Anatomy of a Scandal - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Anatomy of a Scandal
by

There is only one word for it.
 
That word is “scandal.”
 
That scandal is rapidly metastasizing, too. Overtaking you, your family, your business, your kid’s education and, last but certainly not least, the entire global economy.
 
Begin with the scarlet philosophical thread that takes expression from the following people in their own distinctive styles.
 
William Ayers: “I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist … Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it….The ethics of Communism still appeal to me.”
 
Jeremiah Wright: “God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human.”
 
Jimmy Carter: In a June 16, 1976 presentation to the Democrats’ platform committee, Carter promised that America under a Carter administration would help the poor by putting “Greater effort to direct mortgage money into the financing of private housing .”
 
Bill Clinton and Al Gore: Writing in their 1992 campaign book Putting People First, the two promised if elected they would: “Ease the credit crunch in our inner cities…to prevent redlining (and) require financial institutions to invest in homes in their communities.”
 
Franklin Raines: Like Carter, on this subject Clinton and Gore were as good as their word, installing Clinton Budget Director Franklin Raines to run Fannie Mae and get the job done. Raines did just what he was asked to do. As the New York Times reported on September 30, 1999:

”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”

Barack Obama: “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.”
 
And last but not least…
 
ACORN: As Stanley Kurtz over at NRO and Sol Stern of City Journal have both uncovered, a driving force of ACORN — quite aside from accusations that it has engaged in massive fraud in registering voters — has been to exert political pressure on banks to give loans to those otherwise unqualified. In the name, of course, of fairness. Reported Stern  on ACORN back in 2003:

ACORN’s anti-capitalism leads it to deep distrust of capitalism’s central instruments — the banks and other financial institutions that ACORN would class high among those “irresponsible… largest businesses.” ACORN loudly campaigns against “predatory lending,” “redlining,” and other forms of presumed abuse by financial institutions that supposedly hinder the minority poor from getting the capital needed for home buying and business start-ups. As an antidote, ACORN has latched on to a 1977 federal law, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was aimed at ensuring that banks do not discriminate against poor minority communities. Under its rules, banks must go through a costly process of reporting where and to whom they lend money, to show that they don’t discriminate. There are no official penalties for banks that get less than satisfactory ratings from the regulators on this issue. But when banks need approval for mergers or acquisitions, the CRA gives “community groups” the opportunity to lodge complaints against them, alleging suspect lending practices. If there’s even the appearance of discrimination, the regulators may put the bank’s deal on hold.

How did the banks respond to this political pressure from ACORN to lend money to financially unqualified applicants? Says Stern:

ACORN has developed a lucrative niche as an “advisor” to banks seeking regulatory approvals. Thus we have J. P. Morgan & Company, the legatee of the man who once symbolized for many all that was supposedly evil about American capitalism, suddenly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN. This act of generosity and civic-mindedness came, interestingly, just as Morgan was asking bank regulators for approval of a merger with Chase Manhattan. Not to be outdone, Chase also decided to grant more than $200,000 to ACORN.

Stern concludes by quoting one “prominent consultant to the financial industry, who preferred to remain anonymous” as saying this: “The banks know they are being held up, but they are not going to fight over this. They look at it as a cost of doing business.”

The cost of doing business. Wow. Remember that the next time you look at what’s left of your portfolio.
 
Paying what amounts to blackmail money to appease the political pressures from ACORN — while letting ACORN have their way with banks and financial institutions — has now, incredibly, helped bring millions of Americans — perhaps you, dear reader — to the brink of bankruptcy. Stocks, mutual funds, 401k’s, pensions, credit — the financial guts of a family, a business, and in turn the underlying financial foundation of the U.S. government itself — are now in serious, serious trouble. Entire Wall Street institutions are utterly collapsed. Somewhere Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are surely laughing hysterically.

