which we made payments on. But still, for the 1960s when we had no credit of our own, that was a big help. The irony is we actually inherited more from my in-laws, who'd never given us a dime, than my own parents who had so carefully managed their own resources. That really doesn't matter, since we're grateful to both families not only for their love, but their limited resources the government didn't tax away, so that I could retire at 60 instead of 65.
For our daughter, things were fairly straight forward--we had purchased stock for her (Wendy's) that had recovered from the bust in the 80s and reinvested the dividends (and hid it from her in her late teen years). We'd also taken out a life insurance policy after she left home and it had some value when she cashed it in. The money we had "sheltered" for her when she was very young designated for college was long gone by the time she wanted to buy a house, because we'd made the mistake of using her SS# which meant at 18 she had control, not us. That money went to buy a car to replace the one wrecked by a drunk driver who hit her while she was waiting at a stop light.
For our son we had to be a bit more creative to be "fair," and we won't know for years if we helped or hurt him. His stock tanked and was worthless, and we couldn't get insurance for him. His childhood college account also went for other things that young adulthood required and he had access by then. So after his divorce we purchased a home for him, a wonderful place where he could garden and run his big dog. We used our assets to qualify for a low interest ARM, and he made all the payments. He now owns it (with the bank) and we gave him the equity that he had built up by faithfully paying the mortgage and paying all the expenses for four years.
Of course, we hadn't counted on the government so badly managing the mortgage market with the same good intentions we had that it would bring down the economy. We knew some of the places we looked at with him in 2004 had bizarre financing options (NINJA), but although tempted, we took the "conservative" route, and took on the debt ourselves after years of having no debt at all except for a few months of a "bridge loan" when we bought our condo. We did far more than our parents had done for us, but still within the family tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries being the financial safety net for adult children. However, we live in a two-income household society, and try as I might to interfere, he hasn't found a wife to help with the cost of living and a mortgage. So being a brand new home owner in a neighborhood where many foreclosure signs are popping up may be tough if the credit market tumbles even further and affects his job.
But just like the social engineers in Washington, we believed home ownership was right and "a right" for all Americans, especially our children. It may take years to straighten all this out, and there could be more bailing in our immediate future.
Who is more dangerous?
Over at Democratic Underground dotcom which seems to be a discussion board (I haven't found actual articles) there are 30,200 posts about Sarah Palin and 5,270 about Bill Ayers and his relationship to Obama. Most of those Ayers posts are how to refute, stomp on, deny and disclaim that he has any link to Obama other than just a harmless fuzz ball from the neighborhood. I didn't even bother to check on what they're saying about Sarah, but obviously as a woman not defined by leftist feminism, she's a terrible threat to the Democratic Underground.
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