How they destroyed our economy

Remember how we all chuckled at the "community organizer" jokes at the Republican Convention? Oh, how little we knew. Now, some did, because they'd been writing, and speaking and sounding the alarm for years, but we didn't listen. The media didn't notice, they were all ga-ga over o-ba-ma and neither did the talk shows. Just a few conservative and libertarian publications and think tanks.

Remember when we thought the community organization gig was ACORN and just some voter fraud--hadn't we seen that in both parties? Gosh, in Illinois, it doesn't matter if you vote at all "down state"--Chicago will take care of it and they have enough dead people and dogs to vote in your place. JFK might have lived a long life as a Massachusetts senator if his party hadn't stolen the Illinois vote in 1960 from Richard Nixon.

Turns out it was a much bigger cancer behind the subprime loans. Here's an article from 1995, describing guerilla warfare by the community groups which eventually brought down the wealthiest country and most powerful government in the world--without firing a shot.

After a raucous Senate Banking Committee hearing exploring Fleet Financial Group's record on lending to minority communities, the Federal Reserve Board governors agreed to consider taking action against the New England banking giant. Among the community activists present at that February 1993 meeting with the governors was Bruce Marks, Director of the Boston-based Union Neighborhood Assistance Corporation (UNAC) known for waging guerrilla warfare against banks that fail to meet fair lending standards. When Marks and company returned six weeks later, only to be informed that the governors had decided not to act on the matter, the group took action of their own by rushing the front steps of the Reserve and blocking the entrance.

As the group of roughly 60 stood at the front door, a limousine pulled up, and out stepped a man resembling Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The protesters naturally seized upon the opportunity to make their case with the head of the Fed. They ran over and surrounded the car, overwhelming the secret service agents and the Greenspan look-alike. The man turned out to be not Greenspan but Italy's minister of finance. Although the group would have preferred a face-to-face meeting with Greenspan, mistakenly accosting the Italian finance minister was only a minor embarrassment for Marks, who regularly uses high-pressure tactics in his crusade against redlining banks.

Marks had attended the Senate Banking Committee hearing with 400 angry residents from various states, many armed with tales of injustice wrought by Fleet. The protesters, who included gospel singers and Baptist ministers, sang and chanted as they paraded in wearing bright yellow T-shirts depicting a loan shark.

"It was like a gospel revival meeting," Marks said. "I don't know if ever there's been a committee meeting where 400 people just took it over." National Housing Institute

And then skip ahead to the Winter 2000 issue of City Journal, probably written in late 1999.

There is no more important player in the CRA-inspired mortgage industry than the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. Chief executive Bruce Marks has set out to become the Wal-Mart of home mortgages for lower-income households. Using churches and radio advertising to reach borrowers, he has made NACA a brand name nationwide, with offices in 21 states, and he plans to double that number within a year. With "delegated underwriting authority" from the banks, NACA itself—not the banks—determines whether a mortgage applicant is qualified, and it closes sales right in its own offices. It expects to close 5,000 mortgages next year, earning a $2,000 origination fee on each. Its annual budget exceeds $10 million.

Marks, a Scarsdale native, NYU MBA, and former Federal Reserve employee, unabashedly calls himself a "bank terrorist"—his public relations spokesman laughingly refers to him as "the shark, the predator," and the NACA newspaper is named the Avenger. They're not kidding: bankers so fear the tactically brilliant Marks for his ability to disrupt annual meetings and even target bank executives' homes that they often call him to make deals before they announce any plans that will put them in CRA's crosshairs. A $3 billion loan commitment by Nationsbank, for instance, well in advance of its announced merger with Bank of America, "was a preventive strike," says one NACA spokesman.

And here's Marks putting himself in a positive light at a "world citizenship, global humanist" blog. I wonder Mr. Marks, where are those poor and low income people you put in houses today? Do they have jobs? Do they have pensions? Where are the multitudes of employees sopping up government grants to the non-profits for paper pushers and fee takers, and hastily hammered together housing corporations to rebuild communities? Do you even care, or were they always just your route to destroy the United States economy?

Marks’ role as an aggressive crusader for reform of the powerful banking and lending industry has its representatives up in arms. On May 5, 1999 from the Senate floor, Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), head of the Senate Banking Committee, attempted to portray banks as victims of Bruce Marks. Gramm described Marks as, “… someone who graduates from college, goes to graduate school, and goes to work for the Federal Reserve in acquisitions and mergers, quits and goes into business, spends four years harassing banks and bank presidents, and finally the bank (Fleet Bank) caves and gives them $1.4 million, gives them $200,000 to set up their organization; they now have twenty offices, lending $3.5 billion…” Senator Gramm continued, “There is a CRA protester who calls himself an “urban terrorist” who used those charges against a bank, harassed them for four years, went to a speech of the president of the bank (Fleet Bank CEO Terrence Murray) at Harvard University, disrupted the speech, made this man’s life miserable for four long years.” Bruce Marks wears this personal attack as a badge of honor.

