Obama-ACORN, he is up to his elbows in this!

[BodybyFisher]

You want to talk politics, LETS TALK POLITICS Read EVERY word, and watch EVERY video before any knee jerk responses...

Obama Sued Citibank Under CRA to Force it to Make Bad Loans - UPDATED

September 30, 2008 — iusbvision

UPDATE V: AUDIO - OBAMA SAID IN 2007 THAT GIVING SUB-PRIME LOANS TO PEOPLE WHO COULDN’T AFFORD THEM WAS A GOOD IDEA!!! Hotair.com comments HERE.

“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.” — Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007

Do you remember how we told you that the Democrats and groups associated with them leaned on banks and even sued to get them to make bad loans by abusing the Community Reinvestment Act (see HERE and HERE)? The abuse of this act by ACORN and officials like Janet Reno was a factor in causing the economic crisis. The harasment suits filed under this act were used to get banks to lower credit standards and hand out high risk loans. Fellow bloggers have dug up the lawsuit below while researching Obama’s legal career. It is a typical example of an ACORN harassment lawsuit.

In these lawsuits, ACORN makes a bogus claim of Redlining (denying poor people loans because of their ethnic heritage). They protest and get the local media to raise a big stink. This stink means that the bank faces thousands of people closing their accounts and get local politicians to lobby to stop the bank from doing some future business, expansions and mergers. If the bank goes to court, they will win, but the damage is already done because who is going to launch a big campaign to get the bank’s reputation back?

It is important to understand the nature of these lawsuits and what their purpose is. ACORN filed tons of these lawsuits and ALL of them allege racism.

Case Name

Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank Fair Housing/Lending/Insurance

Docket / Court 94 C 4094 ( N.D. Ill. ) FH-IL-0011

State/Territory Illinois

Case Summary

Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982. Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages.

U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo certified the Plaintiffs’ suit as a class action on June 30, 1995. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 322 (N.D. Ill. 1995). Also on June 30, Judge Castillo granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of a sample of Defendant-bank’s loan application files. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 338 (N.D. Ill. 1995).

The parties voluntarily dismissed the case on May 12, 1998, pursuant to a settlement agreement.

Plaintiff’s Lawyers Alexis, Hilary I. (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Childers, Michael Allen (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Clayton, Fay (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Cummings, Jeffrey Irvine (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Love, Sara Norris (Virginia)

FH-IL-0011-9000

Miner, Judson Hirsch (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Obama, Barack H. (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Wickert, John Henry (Illinois)

FH-IL-0011-9000

UPDATE: Hotair.com comments on this story HERE.

New York Post Article HERE:

THE seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in “subprime” loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN.

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansion have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.

The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott’s way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN’s overall efforts.

UPDATE II: Fox News gets on the story

UPDATE III: CNS News Analysis

Under the Clinton administration, federal regulators began using the act to combat “red-lining,” a practice by which banks loaned money to some communities but not to others, based on economic status. “No loan is exempt, no bank is immune,” warned then-Attorney General Janet Reno. “For those who thumb their nose at us, I promise vigorous enforcement.” VIGOROUS ENFORCEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Clinton-Reno threat of “vigorous enforcement” pushed banks to make the now infamous loans that many blame for the current meltdown, Richman said. “Banks, in order to not get in trouble with the regulators, had to make loans to people who shouldn’t have been getting mortgage loans.”

This threat combined with the government backing of Fannie and Freddie set the stage for the current uncertainty, because the “banks could just sell the loans off to Fannie or Freddie,” who could buy them with little regard for negative financial outcomes, Richman said.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/arti...px?RsrcID=36048

UPDATE IV: Its about time …

Update VI: Investors business daily reports more on Obama’s work with ACORN

As the New York Times reports, “Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure.” Is the reason the fact that the slush fund for ACORN in the original bill, siphoning off 20% of any future profits for such activist groups, was trimmed from the tree?

Obama, who once represented ACORN in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, was hired by the group to train its community organizers and staff in the methods and tactics of the late Saul Alinsky. ACORN would stage in-your-face protests in bank lobbies, drive-through lanes and even at bank managers’ homes to get them to issue risky loans in the inner city or face charges of racism.

