Pelosi Declares Hearings On Housing Crisis: Barney Frank To Co-Chair

Immediately after the Wall Street Bailout bill passed the House and went to the Oval Office for Presidential signature, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that there would be hearings on the subject.

According to CNN:

She said Congress will shine a new “light of scrutiny and accountability” on the nation’s financial system to try to prevent a replay of the problems that plunged the nation into a financial crisis. Reps. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, and Henry Waxman, D-California, plan to hold hearings to increase scrutiny of the financial system, Pelosi added. “We want to take our country in a new direction for the middle class,” Pelosi said. Frank told reporters Friday that starting in January, Congress will “have a major role.” “We have to rewrite housing in America. … It would be highly irresponsible if we were to stop here,” he said. “Now we have to perform more serious reform.”

Yet, she mentions nothing about the accountability of people like Sen. Chris Dodd, or Franklin Raines or Jamie Gorelick, the latter two having made millions off of Fannie while the organization itself was sliding into government conservatorship.

And what about Barney Frank Co-Chairing these hearings? Will anyone get him to answer questions about the way he blocked reform of Freddie and Fannie over the past several years? Will Pelosi demand accountability and transparency from him? No. She is nothing more than a partisan hack who just managed to cram through the biggest socialist package in American history.

Something else that should be looked into: Barney Frank’s relationship with a former Fannie executive named Herb Moses.

From Fox News:

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions. Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie. Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical. “It’s absolutely a conflict,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane? “If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane,” added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. “But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.” A top GOP House aide agreed. “C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?” the aide told FOX News. “No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.” Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Of course they didn’t immediately respond. They need time to think up a way of spinning out of it.

You can access these articles on-line here:

Pelosi: After Bill Passage, Hearings Set To Begin
CNN.com
October 3, 2008

Lawmaker Accused Of Fannie Mae Conflict Of Interest
Bill Sammon
Fox News
October 3, 2008

Congress Passes Legislation That Hands American Taxpayers The Largest Bill In History

All the scaremongers said that it was necessary to avert a credit crisis.

Credit crisis?

Where? I was still getting credit card offers through the mail. A 20-year-old friend of mine just got approved for a car loan. Student loans are still being approved. Small businesses are still able to get loans. Exactly where is the “credit crisis?”

Only on Wall Street. And Congress has now authorized the President to screw the American Taxpayer with over $805 billion in responsibilities. Maybe our children will be able to pay this off, but those of us living on Main Street just got served notice that the Federal Government cares more about the people who make big campaign donations than they do about the American people.

From the Associated Press:

The final vote, 263-171 in the House, a comfortable margin that was 58 more votes than it garnered on Monday. The vote capped two weeks of tumult in Congress and on Wall Street, punctuated by daily warnings that the country confronted the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression if lawmakers failed to act. Bush was poised to make a statement on the historic vote. “We all know that we are in the midst of a financial crisis,” House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, said shortly before casting his vote for government intervention in private capital markets that was unthinkable only a month ago. “And we know that if we do nothing, this crisis is likely to worsen and to put us into an economic slump like most of us have never seen.”

And this bailout is going to put us in a situation like none of us have ever seen!

Here is what I see:

- Wall Street Big Wigs and the Congressional recipients of their donations are stuffing my tax dollars into their pockets.
- Numerous recipients of earmarks and pork stuffing my tax dollars in their pockets.
- My gasoline prices going up because some idiot inserted a carbon tax into the bill my and stupid fool Senators (Webb and Warner) and Representative (Wolf) completely missed it!

Here is what I don’t see:

- Accountability from those who caused this mess.
- I don’t see Chris Dodd (D-CT) or Barney Frank (D-MA) being hauled before a Congressional committee to give account of how they blocked Republicans from enacting the reform that could averted this whole mess and saved us $805 billion dollars.
- I don’t see Franklin Raines being hauled before a Congressional committee to explain how he made $90 million while Fannie was losing money.
- I don’t see that the progenitor of this whole thing, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, has been repealed which means that banks and lending institutions are still being forced to make bad loans.