Under Marks’ leadership, NACA has garnered commitments of over $6.7 Billion for the best mortgage product in America. NACA now has 31 offices throughout the country and will double in size within the next 12 to 18 months. NACA has become the largest housing services organization in the United States.

Community Reinvestment Act Harmful legacy

For a lefty hissy fit on the conservatives waking up to the CRA's mistakes, see here, so don't say I don't provide an alternative view, which the left never does.

Backatcha!

Instead of addressing the fraud among their volunteers, Obama's campaign has chosen to investigate the investigators who uncovered the problem. See story at Maggie Thurber. Move over Joe

Rather than address the fact that some people supportive of Obama have registered and voted incorrectly, these Obama campaign workers want to demonize the individuals who've exposed them

And then there's the on-going saga of Joe the Plumber and what a terrible threat a simple question was to the Obama Campaign after Obama told Joe he wanted to spread the wealth (something he's said many times, but not recently, and not on the campaign trail). So much so that someone thought the means justified the end, and hacked Joe's personal information.

Personal information on "Joe the Plumber" was sought through the state's child-support computer in a check run from the main offices of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles confirmed today that he is investigating the incident. He declined to provide details.

The inquiry on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was run through the Support Enforcement Tracking System from the state department's offices in downtown Columbus. Columbus Dispatch

Elizabeth Hasselbeck introduces Governor Palin

This takes 11 minutes but is well worth watching. The writer at the LA Times just couldn't stop editorializing with alarm quotation marks and snarky remarks either about Hasselbeck or Palin.

"The View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was incredibly "honored" to introduce Gov. Sarah Palin on Sunday at a Republican rally in Florida.

But she was even more excited about being able to "talk for a full five minutes without being interrupted."

She talked about Palin's women's rights views: equal pay for equal work, putting an end to honor killings, aiding women exploited in the sex trade and stopping the sanctioning of the abortion of unborn daughters in other countries. [this is a misquote: she said of a country's unborn daughters]

She decried the fact that "they" [clarification, the main stream media reporters] are "fixated on her wardrobe," calling it a double standard and deliberately sexist. But then she turned to Palin and remarked admiringly that the governor "sure is a woman who knows how to dress," which got some rather sexist whoops, hollers and whistles from the audience.

Hasselbeck added: "I’m most impressed by her accessories, you know, like the flag pin she wears in honor of her son and our military — men and women — fighting abroad. And they fight for our every [very] right to be here today." ["They didn't list this because they know it's priceless" Hasselbeck said--to which the crowd went wild with USA chants.]

Elisabeth was certainly coming on strong for Palin, sounding much like a lipstick-wearing pit bull/hockey mom herself.

There wasn't a thing threatening or pit-bullish in the entire 11 minutes. Get a grip--it was a campaign speech introduction. Would you rather she get shouted down as her View sisters do? I watched it twice, including the part about McCain paying the women on his staff the same as men, and Obama paying 83 cents on the dollar. LAT Blogger Dishrag forgot to remember that part. Oh, and the writer was just soooo concerned that baby Trig was on stage--now, abortion of a disabled child she would support, because that's a woman's right, but putting him on stage with his mom, dad and sister? Ooooo, now that's cruel says Elizabeth Snead. If you don't kill them, you should at least hide them, I suppose.

A Charter of Negative Liberties--Our Constitution

Redistribution through the courts--"I'm not optimistic." You can craft a rationale bringing economic change through the courts--the 3 of us sitting here could do it.

Warren Court wasn't radical--didn't break free from constraints of the Founding Fathers. The court didn't say what the federal government must do for you on your behalf. [paraphrased based on listening while scratching my head in disbelief]



People who have attended law school in the last 15-20 years probably will not find anything strange in this radio address, just like people listening to Jeremiah Wright for years didn't notice anything--just sounds normal and patriotic to them. This type of unAmerican, radical thinking is so common among certain classes, they are baffled when Conservatives find it alarming.

America's favorite Terrorist has new book

Bill Ayers, Barack's mentor and Chicago backer has a new book. I'm sure I'll have no problem finding it--given its track record my public library will flood the shelves with copies. Here's what Charming Billy bakes in his pie laced with hate for our culture and government (i.e. white Americans--a group of which he is a member, a descendant of generations of the oppressor class).

"Bill Ayers 'gets it.'* Here's what he understands: One strategy to undermine culture is to discredit its values and history. Of course, reducing American history to a simplistic notion of 'white supremacy' is absurd, but that’s the point. The point is to slowly undermine the confidence of people about the values and history of their own culture so they'll be less willing to defend and protect it. Along the way, you've also created a structure of 'them' (so-called 'white' people, meaning, in this context, people from western and northern Europe) and 'us' (everyone else). This creates internal conflict based on simple, easy to understand qualities like skin color.