In the early 1990s, reports Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center, Obama was personally recruited by Chicago’s ACORN to run training sessions in “direct action.” That’s the euphemism for the techniques used under the cover of the federal Community Reinvestment Act to intimidate financial institutions into giving what have been called “Ninja” loans — no income, no job, no assets — to people who couldn’t afford them.

CRA was designed to increase minority homeownership. Whenever a bank wanted to grow or expand, ACORN would file complaints that it was not sufficiently sensitive to the needs of minorities in providing home loans. Agitators would then be unleashed.

Chicago’s ACORN used Alinsky’s tactics against institutions such as Bell Federal Savings and Loan and Avondale Federal Savings. In September 1992, the Chicago Tribune described the group’s agenda as “affirmative action lending.”

Obama also helped ACORN get funding. When he served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave ACORN grants to fund its activist agenda.

In 1995, Kurtz reports, Obama chaired the committee that increased funding of ACORN and other community organizers. The committee report boasted that the fund’s “non-ideological” image “enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and governmental ‘establishments’ without undue risk of being accused of partisanship.”

The CRA empowered regulators to punish banks that failed to “meet the credit needs” of “low-income, minority and distressed neighborhoods.” It gave groups such as ACORN a license and a means to intimidate banks, claiming they were “redlining” poor and minority neighborhoods. ACORN employed its tactics in 1991 by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA.

As a former White House staff economist writes in the American Thinker, Obama represented ACORN in a 1994 suit against redlining. ACORN was also a driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and helped spawn the current financial crisis.

Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. Last November, he told the group, “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.” Indeed he has. Obama was and is fully aware of what ACORN was doing with the money and expertise he provided. The voters should be aware on Nov. 4 of the roles of both in creating the current crisis.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.a...307667123149723

UPDATE VII: Some on the left are saying that SNOPES.com has debunked this story, this is not so. Snopes is talking about another story that makes a different claim about this same lawsuit. It does not dispute that this lawsuit was one of a series of lawsuits that were filed by ACORN using Redlining and racism allegations to lower credit standards. It does not dispute that all of the ACORN CRA lawsuits claimed redlining and racism. It does not dispute that at other times ACORN used intimidation tactics against bank managers to try and make them give high risk loans. ACORNS activities have been widely reported by many news outfits in the last few days. We are glad that we were one of the first to get this story right.

[BodybyFisher]

NOW, JUST LAST WEEK IN THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE $700 "BAILOUT", THIS!!! I am going to strangle somebody, these arrogant DEMS have GUTS!!!!!!!

Reference: http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3425

September 26, 2008 – The $700 billion bailout package being debated by the White House and members of the Senate and House may help provide millions in funds from this bailout package to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the National Urban League, and the radical Hispanic group known as La Raza. (In Section Two of this report, readers will learn that it was ACORN and other liberal groups were a factor in creating this mortgage crisis in the first place.)

Time is short to protest this effort to fund radical organizations through this bailout! Contact your two U.S. Senators and U.S Representative immediately.

The funding of these liberal and radical groups is to be made through funds given to the Affordable Housing Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund to allegedly “meet America’s housing needs.” Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) is behind this effort to fund these radical groups with bailout money.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was on Fox News on Thursday night criticizing the efforts of liberal Senators to fund ACORN through federal housing programs! This would give ACORN and other groups $100 million or more for their radical voter registration schemes and organizing “the poor.”

In Section Two of this report, TVC will explain the radical objectives of ACORN and its connection to Sen. Barack Obama.

TAKE ACTION: Contact your two U.S. Senators and U.S Representative and tell them that you do not want any federal tax dollars in this bailout going to ACORN or any other liberal organization. If the bailout is to be passed, it should not give these groups money to engage in political organizing or fraudulent voter registration projects.

Section Two: Radical ACORN Helped Create Subprime Mortgage Crisis

The Obama-connected group known as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is one of the main culprits behind the current mortgage crisis in the United States, according to Stan Liebowitz, an economics professor at the University of Texas in Dallas.

Professor Liebowitz outlined how ACORN helped create this financial mess in a New York Post article (Feburary 5, 2008). According to Liebowitz, during the 1980s, groups like ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining” against banks for “discriminating” against minorities in mortgage lending.

