Obama Sued Citibank in 1995 Mortgage Discrimination Case: Of 186 Obama Client Homeowners Only 19 Still Own Homes – Multiple Bankruptcies

Stolen From Hat Tip to Maggie's Notebook

Obama actually did have a private sector job, and he failed at that too. He filed a discrimination lawsuit on behalf of 186 clients claiming discrimination in home mortgages. Nineteen of the 186 still own a home and have a good credit rating – 19 of 186! Some of his clients are speaking out and their message: there should be a regulation against giving loans to people who can’t afford them! Obama pushed the Community Reinvestment Act, right along with Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Maxine Waters. Democrats forced banks to give mortgages to Blacks who had no credit rating, no down payment, sometimes no job. The Bush administration tried 17 times to force Democrats to moderate the risks of these through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The first thing to know is that 71% of the bad loans were Government loans, not Wall Street. From one of my previous articles on the housing crisis:

[In a news conference, Obama] said this: (paraphrased) People got housing loans that they did not understand that they could not afford. They were told they could afford them. They didn’t understand the paperwork they were signing. What a crock. The Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend without credit, without down payments, without any assurance that the buyers could meet their monthly payments. He is a bold, blatant liar.

Flashback to 2000:

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 Daily Caller, snippets from page 1:

The startling failure rate among Obama’s private sector clients was discovered during The Daily Caller’s review of previously unpublished court information from the lawsuit that a young Obama helmed as the lead plaintiff’s attorney. [RELATED: Learn about the 186 class action plaintiffs]

Since the mortgage bubble burst, some of his former clients are calling for a policy reversal.
“If you see some people don’t make enough money to afford the mortgage, why would you give them a loan?” asked Obama client John Buchanan. “There should be some type of regulation against giving people loans they can’t afford.”…
The campaign was powered by progressives’ moral claim that their expertise could boost home ownership among the United States’ most disadvantaged minority, African-Americans. [RELATED: Obama's African-American clients got coupons, not cash]
Progressive activists’ ambition instead contributed greatly to a housing bubble that burst in 2007, crashed the nation’s economy in 2008, wiped out at least $4 trillion in equity, kept unemployment above 8 percent for four years, and damaged the intended beneficiaries of looser mortgage lending standards.

The article is about 6 pages long. Look at this.

While the settlement provided $950,000 for the lawyers, it provided $20,000 for each of the three named plaintiffs, and $360,000 in benefits to be divided among the 183 other clients.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in 1998 that Obama claimed $23,000 in billable hours for his role in the lawsuit. That role was limited, partly because he was networking his way toward his 1996 election to the Illinois Senate. But he stayed with the firm until 2004, and it was his lawsuit.

Obama also won massive campaign donations from the mortgage industry, including at least $126,349 between 1989 and 2004.

He sought public credit for the lawsuit: His employer submitted a docket to the court that listed him as the lead attorney for two of the three named plaintiffs in the case. The docket bound Obama’s name to the lawsuit — and to the 186 clients who would soon follow.

How the bullying brought down the economy:

To meet their anti-redlining promises, executives ditched their caution. Street-level officers soon began offering loans to people with little chance of repaying, including many of Obama’s eventual clients.

Banks were “financing people who had no jobs. … [T]he pendulum swung the other way,” Renee Brooks, an accountant and one of the three named plaintiffs, told The DC.
“They didn’t check out certain people, and they got loans and they couldn’t afford them in the first place,” Juanita Malone, another Obama client, told The DC. “I think that really was, to me … not professional.”

In the late 1990s “money became available to everybody … everybody and their brother-in-law,” said Freeman. “Individuals who get money easily and who don’t have a good background and or a good education would expect to suffer the consequences.”

Their judgment is shared by Mark Zandi, an Obama supporter and the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Too-easy credit and millions of bad loans made during the U.S. housing crisis paved the way for the financial calamity and [the] Great Recession thatfollowed,” he wrote in an Aug. 25 column for the Washington Post.

At least 46 of Obama’s clients claimed bankruptcy – sometimes multiple times, says the Daily Caller and the numbers are actually higher. It took years to shake this out:

 2009 wasn’t an aberration: Obama’s client list had averaged 5.3 foreclosure notices a year during the 1990s.

More is expected this year and into 2013.
Everyday we hear how many mortgages are under water:

Each client’s wealth losses have been shared with other Americans through declining neighborhood-wide property values.

In Marcella Wilson’s neighborhood, nearby home values have dropped, she said, because “crooks [in banks] were giving people money they couldn’t afford.”
“My neighborhood is so-so.” she said. “Fifty years ago, when we moved in, it was a very lovely place.”