"Eventually, the culture becomes so disillusioned and split apart that an organized cadre of leaders can take control and establish a new kind of society – like the Bolsheviks did in 1917, or the National Socialists in 1933, or the followers of Mao in 1949," the forum participant wrote.

More on the book at "Ayers, Dohrn: 'White supremacy' responsible for America's troubles"

*I wonder if this is what Michelle Obama meant in Bexley last week when she said, "Barack gets it." The crowd whooped and cheered.

Clear evidence of fraud

Check out Maggie Thurber's blog for more information

So we've got clear evidence of individuals who have come to Ohio on a temporary basis, have no intention of staying in the state past the election and its certification, who have homes and families in other states, who have registered and who have cast a ballot. Today, the boards of elections start separating the ballot envelope from the identification envelope, which means that after separated, these individuals can still be prosecuted for voting illegally, but there is no way to separate out their vote and not have it count. Thurber's Thoughts

The sale of National City, pt.2

I'm still looking for my last dividend check--the one for thirty two cents. The top three executives will get golden parachutes with a combined value of $40 million following the sale (adjusting I assume for the current value of the stock which must not be too terrific); Peter Raskind, Daniel J. Frate, John L. Garney.

Ohio's progressives, socialists and marxists will scream about greed and the failure of capitalism, but I won't. I owned a few shares for about 30 years and did nothing except open the envelope four times a year, endorse the dividend check, and take it to the bank. It was never huge--probably not more than $30-$50 a year, but it was more than the cost of gasoline to drive to the bank, which the most recent one wasn't.

Meanwhile, they were being paid big bucks to figure out how to manage demands that they live up to the crazy expectations of the law and regulations to loan easy money to people who may not be able to pay it back. A law, the Community Reinvestment Act, which started small and quietly during the 1970s, with good intentions. People whose homes may never appreciate, but may depreciate, to fund builders and city services which also jumped into "the American dream" bubble. Easy money--that's what government tampering with the banks and credit did for us. Even churches got into the act, although I don't think they did the political advocacy of the left wing, ACORN type organizations. They too set up corporations, hired people, fixed up homes, "stabilizing neighborhoods," "strengthening community," to help the poor, everyone from Mennonites, to Catholics to Lutherans. But they did it with government money so they'd qualify for loans.

"The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being." "The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities," City Journal, Winter 2000

So yes, they were greedy, but when you try to strangle a business, any business, with regulations while also demanding that it perform as a sugar daddy social worker for the poor and low income, you just might find them looking for loop holes to outsmart those guys who float in and out of the beltway, who lobby, and populate endless think tanks.

It's Congress that I'd like to drop from a plane without a parachute, golden or otherwise. It was a stupid affirmative action scheme even back during the Clinton years, but there was time to remedy it. (Bruce Marks , primary culprit--story from 2004) Bush couldn't pull his people together when he had a Republican Congress, and the Democrat Congress blocked any effort, even those late ones, to fix the problem. If Gore had won in 2000, we'd be in exactly the same spot. Had you thought of that? We'd probably gone to war since the whole WMD meme started in the 90s with the Democrats, but even if we hadn't, the economic system still would have failed because the same policies chasing the same easy credit would have been there.

Now we're in a recession, and about to do the Hoover-Roosevelt two step all over again, only this time it will be Bush-Obama. Let's hope it won't take a decade of more tampering and 25% unemployment this time.

Eating pumpkin ice cream reading obesity research

After a lunch of lightly grilled, prepackaged organic vegetables (broccoli, carrots, red cabbage), I had a dish of pumpkin ice cream with some peanut butter on top. While eating the dessert I was reading "Transforming Research Strategies for Understanding and Preventing Obesity" by Huang and Glass in JAMA, Oct 15, p. 1881. Before I go into detail, let me ask you a few questions, and please don't argue or go off topic, just answer about you and you only; no one else:

• Has the federal government made you fat?
  
• Has your state or local government made you fat?
  
• Did your educational institutions--high school, college, grad school--make you fat?
  
• Has your income, whether high or low, made you fat?
  
• Has your peer group made you fat?
  
• Did your mother's diet before you were born make you fat?
  
• Has the location of your super market or grocery store made you fat?
  
• Has the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables where you shop made you fat?
  
• Has the lack of a farmer's market in your neighborhood made you fat?
  
• Has lack of exercise opportunities made you fat?
  
• Has the zoning where you live made you fat?
  
• Did the farm, town or city where your great, great grandparents lived and worked make you fat?
  