In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress amended the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and forced banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants. This was then followed by studies that seemed to validate the claim that banks were discriminating. But that wasn’t the reason banks were rejecting minority loans. “…minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications - but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances,” said Liebowitz.

Then, in 1992, the Boston Federal Reserve bank issued a report claiming there was systemic lending discrimination against minorities. Liebowitz and others analyzed this study and found it to be seriously flawed – but the ACORN agenda triumped.

The Boston Fed issued a manual for mortgage lenders urging them to relax qualifications for getting home loans. A 1995 revision of the Community Reinvestment Act “required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

“Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

“Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course,” said Liebowitz.

The Fannie Mae Foundation began working with community activists and engaged in “flexible” underwriting criteria. Low-income loans grew from $1 billion in 1992 to $600 billion by 2003. Among those giving these risky loans was Countrywide.

Liebowitz predicted in 1998 that these flexible loans would end in financial disaster for our nation. He wrote: “After the warm and fuzzy glow of 'flexible underwriting standards' has worn off, we may discover that they are nothing more than standards that lead to bad loans . . . these policies will have done a disservice to their putative beneficiaries if . . . they are dispossessed from their homes.”

That day has arrived – and America can blame ACORN and other community organizer groups that pushed risky loans upon banks and mortgage companies.

Sen. Barack Obama has attempted to blame the Bush Administration and John McCain for these financial collapses, but Obama trained ACORN activists in Chicago and provided the group with legal representation.

[BodybyFisher]

Yea lets talk politics, my favorite subject besides NORTHSTARS.........................

This is EXTORTION pure and simple, this is what Jessie Jackson does

[Cadillac Jim]

Perhaps someone with access to the Congressional Record (is it online yet?) can get us the votes on the 2002 reform bill that failed, and other votes on the CRA. The text on the 1995 revision would be a nice accompaniment for the vote tally. Other such would be nice, too.

Anyone needing web space to post files for linking to Caddyinfo posts please contact me by PM.

[JimD]

Yea lets talk politics, my favorite subject besides NORTHSTARS.........................

This is EXTORTION pure and simple, this is what Jessie Jackson does

Are you saying that Jesse actualy has a job?

[BodybyFisher]

Yea lets talk politics, my favorite subject besides NORTHSTARS.........................

This is EXTORTION pure and simple, this is what Jessie Jackson does

Are you saying that Jesse actualy has a job?

Isn't he the head of the Rainbow Coalition Shakedown Organization?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow/PUSH_Coalition

WOW, this just keeps getting more and more ugly, see this in the above link:

In 1998 the Rainbow/Push organization admonished Freddie Mac for its lending and employment practices, which led to its pledge to earmark $1 billion in mortgage loans specifically for minorities, to donate more than $1 million directly to Rainbow/PUSH and to became a sponsor of Jackson's annual Wall Street Project.

[rek]

What's even more add-mazing... Hank and Benny were clueless...

[BodybyFisher]

What's even more add-mazing... Hank and Benny were clueless...

I HATE this expression, but its appropriate here, YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!

Personally, I think its worse than we know. Its a political football for sure, they are selling the country down the drain for politics, it shows you how important this election is. Look at Pelosi TODAY talking about ANOTHER $150 BILLION STIMULAS PACKAGE... WTF?

[BodybyFisher]

Throw money at it in an election year.

Last week I was at a friends house, he asked me to look over his computer system and bring it up to date (network, 19" flat screen second monitor, wireless print server, etc). He was shocked that I could expand his desktop to a second monitor. He was very excited about what I was going to do, and I said, I can spend other peoples money, really good.

That is what Pelosi is doing, a single voice, she is spending the US tax payers money, $150 billion of it, just like that, for political reasons. Keep in mind that only 35% of the public actually pays federal taxes. They hate corporations but corporations pay a lion share of taxes in this country, and while they yell that its only 10%, that so called 10%, if it is true, is substantial. What that public does not realize is that, while the dems talk tough about TAXING oil companies WINDFALL PROFITS and corporation's PROFIT, that figure is just passed along to JQ Public, you and I... so who the H are they kidding. It's class warfare, tax the rich! This is why they farm or harvest VICTIMS and UNACHIEVERS, and the UNDISCIPLINED among us, they need them for support. This is what we are up against.

Go back and read about Marx, Stalin and Socialism.