Seventeen of Obama’s clients lived in her 60619 ZIP code.

I encourage you to read the Daily Caller piece. Many of Obama’s private sector clients are quoted there. The Jawa Report has much more.

When Musicians Were Worthy Of Our Adoration!

I received this from my good friend Poppy.  She is from Galesburg, Illinois and now resides in Scotland.

When Sousa came to Galesburg

 

All over the country, this July 4th, bands will be playing the music of John Philip Sousa, and espe­cially his “Stars and Stripes Forever,” the “National March” of the United States and what some would say is the best march ever written. Sousa wrote that march in 1897, and citizens of Galesburg were among the first to hear it, with the composer conducting, when Sousa and his band performed in Galesburg on a winter evening in 1898.

Sousa, an America-born son of Portuguese and Bavarian emigrant parents, studied music from an early age, including violin and music theory. Also from an early age, he began to perform and compose music of a sort we would now call “light clas­sical.” He also grew into a profi­cient conductor – of theatrical orchestras, of the U.S. Marine Band starting in 1880, and then of his own group, Sousa’s Band, starting in 1892.

From the beginning, with his own band, Sousa hired the best musi­cians available, many of them European and many with expe­rience playing in profes­sional orchestras. Before long the group’s repu­tation was such that it was the aspi­ration of many a young American musician to play in it. Sousa himself even­tually became a celebrity, known for his dramatic conducting. (Otis Skinner said that Sousa was “away ahead of all of us” as a performer, though the great actor noted that Sousa’s skilled musi­cians had some­thing to do with his success.)

At the time he performed in Galesburg in 1898, Sousa had reached a high point in his career. His band had become an immense success, and it would soon start a series of European tours. Sousa was, for a time, “The world’s most widely known musician,” according to the “New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musi­cians.” When they came to Galesburg, Sousa’s band was on a tour that had already taken them through New England, part of Canada and now the Midwest.

The Evening Mail adver­tisement for the Galesburg perfor­mance, billing Sousa as “The March King” (an appel­lation still used today) notes that the band would perform at the Audi­torium on North Broad Street in Galesburg on the evening of February 10th, 1898. The adver­tisement also includes a picture of the conductor and says that tickets for the perfor­mance, part of the band’s “Twelfth Semi-Annual Tour,” are $1 for the Lower Floor, 75 cents for the Balcony and 50 cents for the Gallery.

The glowing account of the concert in the next day’s Evening Mail notes that the band played to “a packed house,” “won enthu­si­astic applause” and played twelve encores, “an unusual concession for any profes­sional Company.” The encores, though, were part of Sousa’s usual, crowd-pleasing practice. His printed program often listed only about 10 pieces, but the band’s custom was to perform encores after almost every scheduled selection.

That evening’s program was described as mostly “popular” music, though it included band arrange­ments of music by Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, and perfor­mances by a “violiniste,” Jennie Hoyle, and soprano Maude Reese Davis. There was also a trombone solo by Arthur Pryor, Sousa’s assistant conductor who was to go on in later years to lead a popular band of his own.

No doubt the concert included many examples of Sousa’s specialty, military marches. Only a few are mentioned in the news­paper account, including “El Capitan” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” (That title was later to be used for a movie based on Sousa’s life).

The Evening Mail account ends with praise for Sousa the conductor and his “rare exhi­bition of skill. The great band plays as one piece, in perfect time and harmony.” Sousa’s music and the skill of his band in performing it made him immensely popular. Perhaps it captured the nation­al­istic spirit that was building in the country at this time.

Only five days after the Sousa Band’s appearance in Galesburg, the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor, beginning the Spanish-American war. In the months ahead, the band would play patriotic concerts for wildly enthu­si­astic crowds in many cities. In May, in Cleveland, they accom­panied the Ohio National Guard unit to the depot as the troops left for the war, one of the few times Sousa’s ensemble func­tioned as an actual marching band.

Sousa went on for many years as America’s most popular band­leader and patriotic music composer, though his best marches, such as “Semper Fidelis,” “Wash­ington Post,” and “Liberty Bell” were all composed in the late nine­teenth century. They are still familiar to millions of amateur musi­cians who play in high school or municipal bands.

While in Galesburg, the Sousa Band appar­ently stayed at the Union Hotel, across the street from the Audi­torium. The desk clerk at the hotel, James Otway, kept an auto­graph book, now in the Galesburg Public Library’s Special Collec­tions Room, in which Sousa left a memento of his visit. There is the signature of “the March King” and above it the musical notation for a few measures of his newly composed and now immortal “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

That was a time of patriotism, a time in which love of country was not an obscenity.  It was a time in which our musicians promoted the idea of nation, of country.  Instead of looking at the past in terms of "Ugly American", they saw the promise that this nation gives.