• Have USDA policies affecting land use made you fat?
  
• Has building design of your home or work place made you fat?
  
• Has the elevator in your building or the parking lot for your car made you fat?
  
• Has food labeling or lack of it on restaurant menus made you fat?

I've been up the scale and down the scale, and no one but me can determine whether I'll be obese or not. But there's a whole bunch of government money out there just waiting to call me a liar.

Using the tobacco taxes as an example of how top down punishment by the federal government can stem the obesity tide of the predicted $860 billion in health care costs, the writers of this article (both NIH employees), are pointing the way for Uncle Sam to join you at the dinner table, the restaurant, the grocery store, the snack bar and the tailgate party before the OSU football game. And he won't be a fun or an invited guest.

Clearly, education about personal responsibility for health and weight has failed, the authors report. We have evolved, but not enough. Our bodies are not equipped for an obesogenic environment. After working their way through maternal feeding patterns, lack of P.E. in schools, public snack machines and sedentary behavior, the authors pounce on the real problem. You'll be glad to find out it's not your genes, your taste buds, your cravings, or your lack of will power. It's the government--all levels from cradle to grave, from bike path to freeway, from safety to quantity.

At the governmental level, policies regarding food, agriculture, education, transportation, urban design, marketing, and trade all play a role in increasing the accessibility and availability of high-fat and high-sugar foods vs fresh fruits and vegetables and in decreasing opportunities for physical activity. The lack of access to preventive care is also a major concern. Historical U.S. policies that led to social inequality and segregation have, in turn, resulted in inequalities in the built environment, leading to disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor and minorities.

"Trust me, I'm from the government." These are the same guys from the government who don't require country of origin on your canned goods, and have no way to check the quality or adulteration of foodstuffs imported from Mexico and China, the most recent culprits that sent people to the hospital. But we're supposed to hand them billions in government grants for "cross-disciplinary hypotheses to research on upstream (trendy word = bad capitalists) policy interventions and their downstream effects on food and physical activity behaviors, investment in capacity building and rigorous training of a new generation of multilevel scientists, and global perspective on obesity research." What does cross disiplinary look like?

medical geography
epigenetics
psychoneuroendocrinology
advanced neuroimaging tools
socioenvironmental factors
spatial data
expression of genes
population patterns
food marketing
taxes on unhealthy food
public transportation
crime free neighborhoods
behavorial economics

and of course
the United Nations World Health Organization

Please note you free market and capitalist morons, your government knows best: "Neoclassical economic theory promised that allowing individuals to pursue their individual passions and desires with a minimum of constraint would lead to aggregate prosperity. However, this theory may be flawed in the case of food and activity preferences. If humans have built-in biological propensities at odds with their environment, top-down approaches may be needed to achieve population obesity prevention goals."

And here comes Obama rama dom dom.

Reformation Sunday

We both forgot to wear red; looking around the 8:15 service I see many others did too. In the Cornerstone this week Pastor Eric Waters writes

"Because we were the first of the Protestant churches, many of our fellow Protestants look on us with suspicion as being "too Catholic." They point to our practice of infant baptism, belief that the bread and wine of Communion really is the Body and Blood of Jesus, and the recitation of the Creed as proof that we're still stuck in the superstition of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic church looks on our longer sermons, various liturgies, and disagreement with the Pope as proof that we went too far. In short, most of our fellow Christians look on us as neither fish nor fowl: too Catholic for some, too Protestant for others."

My husband was baptized as an infant (Presbyterian), and I was about 12 (Church of the Brethren). If you ever want to see a Lutheran pastor go pale in your adult confirmation/transfer class, just ask to be re baptized. On the other hand, there are Protestant churches that would want to do mine over, because they wouldn't trust the minister or denomination who presided at mine. Lutherans and Catholics see infant baptism as done by God, not by man, so Lutheran pastors don't do that. I think Luther himself gave a good explanation, because he really had more problems with the reformers (in my opinion) who came after him (he called them dolts and blockheads) than the Catholics and Humanists. To the argument that you don't remember your baptism, he replies

Were I to reject everything which I have not seen or heard, I would indeed not have much left, either of faith or love, either of spiritual or of temporal things

He asks the anabaptists. . . How do you know who your parents are. . .you don't remember your birth, so why should you honor your parents? Why should you obey the government if you haven't seen the leader. How do you know the apostles preached. If you can't believe anything you haven't seen, felt or experienced, says Luther, you're in the devil's pocket.

To the argument that you need to believe before baptism, Luther really works up steam

For if they follow this principle they cannot venture to baptize before they are certain that the one to be baptized believes. How and when can they ever know that for certain? Have they now become gods so that they can discern the hearts of men and know whether or not they believe? . . . You say that he confesses that he believes. Dear sir, confession is neither here nor there. The text does not say, "He who confesses," but "He who believes."