You know, I have always defined the dems as 'glass is half empty types'. They are miserable, mean, angry, miserable people. Look at Hillary, Shumer, Reid and Pelosi compared to Palin, Boehner, Rice, Guiliani who are glass is half FULL types, smiling happy people. I HATE being around NEGATIVE people, anyone who knows me, I JUMP on negative people like a 300 pound bouncer, don't I? It's natural, who the F wants to be around negative CS'ers? Anyone? Its time we wake up and realize that we ARE in trouble. MFer OBAMA has complained about PAYING MFing COLLEGE loans OVER AND OVER, HASN'T he? I came from a very very difficult childhood, money was ALWAYS a problem, but I found my way thought college, I found it in a circuitious way, but I found my way. AND I payed college loans for 10 years and I DID NOT COMPLAIN....

ARE WE suppose to pay for EVERY child to go to college?, what happen to apprentiships?, trades, etc? What happened to working your way though college? Everyone has to have a landscaper these days, what happened to the days kids combed the neighborhoods and mowed lawns for spending money, in high school and college I mowed three or four lawns a day. Oh I guess these are jobs AMERICANS don't do anymore, huh? And we have FAT kids besides, no one goes outside, no one plays stick ball, box ball, etc, ITS TOO DANGEROUS... I played stick ball in WEST PHILADELPHIA and SURVIVED. My neighbor came over and cautioned me that I let my daughter play on the LAWN, and I am making a mistake, what? why?, well I guess so... What is the impact of 24 hour CABLE news?, someone farts in Utah and its on the TUBE within the hour, what had media created here? Has anyone listened to some of the music lately, rap music, the other day I heard, I want you in HIGH HEELS and HAND CUFFS... WHAT?, this is the station MY 10 yo DAUGHTER listens to! Oh I know, MONITOR what she watches and listens to, like someone else said yesterday, DON'T read the politics. What has happened to us?

Instead of throwing money at problems like PELOSI wants to do, hand ANYONE one of these MFers asked what the problem actually is?

We have gone from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Everything is manufactured in the middle east and China. Let me remind you all that OUR manufacturing won WW2. We, the US, we manufacture NOTHING, we put a MAN on the MOON and we MANUFACTURE NOTHING, NOTHING! Well you will say, we have the best military in the world, YEA?, we have sold and allowed CHINA to get our national secrets, directly from Los Alamos for YEARS. China has just orbited the earth. China, a communist country, who has the worst environmental problems on the planet, who was allowed into the WTO during the CLINTON administration manufactures everything. Let me remind the YUTES that CHINA, supported NORTH VIETNAM, when we were in that situation.

How many jobs have gone to India, anyone call tech support recently?, why is it OUR people could not do that? When did we stop nuturing our OWN people. Why is OBAMA willing to RID the WORLD of poverty, RID the US of POVERTY, the WORLD is NOT our responsiblity, we already defend it when we have to..

Our education has been diluted to the LEAST common denominator. Bill Gates needs to go OUTSIDE the country for educated workers, why is that? http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9892046-7.html

When you have Bill Gates saying he needs to go OUTSIDE the US to get well educated employees, that is saying something. Who is going to ask, what is wrong and HOW are we going to fix it?, not just put a bandaid on it.

Reagan fought against Communism in Hollywood, I wonder if we have been gutted from inside?, read this on Reagan:

His first vote, at age 21 in 1932, was for Franklin Roosevelt and the "full Democratic ticket." In his autobiography he writes:

During the Fireside Chats, his strong, gentle, confident voice resonated across the nation with an eloquence that brought comfort and resilience to a nation caught up in a storm and reassured us that we could lick any problem. I will never forget him for that.

After college, during the Depression, he found work as a sports announcer, eventually for Chicago Cubs baseball games, honing his play-by-play descriptions to a maximum connection with his common listener. While in Los Angeles he followed someone's advice and succeeded in winning an acting contract at Warner Brothers motion pictures studio. He had to join a union: the Screen Actors Guild. Reagan writes:

As far as I was concerned, some of the studio bosses were abusing their power. Throughout my life, I guess, there's been one thing that's troubled me more than any other: the abuse of people and the theft of their democratic rights.

Reagan was chosen as one of the Guild's board of directors. On the board with him were big-name stars such as Cary Grant and Jimmy Cagney who, in Reagan's words, "gave their time and prestige to assure that lesser players like me got a fair shake."