Our so-called celebrities could learn a lesson from John Philip Sousa.  Instead of damning America, they should get down on their knees and thank G-d that there is an United States of America.  Especially on July 4th.  And every day.

A Memorial To What?

This comes from our dear friends at PETA.  You know those idiots who believe that a cockroach has more rights than you do.  The idiots who promote being a Vegan, even though medical science has discovered that Veganism is unhealthy.  But this outrage isn't about Veganism, but about a Memorial they want to cows.

PETA has asked the Department of Transportation in Illinois to commemorate the spot where 16 cows lost their life on May 22 in a traffic accident says a report in the Chicago Tribune.

The cows plunged from the back of a tractor trailer when it jackknifed on a bridge on an I-80 highway overpass.

I’m wondering if we could just have a memorial BBQ. I’ll bring the grill.

Now, before you start laughing remember: This is Illinois.

Yes, that state.

You know how people warn you about avoiding stupid mistakes by saying, “You don’t want to be that guy.”

Well, ladies and gentleman I present you your Daley-Obama-Rahm Emmanuel-led State of Illinois. That state.

It’s a state where graft makes everything “work,” and where 3 out 4 governors go to prison, because someone has to take the rap for all that graft. You have to keep up appearances that you are interested in good government. And there is nothing like sending both Republican and Democrat governors to jail to make the message clear.

You don’t want to be that guy? Then, don’t become governor of Illinois.

In other states the position of governor is one of honor. In Illinois governors are elected patsies so the graft machine can keep going.

The PETA proposal memorializing the Cow-Victims-of-5/22 asks Illinois to glorify the animals that died while performing their function “in the meat trade.”

The “meat trade” is what you and I call groceries.

"These proposed signs would also remind tractor-trailer drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul to their deaths every day," said Tracy Patton, 26, a campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals according to UPI. "It's a big enough tragedy that these animals end up in slaughterhouses, where they are kicked, shocked with electric prods and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths. Sparing them from being tossed from a speeding truck and deprived of care afterward, sometimes for several hours, seems the least that we can do."

So they want drivers to act more responsibly while driving animals to their deaths? Maybe keeping truck drivers’ eyes on the road and not on some signs would be a good start.

Because, that’s all we need: truck drivers squinting at memorials to cows while speeding across bridges in downtown Chicago. What’s next? Cow-sensitivity training?

PETA submitted their application under a 2007 provision in Illinois law, where family members of those who die as victims of DUI accidents may request memorials to the victims. The law was passed, according to a DOT spokesman, in order to regulate unofficial roadside memorials says the Trib.

That’s been a terribly pressing problem for the US. If we could only get federal control of those roadside monuments, this economy would really boom. And certainly replacing spontaneous, personalized, ad-hoc memorials by friends and relatives who knew the victim with a sanitized government memorial will probably better aid the grieving process for those who are left behind.

Thank God for good government in Illinois.

The problem for PETA isn’t that their proposal is outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony; no the problem for PETA is the same problem that the rest of us have with government. The only reason why Illinois politicians aren’t rushing to support PETA in raising a memorial is because PETA doesn’t have the cash to get the graft machine to use the misguided law regulating personal acts of grief to help PETA with their outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony proposal.

Because earlier this year the Illinois legislature, in an outrageous, stupid, ridiculous, insulting and loony move, raised personal income taxes by 67 percent and corporate income taxes by 47 percent…and then started exempting the very biggest corporations from the tax.

And if you don’t think that those exemptions weren’t driven by cash and graft, then congratulations!

You qualify for either the Republican or the Democrat nominations for governor in Illinois.

What you are witnessing is the Illinois machine at its graftest.  In fact, this should pass in Springfield without a problem.  And the taxes of honest people will be used to build this piece of pork (Cook like a steak.).  In fact I have the best Memorial to place roadside:

This should help serve everyone.

Obama and Rahm at Man's Country - Frequently?

by Maggie at Maggie’s Notebook

Well, well, well. HillBuzz was visited in Chicago by a US journalist wanting information about Man’s Country in Andersonville, Illinois. This article states that Barack Obama was a frequent visitor until 2002 and Rahm Emanuel until 2008, according to their sources.
HillBuzz tagged this article “bath houses.”