And how many times would you be rebaptized asks Luther. Each time you have a fresh sense of your faith, or after each doubt is put down.

So when next day the devil comes, his heart is filled with scruples and he says, Ah, now for the first time I feel I have the right faith, yesterday I don't think I truly believed. So I need to be baptized a third time, the second baptism not being of any avail. You think the devil can't do such things? You had better get to know him better. He can do worse than that, dear friend. He can go on and cast doubt on the third, and the fourth and so on incessantly. . . the end result? Baptizing without end. All this is nonsense. Neither the baptizer nor the baptized can base baptism on a certain faith. . .

Since our baptizing has been thus from the beginning of Christianity and the custom as been to baptize children, and since no one can prove with good reasons that they do not have faith, we should not make changes and build on such weak arguments. . .

When they say, "Children cannot believe," how can they be sure of that? Where is the Scripture by which they would prove it and on which would they build? They imagine this, I suppose, because children do not speak or have understanding. [goes on to tell the story of John and Jesus in their mothers wombs as an example that children can know and understand and believe]. . .What if all children in baptism not only were able to believe but believed as well as John in his mother's womb?

He gives another example from a betrothal and wedding where a girl marries reluctantly and without love then after 2 years, she loves her husband.

Would then a second engagement be required, a second wedding be celebrated as if she had not previously been a wife, so that the earlier betrothal and wedding were in vain?. . .

Rebaptism is relying on works, says Luther. God's Word is unchanging even if the person doing the baptism does not have faith.

The unchanging Word of God, once spoken in the first baptism, ever remains standing, so that afterwards they can come to faith in it, if they will, and the water with which they were baptized they can afterwards receive in faith, if they will. Even if they contradict the Word a hundred times, it still remains the Word spoken in the first baptism. Its power does not derive from the fact that it is repeated many times or is spoken anew, but from the fact that it was commanded once to be spoken.

You can read Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings ed. by Timothy Lull on-line.

Worth repeating

Someone came to my blog today looking for an Oreo Cowkies photo (belted Galloways) and ended up at "Where I part company with Conservatives" essay. They must have been archived on the same page. I reread it and decided it was worth posting again with a few additions.

Politics

• I'm against the death penalty. Don't let the evil scumbags turn you into a killer.
  
• I believe marijuana can be a controlled substance for medical treatment, just like other mind altering legal drugs.
  
• I believe drug sentencing is too punitive and counter-productive--at least in Ohio. 60% of our prison population is drug related (I've heard, haven't researched it). Prisons are schools for crime, and we should stop sending so many novices there, because they will graduate and return to us.
  
• I think Creationists need to stay clear of the public schools. We haven't even convinced our own folks, so why go after non-believers? No one ever got to heaven because of believing in creation, nor was sent to hell because of evolution. Plus, you're not being truthful about your motives and that hurts your witness for Jesus.
  
• Schools need to allow students the freedom to be Creationists or write or speak on the topic without fear of punishment or grade reduction.
  
• I don't believe in the current political race for the brass ring called global warming, but I also believe that many conservatives don't take the precautions and care they should with the environment. Clean air and clean water is good for our health and for capitalism.

Religion

• I'm not a dispensationalist Christian. Not that all conservatives are, but many that are cherry pick their way through the Bible finding end-times principles to apply to politics that aren't there.
  
• Most Biblical admonitions about sexual behavior and morality are addressed to men lusting after women, not to gay men. Pay attention to your own plank before looking for the splinter.
  
• The Biblical record is clear that Jesus intended women to have an equal role in the church.
  
• I'm fine with infant baptism and don't believe in rebaptizing, although I appreciate my anabaptist heritage. Watching an infant baptism is a wonderful reminder of our need to rely totally on God.
  
• If you've got a well written liturgy, faithfully followed, it makes up for poor sermons and unsingable hymns.
  
• Conservative Christians need to pay attention to Matthew 25. Peace and justice Christians need to realize they won't find government grants and taxes there to fund their favorite programs (and salaries). It is very clear to all who you are meeting when you feed the hungry and visit the sick.

Others

• I don't believe pets are "just like family," but once you take one into your home, you have obligations and responsibilities for training, veterinary care, love and affection.
  
• I believe homeschooling is good and educationally sound, especially for the parents who will have more actual learning and support than if the children attended public or private schools, but it isn't always better for the children. There's nothing wrong with doing it for mom or dad if they become better parents.
  
• Our children come into this world as unique beings, with everything in place to be successful and happy. If they don't get there, it may not be your fault, and it definitely is not the government's. Take the blame where you deserve it, and dump the guilt if you don't.
  
• I believe that Eat less, move more is the best health plan, and that probably isn't in the Bible or hawked on your favorite talk show.
  