Let’s see who the big winners really were:

Sec. 101. Extension of alternative minimum tax relief for nonrefundable personal credits.
Sec. 102. Extension of increased alternative minimum tax exemption amount.
Sec. 103. Increase of AMT refundable credit amount for individuals with longterm unused credits for prior year minimum tax liability, etc.
Sec. 201. Deduction for State and local sales taxes.
Sec. 202. Deduction of qualified tuition and related expenses.
Sec. 203. Deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers.
Sec. 204. Additional standard deduction for real property taxes for nonitemizers.
Sec. 205. Tax-free distributions from individual retirement plans for charitable purposes.
Sec. 206. Treatment of certain dividends of regulated investment companies.
Sec. 207. Stock in RIC for purposes of determining estates of nonresidents not citizens.
Sec. 208. Qualified investment entities.
Sec. 301. Extension and modification of research credit.
Sec. 302. New markets tax credit.
Sec. 303. Subpart F exception for active financing income.
Sec. 304. Extension of look-thru rule for related controlled foreign corporations.
Sec. 305. Extension of 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements and qualified restaurant improvements; 15-year straight-line cost recovery for certain improvements to retail space.
Sec. 306. Modification of tax treatment of certain payments to controlling exempt organizations.
Sec. 307. Basis adjustment to stock of S corporations making charitable contributions of property.
Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
Sec. 310. Extension of mine rescue team training credit.
Sec. 311. Extension of election to expense advanced mine safety equipment.
Sec. 312. Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic production activities in Puerto Rico.
Sec. 313. Qualified zone academy bonds.
Sec. 314. Indian employment credit.
Sec. 315. Accelerated depreciation for business property on Indian reservations.
Sec. 316. Railroad track maintenance. Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
Sec. 318. Expensing of environmental remediation costs.
Sec. 319. Extension of work opportunity tax credit for Hurricane Katrina employees.
Sec. 320. Extension of increased rehabilitation credit for structures in the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
Sec. 321. Enhanced deduction for qualified computer contributions.
Sec. 322. Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Sec. 323. Enhanced charitable deductions for contributions of food inventory.
Sec. 324. Extension of enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventory.
Sec. 325. Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds.
Sec. 401. Permanent authority for undercover operations. v Sec. 402. Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities.
Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.
Sec. 504. Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation.
Sec. 505. Certain farming business machinery and equipment treated as 5-year property.
Sec. 506. Modification of penalty on understatement of taxpayer’s liability by tax return preparer.
Sec. 512. Mental health parity.
Sec. 601. Secure rural schools and community self-determination program.
Sec. 602. Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund.
Sec. 702. Temporary tax relief for areas damaged by 2008 Midwestern severe storms, tornados, and flooding.
Sec. 703. Reporting requirements relating to disaster relief contributions.
Sec. 704. Temporary tax-exempt bond financing and low-income housing tax relief for areas damaged by Hurricane Ike.
Sec. 706. Losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 707. Expensing of Qualified Disaster Expenses.
Sec. 708. Net operating losses attributable to federally declared disasters.
Sec. 709. Waiver of certain mortgage revenue bond requirements following federally declared disasters.
Sec. 710. Special depreciation allowance for qualified disaster property.
Sec. 711. Increased expensing for qualified disaster assistance property.
Sec. 712. Coordination with Heartland disaster relief.
Sec. 801. Nonqualified deferred compensation from certain tax indifferent parties.

And don’t forget Sec. 117. The carbon tax. Now the Feds can royally screw our economy just like the governments in Europe are screwing theirs!

At least I can say one thing that is a bit of a relief. This bailout is going to ultimately fail and the economy is going to crash (we cannot keep the markets artificially inflated like this) and it looks like Barack Obama is going to win this election. The crash will happen on his watch and he will have no one to blame except himself and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Congress OKs Historic Bailout Bill
Julie Hirschfeld and David Espo
Associated Press via Breitbart
October 3, 2008

Now There Is A ‘Carbon Tax’ In The Bailout!

As if taking your money and giving it to Wall Street wasn’t enough! Now they want to reach deeper into your wallet and take even more money from you! All for a manufactured crisis called “Climate Change” that the legitimate sceintific world has shown to be a natural phenomenon.

Check this out from Matthew Vadum at Capital Research Center:

If you look at page 180 of the 451-page monster bailout bill that easily passed the Senate yesterday (PDF here), you will see that it includes at Section 116 language about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide.” It also provides, at Section 117, for a “carbon audit of the tax code.” What could a provision about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide” and another provision about doing a “carbon audit” of the tax code possibly have to do with restoring confidence in Wall Street’s troubled credit markets? The answer: NOTHING. This appears to be an attempt by global warming fanatics to lay the foundation for an economy-killing carbon tax just like the “cap-and-tax” system that is now destroying European industry. If you think the Mother of All Bailouts is bad, just wait till you see the carbon tax. Get ready to reduce your standard of living drastically.

And the amount of money you have to take care of your family.

This bailout is getting worse and worse.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Hidden Carbon Tax Provisions In Paulson’s Bailout 2.0
Matthew Vadum
Capital Research Center
October 2, 2008