When war came in 1941, Reagan was thirty. He joined the Army as a second lieutenant and ended as a captain on duty in California, an adjutant and personnel officer at Fort Roach, a movie studio used by the military. Working with civilians assigned to Fort Roach, Reagan learned about bureaucracy. He writes,

If I suggested that an employee might be expendable, his supervisor would look at me as if I were crazy. He didn't want to reduce the size of his department; his salary was based to a large extent on the number of people he supervised. He wanted to increase it, not decrease it.

I discovered it was almost impossible to remove an incompetent or lazy worker and that one of the most popular methods supervisors used in dealing with an incompetent was to transfer him or her out of his department to a higher-paying job in another department.

We had a warehouse filled with cabinets containing old records that had no use or historic value. They were totally obsolete. Well, with a war on, there was a need for the warehouse and the filing cabinets, so a request was sent up through channels requesting permission to destroy the obsolete peoples. Back came a reply - permission granted provided copies are made of each paper destroyed.

Reagan was acquiring a "distaste for big government," but at the end of the war he remained, he writes, a "New Dealer to the core." He did not trust big business. From a family that believed in fair and decent treatment for blacks, he was disturbed by racism. He writes that at the end of the war "scores of new veterans' groups sprouted up around the country and were trying to peddle some of the same venom of fascist bigotry that we had just defeated in the war." As an after-dinner speaker, Reagan spoke against the rise of "neo-fascism" in America. He joined the United World Federalists and the American Veterans Committee, impressed by their slogan "A Citizen First, a Veteran Afterward." He dismissed as "foolish and paranoid" those who were denouncing the Russians, remembering that the Russians had been allies of the U.S. in the war against fascism.

Meanwhile, the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Communist Party in the United States was maintaining its devotion to the world's one Marxist-Leninist power: the Soviet Union. The Communist Party USA saw verbal attacks on Stalin or the Soviet Union as lies, bourgeois propaganda and counter-revolution - ten years before the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would denounce Stalin. Not pursuing a strategy independent Stalin - as Tito, Yugoslavia's Communist leader, would - made the Communist Party USA more at odds with public opinion and more vulnerable to attack. And in Hollywood, the Party's eagerness to advance itself within left-of-center organizations appears to have put it on a collision course with various people in Hollywood, including Ronald Reagan.

There were forty-three labor unions in the picture business, most of them affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, as was the Screen Actors Guild and the International Association of Theatrical and State Employees (IATSE). In 1946 an attempt was made to take over the IATSE by a new group called the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU). The CSU planned to set up picket lines at Warner Brothers Studios. Reagan investigated the strike for the Screen Actors Guild, and he decided that the strike was " phony." He described it as a jurisdictional dispute between two unions, not something worth shutting down the movie industry. While making a movie he was called to a telephone at a nearby gas station. The caller would not identify himself and said that if Reagan made a speech against the strike at an upcoming meeting of the full membership of the Screen Actors Guild a squad of people would be waiting for him. According to Reagan the caller said, "Your face will never be in pictures again.

Burbank police gave Reagan a gun to carry, and a twenty-four hour guard was put on his house. Reagan spoke to the full membership of the guild, and the membership voted 2,748 to 509 in favor of crossing the CSU picket line. According to Reagan the gates of the studios became a bloody battleground of daily clashes between the people who wanted to work and the strikers and outside agitators brought in to help them. Homes and cars were bombed and many people were seriously injured. During the strike a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to Reagan's home and informed him that during a meeting of the Communist Party in downtown Los Angeles one of the members asked, "What they hell are we going to do about that son-of-abitching bastard Reagan?"

The FBI agent also told Reagan that the Communist Party was attempting to gain control of the Hollywood work force and also striving to influence the content of movies through the work of several prominent film writers and actors who were Communist Party members or Party sympathizers. The agent invited Reagan to meet periodically with the FBI for discussions regarding developments, and Reagan agreed.