• I know from experience that all bubbles burst, whether it's love, finances, dreams, careers, or political candidates.

Working for the candidates

Yesterday I volunteered at a printing facility for the McCain-Palin ticket. I met some interesting people and got a little taste of how "boots on the ground" works during campaigns. You can have tons of money for the TV ads, billboards and appearances on Letterman and SNL, but if you don't have the loyal, organized volunteers, you probably won't get elected--at any level.

Until the carpetbaggers came to Ohio (about a dozen Obama staffers have now cancelled their registration and ballots--they must have cut a deal to avoid felony charges), I thought the involvement of some of my Democrat friends 24/7 was admirable, even though I disagreed with their politics. It takes a lot of gumption, guts and glorification to pick up and move to another state even for a week or two. I don't see it that way anymore.

Not that my friends of 50 years would register and vote multiple times or encourage anyone else to, but they've helped with the plan--whether setting up the headquarters, filling in for the locals, making the coffee or hosting an event. The 20-30 year olds they admire so much do not have our grounding in ethics and morality. They are of the ends justifies the means crowd. They're schooled in Obamanomics. As Michelle said this week in Bexley, "Barack gets it" (and I think she means your money).

Seeing the vans pull up to voter sites (during golden week in Ohio you could register and vote the same day and our Secretary of State and Courts have said it is legal even though she can't verify them) and disgorge the homeless from God knows where with ACORN drivers and counselors telling them how to vote makes me see political volunteering outside your own city and state in a whole new light.

The houseful of 13 out of towners who came here were taking time out of their busy schedules in Europe and elite Ivy League schools as honor scholars with wealthy parents to fund their fun to tell us poor schmucks how we should vote. Good riddance, and I hope they can't find another sandbox to litter and just go back to studying peace, justice and marxism until they grow up.

The International Herald Tribune regrets

Not that I expected it to print my comments--I never give out all that detail (phone, address, eye color, handedness, all identity stuff) that you need, and still your comments will never appear--your identify just goes into a database. I just wanted to let them know that the comments of Joe Biden My Time promising Barack's election would cause an international crisis appeared in their paper a few days before our local journalists thought to mention it. At another international on-line news service (Pakistan) I think I noticed the phrase "Islamic terrorists", whereas the USAToday had called them "insurgents" when they burned down a building storing cooking oil intended for families with daughters enrolled in school.

At the bottom of the Tribune's nice "thanks but no thanks" response I saw this warning.

-
In order to preserve the environment, please do not print this message unless it is necessary.

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is destined solely for the recipients detailed above and may not therefore be divulged or communicated to any other persons. Any modification, publication, use or dissemination is prohibited if not authorized by the International Herald Tribune.

So you are seeing an unauthorized response to my e-mail complimenting them on their coverage of a very alarming incident that happened twice in one day in the U.S. on the Biden by-hook-or-by-crook march to the White House.

A voting record Left of Everybody

New York Times Endorses Obama for President

Oct. 24, a Reuters headline. Now that's a big surprise, right?

"S&P Lowers NYT Rating to 'Junk'" also a headline on October 24, Crain's New York Business.

The company reported a 51.4% decline in third-quarter profit but still beat Wall Street estimates as the newspaper industry continues to suffer from advertising reductions accelerated by a worsening economy.

For years the New York Times
has published only its opines
of how much America declines
while George Bush it always slimes.

Read it daily if you will
I can't take the snooty swill.
A 50+ decline but still
Team Obama is their drill.

The National Run Around

We can expect FDR type programs from BHO, for in your face, God Almighty inspired government regulations, and jack boots on the necks of non-compliant plumbers. But with better looking graphics and logos, given that his campaign man is a media guru. The National Recovery Association was called the National Run Around because of the hundreds of codes that impeded business, and the WPA, Works Progress Administration, was called the We Piddle Around.



"The economic impact of the NRA was immediate and powerful. In the five months leading up to the act’s passage, signs of recovery were evident: factory employment and payrolls had increased by 23 and 35 percent, respectively. Then came the NRA, shortening hours of work, raising wages arbitrarily, and imposing other new costs on enterprise. In the six months after the law took effect, industrial production dropped 25 percent. Benjamin M. Anderson writes, "NRA was not a revival measure. It was an antirevival measure . . . . Through the whole of the NRA period industrial production did not rise as high as it had been in July 1933, before NRA came in.

To run NRA, FDR chose "General Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, a profane, red-faced bully and professed admirer of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Thundered Johnson, "May Almighty God have mercy on anyone who attempts to interfere with the Blue Eagle" (the official symbol of the NRA, which one senator derisively referred to as the "Soviet duck"). Those who refused to comply with the NRA Johnson personally threatened with public boycotts and "a punch in the nose."