Man’s Country (see bottom of sign above door)

HillBuzz tagged this article “bath houses.” A quick check on the Internet and what I find about Chicago’s Man’s Country is fairly disgusting. Read the reviews here, especially the one by Alberto M. who says Man’s Country is “a gay Chicago icon…,” but complains that there is always the chance of getting “cooties” in Man’s Country.
Now, the article goes on to question the rags so busily working to tie Obama to an affair with Vera Baker, and the writer says something is fishy, and doesn’t hesitate to explain. The side story is about Kal Penn, the actor who left House to serve the President. He also plays Kumar in the Harold and Kumar movies. In the White House, Penn goes by his real name, Kalpen Modi.

Why the sudden need to portray this current president as an insatiably heterosexual stud who just can’t get enough women?

Baker’s a diversionary tactic…designed to cover SOMETHING up…and we think that something is an affair Obama had with Kal Penn, which seems to have ended badly.  We also think Penn was mugged not by a street thug in DupontCircle, but by someone working for either the DNC or Organizing for America (or any number of its umbrella thugs), because Penn’s phone had something in it that would prove some kind of romantic relationship between the president and a Hollywood actor with zero government experience who was plucked off a TV show unceremoniously and lifted into a high profile made-up position in the White House…so he could be close to Obama in Washington, where Obama wanted him.  Wanted in more than one sense.

Until he didn’t want him anymore.

And then someone needed to take his cell phone away, so that any pictures, texts, voicemails, or other interesting itts and bitts could be secured by those wishing to protect the current president.

Here’s a link to Penn/Modi’s mugging.
You know, this is an astounding and gutsy story, whether true or false. HillBuzz has stepped “out there.”  It is obvious from they have had some background on the story. Maybe they have blogged about this in the past, but the blog title is Someone in the national media is FINALLY interested in Man’s Country in Andersonville.

My disclaimer: I’m printing this because the report comes from Chicago. I don’t know if it’s true, but unless the writer is lying about the national media coming specifically for info about Man’s Country, it deserves to be known, and besides, HillBuzz is a reputable blog. I got to the HillBuzz story via Logistics Monster who indicates that many have known about this since 2007, so….
Read it all at HillBuzz

Musical News Round-Up To Start The Day

1.  Yesterday morning about 4 am a 3.8 Earthquake struck the northeastern section of Illinois. Center between between the towns of Virgil and Sycamore, Illinois.

An early morning earthquake rattled northern Illinois on Wednesday, shaking an area about 50 miles west-northwest of downtown Chicago, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake was originally reported as having a magnitude of 4.3, but the USGS later downgraded it to magnitude 3.8. It hit just before 4 a.m. CT (5 a.m. ET), with an epicenter about 3 miles underground. The USGS pinpointed the quake between the towns of Virgil and Sycamore, Illinois.

Millions of people felt the temblor, with reports coming in to the USGS from Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa and Wisconsin, as well as Illinois. Members of the public sent more than 10,000 reports of the earthquake to the USGS within the first few hours after it struck.

I lived for 12 years in Southern California.  I felt nothing.  It was a very minor quake in my humble opinion.  But here is some music to help one through the next quake:

CAROLE KING (Live) - I Feel The Earth Move




2.  Charles Wilson, former Congressman from Texas, died yesterday at the age of 76.

Former Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-TX), a swashbuckling congressman immortalized in the book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War," died Wednesday in Lufkin, Texas. He was 76.

Known mostly for partying philandering while in Congress, Wilson secured the nickname "Goodtime Charlie." But the book and film about his efforts to covertly arm the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s ingrained Wilson's name in the American consciousness.

Tom Hanks played Wilson in the 2007 film, directed by Mike Nichols.

Wilson also had a heart transplant that same year.

Yana Ogletree, the director of media relations at the Memorial Health System of East Texas, says Wilson was at a meeting Wednesday morning in Lufkin with his friend Buddy Temple. The former congressman started to have trouble breathing. Temple then drove Wilson to the hospital and flagged down an ambulance while en route. The ambulance then drove Wilson to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 12:16 p.m. CT.

Ogletree says the cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest.

Read the full story here.

Peggy Lee - Hey big Spender



3.  Phil Harris, captain of the fishing boat Cornelia Marie, star on the reality show, Deadliest Catch, died yesterday of a stroke.  He was 53.

Phil Harris, the fishing boat captain whose adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on the television show "Deadliest Catch", has died, the Discovery Channel said Tuesday night. He was 53.

Harris suffered what his family described as a massive stroke on Jan. 29 while the fishing vessel he captained, Cornelia Marie, was in port at St. Paul Island, Alaska. The fisherman was flown to Anchorage for surgery.

The reality show, which has filmed five seasons, has been one of the Discovery Channel's most popular and depicts the crab fishing industry in the dangerous waters off Alaska.

Read the full story here.

You can leave your condolences to the family here.

DEADLIEST CATCH THEME SONG



Have a good day!