Reagan was invited to fill a vacancy on the board of directors of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. At a meeting of that organization, Reagan was annoyed with the arbitrary manner of the chairman. Also the former president's son, Jimmy Roosevelt, whom Reagan knew personally, was verbally attacked by "a couple of well-known Hollywood writers" for saying that a group such as this needed to be vigilant against being used by Communist sympathizers. Dore Schary, the head of MGM motion picture studios, sitting next to Reagan, whispered to Reagan to stop by the apartment of the actress Olivia de Havilland after the meeting. There, Reagan heard about ten others speak of their suspicion that Communists were trying to take over the organization. He turned to de Havilland and whispered: "You know, Olivia, I always thought you might be one of them." Reagan writes that "She laughed and said, "That's funny. I thought you were one of them."

At a meeting of the executive committee, De Havilland submitted a motion that the board declare its "belief in free enterprise and the Democratic system" and repudiate "Communism as desirable for the United States." None of the other members of the executive committee supported the motion. De Havilland, Reagan and ten others resigned from the organization, what Reagan describes as "the last front of respectability" for the group. And within a week, he writes, it was out of business.

Reagan went to a meeting of the board of the veterans' organization he had joined, a meeting being held in an abandoned store that had been lent to the group. He sat on one of the folding chairs. "As soon as I sat down," he writes, "every member on the board who had been sitting on that side of the aisle got up and moved across to the other side, leaving me to sit along. Shortly after that , I learned the group had become another front for the Communist Party in Hollywood."

Reagan writes with critical words of the arrival of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee coming to Hollywood searching more for personal publicity than Communists. "Many fine people, he writes in his autobiography, were accused wrongly of being Communists simply because they were liberals. "I was all for kicking Communists out of Hollywood," he added, "but some members of the House Un-American Activities Committee, ignoring standards of truth and fair play, ganged up on innocent people and tried to blacklist them." Reagan and others formed an "industry council" to contact people threatened with blacklisting. The council suggested that these people cooperate with the FBI and the House Committee and declare their innocence.

Some in Hollywood believed that Communists and "sympathizers" had as much right to work in Hollywood as anyone. Reagan, on the other hand, believed that Stalin wanted to get control over the motion picture industry, and he complained in his autobiography that a lot of "liberals" just couldn't accept that Moscow had bad intentions or that Stalin was "a murderous gangster." To them, writes Reagan, fighting totalitarian was "witch hunting" and "red baiting."

[BodybyFisher]

In 2000, Gates and his wife founded the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence. Bill Gates and his father have met with Rockefeller several times and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.[51]

The foundation's grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in third world countries, and other causes. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities from 2000 onwards. These donations are usually cited as sparking a substantial change in attitudes towards philanthropy among the very rich, with philanthropy becoming the norm.[52]

Transition

On June 16, 2006, Gates announced that he would move to a part-time role within Microsoft (leaving day-to-day operations management)[53] in July 2008 to begin a full-time career in philanthropy, but would remain as chairman. Gates credited Warren Buffett with influencing his decision to commit himself to charitable causes.[54] Days later, Buffett announced that he would begin matching Gates' contributions to the Gates Foundation, up to $1.5 billion per year in stock

Then you have the GIMME GIMME GIMME types, this occured in March 2008:

"No," the Microsoft chairman responded sharply. "These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of where."

Rohrabacher said he's not talking about "top" students. He's concerned about the B and C American students who "fought for our country and kept it free." There's no excuse, he argued, for displacing those people with "A students from India."

An audibly irritated Gates replied that when companies like Microsoft hire top foreign engineers, they create jobs for B and C American students around them. If Microsoft weren't able to hire those top engineers in the United States, it'd be doing so in other countries and surrounding them with native B and C students, he said.

Rohrabacher argued that if companies like Microsoft simply raised wages, they'd find plenty of Americans lining up for those jobs.

"No, it's not an issue of raising wages," Gates retorted. "These jobs are very, very high paying jobs."

Earlier in his remarks, Gates said Microsoft was unable to hire one-third of the foreign-born candidates it wished to hire because of too few H-1B visas. In an attempt to show a shortage of qualified Americans to fill his company's posts, he pointed to a 2008 National Science Foundation study that found in 2005, 59 percent of all doctoral degrees and 43 percent of all higher-education degrees in engineering and science are awarded to temporary residents.

Gates also suggested the U.S. government's stance toward high-skilled foreigners is absurd in comparison with other countries. He pointed out Microsoft's decision last year to open an outpost just over the Canadian border from Washington as a sort of refuge for foreign-born employees for whom it couldn't obtain U.S. visas.