Roosevelt next signed into law steep income tax increases on the higher brackets and introduced a five-percent withholding tax on corporate dividends. He secured another tax increase in 1934. In fact, tax hikes became a favorite policy of Roosevelt for the next ten years, culminating in a top income tax rate of 90 percent.
Read Reed.

Calling Team Obama

While they were out investigating Joe the Plumber's taxes, look what was going on in New York with a Kennedy man.

Gov. David Paterson's embattled top aide resigned Friday, after a week of escalating criticism over his failure to pay $300,000 in taxes on time and a questionable excuse for the lapse.

Mr. O'Byrne, who has ties to the Kennedy family, has said clinical depression kept him from paying taxes between 2001 and 2005, before he took the job as secretary to the governor. He's a former Jesuit priest who officiated at the wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. and counseled the Kennedy family three years later after he died in a plane crash. He was the top aide to Mr. Paterson. He was responsible for mapping out policy and politics as Mr. Paterson rose from the near powerless Democratic minority in the Senate to lieutenant governor and then governor after Democrat Eliot Spitzer resigned in March amid a prostitution scandal. Crains

Dear President Gee

You probably don't remember me, but we met during your first round as OSU's president when I went to a public meeting to "meet the new guy on campus" and boldly asked what you intended to do about the leaky roof over my library which was putting our books and computers at risk. Ah, the good old days, when one could ask questions face to face. That building's gone now, replaced by the one I helped plan, and you are back at Ohio State.

I'm writing to tell you I met one of your wonderful students today. Not only am I impressed with the quality of our young people, but I feel safer too--he's in the National Guard. We had a delightful time volunteering together on a political campaign project for McCain-Palin.

However, as Glenn Beck would say, I need to wrap duct tape around my head to keep it from exploding over what I learned about the abusive behavior of your faculty at Ohio State. It was shocking and alarming, and as a tax payer, I recommend an investigation. I was aware of the brainwashing going on in the 80s and 90s, but I don't think it was anything like today. I think OSU's faculty of 20 years ago had more integrity, and weren't so monolithic in their views and politics.

He told me that he has seen every one of Michael Moore's movies in his college classes! It was required. One was a biology course, one was a political science course, and I've forgotten the other two. For one class final in a Latin American history course the only question was to write an essay on the seven best things Fidel Castro had done for Cuba. In another course where the students needed to write a persuasive paper, he chose "Why the U.S. needs to drill in ANWR." His instructor, an honest but not particularly ethical woman, told him at the outset he'd need to choose another topic. She'd have to flunk him because he'd never be able to persuade her, no matter how good his argument or bibliography, she said. He says the ridiculing and trashing of the Bush administration has been relentless in all his classes.

He also told me he doesn't know why we hear so much about unemployment--he has three jobs! After volunteering, he was going to go play golf with his dad, retired military, who was in town visiting.

Dr. Gee. Tell me. What is going on at Ohio State? Whatever happened to a liberal education where students were taught and encouraged to think on their own? Why are you asking for money for buildings and landscaping if all you're producing there is a graveyard for young minds?

The sale of National City

National City Corp., Ohio's biggest bank, acquired Buckeye Federal Savings and Loan of Columbus in 1991 which had a small branch in the Tremont Shopping Center close to our home. This week it agreed to be bought by PNC Financial Services Group for more than $5 billion. I had opened a savings account at Buckeye Federal because it was convenient (within walking distance). When depositors were allowed to buy stock, I did--maybe 10 shares. I think until it was bought by National City, I used my dividends to buy more stock. This was my first adventure into investing, and I know exactly where the money came from and the sad, sad story of where it has gone (subprime mortgages). My last dividend check was thirty-two cents, less than the stamp to mail it.

When my grandmother's estate was finally settled (it took years--apparently the fine state of Illinois thought my grandmother had given her three children her farms in Iowa and Illinois as a death-tax dodge). My mother, a very mild mannered woman with a wry sense of humor, said this was clearly ridiculous, noting that Grandmother a somewhat stubborn and strong willed woman had no intention of dying--ever. Grandma died in 1963 at 87, and I don't recall exactly when everything was settled, but it went on a long time. Sometime in the early to mid-1970s my mother gave me $5,000 from Grandma's estate. This was more money than I'd ever seen, so I took it to the Buckeye Federal branch, and in turn, opened college accounts for my two young children using their SS# (don't ever do that), and put the balance in my account.

I wanted to be very careful with this money because I knew the story of its journey. My grandmother's father was born in 1828 in Adams County, Pennsylvania. He was a hard worker, ambitious, and when news of the Gold Rush in California got to southeastern Pennsylvania, it looked like a lot more fun and money than driving a team to Baltimore and back for his father. So he and a friend were on their way. We have no record of what happened, but we assume the friend died during the trip, and Grandfather David settled in Rockford, Illinois where he worked as a carpenter making furniture and household things. He saved his money, and eventually bought acreage in Lee County very cheap because it was marsh land that needed to be tiled. He returned to Pennsylvania, found a bride, and they set up house near Ashton, Illinois.