This is in real part because of ACORN, the self-same organization that is now being investigated for massive voter fraud in key electoral states from Pennsylvania to Nevada. The same organization which Barack Obama himself once counseled in his role as a “community organizer.” (You wanted to know what a community organizer does? Look at the condition of your 401k and you will now get it immediately.) And, not to be forgotten, ACORN shares some shade of the philosophical thread that runs in varying hues from the blood red fuses of Bill Ayers bombs to the purple prose of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons to the housing policies advocated and implemented by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore and defended by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and an army of Democrats captured on videotape.
 

DO YOU GET the picture here? Do you see the thread? William Ayers thought America was so unfair he became a self-described “radical Leftist” who expressed his views on American capitalism by bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Jeremiah Wright his pulpit to preach that America was so unfair because it treated our own citizens as “less than human.” Jimmy Carter was so disturbed at the lack of fairness in the free market he vowed that if he were elected president in 1976 he would put “greater effort” into making sure the government could “direct mortgage money” to housing for the poor. He was as good as his word, getting the Community Reinvestment Act passed in 1977. The purpose of the Carter legislation was to reduce “discriminatory” credit practices affecting the poor. Like clockwork, this in turn opened the door for ACORN. Fannie Mae boss Franklin Raines, the Clinton appointee who walked away from the agency with $90 million, was so intent on making things fair for those “millions of families” unable to buy homes (as Clinton and Gore had promised in 1992) that he reduced “down payment requirements,” a key tenet of ACORN.
 
Here’s Stanley Kurtz — way back in May — on the findings of his investigation into Barack Obama and ACORN: “Obama’s ties to Acorn — arguably the most politically radical large-scale activist group in the country — are wide, deep, and longstanding.”
 
In other words, working with ACORN was part of Obama’s self-appointed role as a “community organizer.” Long before having any association with ACORN had the serious potential, as it now suddenly very much does, of being a political liability, Obama sought and received the endorsement of its political arm for his presidential campaign. These were his old buddies, so, of course, he got it. Why not? After all, in his own words at the time:

“I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

Are we clear here? Barack Obama not only was the counsel for ACORN as part of his “community organizer” role he considered “the work you do” important. Said he: “We appreciate your work.” He was proud to be “fighting alongside ACORN on issues” it cared about. And what do we now know the results of ACORN’s work and its issues to be? Starkly and very simply put they have:
 
1. Undermined the financial stability of you, your family, your business and your government with a financial collapse unrivaled since the Great Depression.
 
2. Flooded battleground states in this election with a massive attempt at fraudulent voter registration that is on the verge of stealing the presidency of the United States for Obama.
 
One question.
 
WHERE IS JOHN McCAIN?????????
 
This is a blossoming scandal that will make Watergate look like a piker. And someone has the …pardon me, but the word that comes to mind is “stupidity”….to say that Ayers and Wright and the ideology of what and why they did what they did have no connection to where we are right this minute? Are they kidding? That bright, scarlet philosophical thread that runs straight from the bombs of Bill Ayers to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright to the political shenanigans of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd has gradually revealed itself to be a very long fuse to a spectacular explosion of financial and political scandal. An explosion linking everything from the political blackmail of institutions like J.P. Morgan to the financial manipulations of Franklin Raines and Fannie Mae and stunningly connects to ACORN and Obama himself. Last and certainly not least, this same fuse led directly to the destruction of your personal wealth — your money — and is even now poised to steal your votes and destroy the possibility of an honest election.

Two points:

* If the McCain campaign cannot connect all these dots for voters — in the last debate, on the stump, in its commercials and with its surrogates — this will go down in history as a spectacular example of political malpractice.

* Second, and without question of more importance. If in fact this election produces a majority for Obama from voters who do not yet see the connection between ACORN, Obama, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Fannie Mae and the resulting status of their own personal financial well-being and that of, quite literally, the entire global economy, there are two words for the day after an Obama election. With a tip of the hat to Ben Stein they are these:

Special Prosecutor.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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