Rohrabacher's badgering isn't just talk: He has sponsored a bill that would require employers to prove they're not displacing American workers and fulfill other obligations before obtaining H-1Bs, as have two U.S. senators. What is wrong with fixing the problem?

Such efforts enjoy support from groups representing American computer programmers, such as the Programmers Guild, which continue to argue that the worker shortages described by Gates and other high-tech executives in recent years are bogus.

Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of the book Outsourcing America, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that it's wrong for Gates to imply that most H-1Bs are going to the brightest foreigners with advanced degrees and earning them big bucks. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the typical H-1B holder holds a bachelor's degree and is making a median salary of $50,000. And the same NSF report referenced by Gates says less than 1 percent of H-1B recipients in computer-related professions even hold doctoral degrees, and about 44 percent hold master's degrees.

Still, politicians with a skeptical view of visa expansion appear to be largely the exception in Congress. Other members from both political parties at Wednesday's hearing suggested Gates' push for a more liberal immigration policy was right on.

Whether those long-sought changes will occur this year remains unclear. Attempts to overhaul the immigration system collapsed last year, and with them went efforts to hike the number of H-1B visas and green cards.

"These top people are going to be hired. It's just a question of where."

--Microsoft Chairman Bill GatesTo be fair, Gates emphasized that changes in immigration alone aren't enough. He repeatedly called for improvements in training American teachers and students in science and technology fields at all levels, from kindergartens to universities. THAT IS THE ANSWER.....

Few in Congress seem to disagree with Gates' push for greater investments in research and education. Last year, the president signed a measure called the America Competes Act into law, which calls for pouring some $33.6 billion into a bevy of federal science, technology and research programs. Members of the Science Committee said they would be pressuring appropriations committees to ensure the target funding amounts are fulfilled in the final budget.

Throughout the hearing, Gates repeatedly received praise for his work through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But at least one member, Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), who represents what she called the "challenging communities" of Watts, Compton, and Long Beach, clearly wanted Gates to be even more generous. She pressed the billionaire philanthropist to commit to sponsoring more scholarships with guaranteed jobs at companies like his waiting after a university degree is obtained.

Gates said he agrees scholarships are important, but he wasn't willing to go as far as Richardson had wished. HE ONLY EARMARKED $7 BILLION, but I guess that is not enough for Richardson

[Cadillac Jim]

The brain drain has been in progress for a long time and has taken up a lot of steam since 2000. At the professional symposia, the foreign students and professors are the majority, and occasionally the overwhelming majority. Some journals that once were entirely made up of papers from USA contributors have become almost entirely papers from foreign contributors. The fields I talk about include hydroacoustics and antenna hardware technology. The trend is apparent in every area.

We have 75% of the world economy at play in the USA. We should have 75% of the participation in industry, economics and academia. In order to make the world a better place, the USA has opened its markets and exported foreign aid and moved toward developing third-world countries. This worked well until we lost our energy independence in 1972. Since then the situation has gradually deteriorated, and the US has not moved decisively and committed to a plan that will sustain us indefinitely; the analogy occurs to me of cooking a lobster by putting him in cold water and warming the whole thing on a stove versus dropping him in a pot of hot water.

[BodybyFisher]

Thanks to Britt for forwarding the following info to me, I had planned to research it but this is perfect.

Like I said, OBAMA is up to his elbows in this mess

Here is a quick look into 3 former Fannie Mae executives who have brought down Wall Street.

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregulaties in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the time of his departure The Wall Street Journal noted, " Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday conceding that "mistakes were made" and saying he would assume responsibility as he had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years." Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion.

Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear. http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/ . The Government noted, "The 101 charges reveal how the individuals improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The Notice explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner." These charges were made in 2006. The Court ordered Raines to return $50 Million Dollars he received in bonuses based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.

Tim Howard - Was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the books. The Government Investigation determined that, "Chief Financial Officer, Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae,"

On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004.

Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.

Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES? Raines works for the Obama Campaign as Chief Economic Advisor

TIM HOWARD? Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama

JIM JOHNSON? Johnson hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee

Excerpts from CSPAN Democrats & Franklin Raines Defend Freddie and Fannie