Wedding photos, 1855
Fast forward through the Civil War, coming of the railroad and boom and bust years of the 19th century. When he died in 1912 his estate was worth about $250,000, which was a lot of money in those days--probably millions in today's dollars. My grandmother was the youngest of four, with a college education, husband and 2 young sons. The other three siblings had all died rather tragically as adults--Willy, diphtheria, Martha, child birth and Ira, blood poisoning. So she inherited a third of his estate along with her nieces and nephews, children of her deceased siblings. She and grandpa, who didn't like farming and wanted to be a business man, settled down on the farm--although neither were suited or prepared for this life. Fast forward through the ups and downs of WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, and old age, with grandma doing all she could to hang on to the land.

So that's how the money came down to me to deposit in Buckeye Federal, which was absorbed into National City (I'm guessing because of the S&L scandal of the 80s, but haven't really documented that), which this week met its own end. National City was most likely brought down by bad investments in subprime mortgages.

And it all started about 160 years ago with a young man heading for California on an adventure.

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Note: As I re-read this a month later, I see I used both "City National" and "National City", probably because when you leave a saved post in blogger to go out to the internet, it sometimes returns you to a previous unsaved post, and thus, you think a correction you made is there, and it isn't, you then resave, losing the first save. Get it? Well, since these mistakes never get erased, if you got here or didn't get here because of a mistake, I apologize. I really did try to correct them early on.

The health care gap and the poor

My years in a medical library have left me with a bias and love for medical literature. I'm pretty much down to reading JAMA regularly (love the poetry, essays, editorials and book reviews), but I also visit a lot of web pages and have bcome dependent on googling the terms that confuse me (many). I have a growing concern alarm about the amount of money circulating to support research on research (i.e. the value and distribution of information) and/or research on social/political issues or conditions. When you look at the huge dollar amounts from NIH, corporations, pharmaceuticals or foundations or even various philanthropic runs or walks for the disease of the week, you see that so much of it never finds its way into the lab or the clinic. It never touches the virus, bug or neoplasm. It gets sifted and sorted and distributed to various versions of the medical community organizer--ACORN in a lab coat--for lack of a better term.

For example, let's just look at this simple phrase in a review of Metabolic syndrome and psychiatic illness by Scott D. Mendelson (2008) which appeared in JAMA, Oct. 15, p. 1824.

Patients with chronic mental illnesses may not have access to regular medical care and may lead unhealthy lifestyles, and their physical conditions are often not diagnosed or treated in a timely fashion.

I can guarantee you there will be millions and millions of grant dollars heading out the door to chase "access" and "timely fashion," and not enough toward diagnosis and treatment. Further, there will be more millions wasted on "unhealthy lifestyles," primarily in the form of education, information, and hand wringing with endless lectures by the nearest relative--especially the mother! At the risk of sounding like a cold hearted wingnut as some of my readers call me (not realizing I'm a reformed humanist), I call that "peace and justice medicine." Science isn't advanced, people aren't healed, but liberals get a warm glow, a sense of doing something and a good salary.

Before you buy into peace and justice medicine, just look around at your own family or friends. Especially someone with very serious health concerns. You probably won't find lack of access or timely treatment (unless you're on a government plan, but that's another topic). You'll see that person's genes and jeans. What they inherited from the generations who came before them, and what they are doing with it now: eating too much, exercising too little, driving too fast, chasing too many rainbows, drinking too much, smoking or chewing tobacco, sleeping around, shooting up or sniffing, and hanging out with bad people. That about covers it.

There may be an insurance gap, gender gap or access gap for the mentally ill, but that isn't what made them ill. There may be some people who need cholesterol or high blood pressure medicine and don't get it because they bought groceries instead, but that's not what caused their high cholesterol. There may be men going to bath houses who don't know there is a drug out there for the disease they are about to plant inside the anus or mouth of another man, but it isn't ignorance or poverty that is causing their behavior.

More later. Time for the coffee shop and reading more book reviews in this excellent issue. I'm going to write P. Murali Doraiswamy, MD and tell him/her that was really an excellent review.

You've read or seen "I am Joe"

Don't miss "I am Bill" for equal time, to be fair to the other side, to spread the wealth and fun around.

In his 2001 screed, Fugitive Days, Ayers recounts his life as a Sixties radical, his tenure as a Weatherman lieutenant, his terrorist campaign across America, and his enduring hatred for the United States. "What a country," Ayers said in 2001. "It makes me want to puke." Discover the networks