Follow-up on the birth certificate story:: JUDGE ORDERS OBAMA TO PRODUCE BIRTH CERTIFICATE

Troy sent this.

Don't know if this is true, but is hilarious if so. As we have CFR McCain against CFR-married 33° (not the earlier reported 32°) Prince Hall Freemason Obama,  it's the Pope's CFR that will win no matter what (even with CFR-connected Ms(!) Clinton). Thanks to Doug for the posting -

Troy

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Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 07:11:31 -0700
To: troy_space@hotmail.com
Subject: October surprises that I never could have imagined.

JUDGE ORDERS OBAMA TO PRODUCE BIRTH CERTIFICATE

By Jon Christian Dryer

October 3, 2008

NewsWithViews. com

On September 29, 2008 US District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick, the federal magistrate for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in the matter of Philip J. Berg vs Barack Hussein Obama, et al as the world was distracted by the $700 billion subprime mortgage crisis.
Obama signed a breathe of relief as the mainstream media chose to ignore the question: "Can Senator Barack Hussein Obama legally seek the office of President of the United States?"

The flap began in June when National Review's Jim Geraghty raised the question and asked the Obama Campaign to release a copy of his birth certificate in order to prove that he actually was born in the United States. (Reports had previously surfaced claiming that Obama's Kenyan grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, told reporters that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but in Kenya. She reportedly told reporters that when her son, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. returned to Kenya he was accompanied by a pregnant white wife who was close to term.
)

Obama's family did not take to Stanley Ann Dunham Obama well according to Sarah Obama because she was white. Shortly after she arrived in Kenya Stanley Ann decided to return to Hawaii because she did not like how Muslim men treated their wives in Kenya. However, because she was near term the airline would not let her fly until after the birth of her baby. Obama's grandmother said the baby was born in Kenya and that shortly after Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born, Stanley Ann returned to Hawaii.

Purportedly, when she arrived back in Hawaii, Stanley Anne registered her son's live birth as an event which had just happened—in Hawaii. This supposition is based on the appearance, shortly after Nov. 6, 2007, of a Hawaiian birth certificate that was issued, as a duplicate birth certificate, by the State of Hawaii to a US Senator who requested it.

While the Internet screamed that the birth certificate, which appeared on the Obama Campaign's "Fight The Smears" website and was also downloaded and used by far left blogger Markos Zuniga on his website, Daily Kos, it was not an electronic image concocted by Daily KOs as was hypothesized by a self-described cyvbersleuth who uses the cyber pseudonym Techdude. It was the real McCoy—even if it was issued as a political favor to a prospective Democratic presidential candidate by a Democrat official in Hawaii. The county clerk who issued the document, which purports to be a copy of an original document, was date stamped "Nov. 6, 2007" on the reverse side of the birth certificate in blue ink which bled through and is visible on the front of the electronic image.

Attorney Philip J. Berg, the former head of the Montgomery County. Pennsylvania Democratic Party and a former member of the Democratic State Convention and, reportedly a Hillary Clinton supporter, wanted to learn the truth from the myriad of rumors that also suggested that Sen. Obama may also have been a citizen of Indonesia. The only consistent part of the story was Stanley Ann returning to Hawaii to claim he had been in the United States and was a US citizen.
In his ruling, Judge Surrick noted that the "...cause came before the United States District Court Judge, Honorable R. Barclay Surrick on defendant Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic National Committee's motion to dismiss.
" The order continued, "Having reviewed the motion and plaintiff's opposition to said motion and for good cause shown, it is hereby ordered that the motion to dismiss pursuant to F.R.C.P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) is denied. It is further order of this court that the following discovery is to be turned over to plaintiff within three (3) days.

1.
Obama's "vault" version (certified copy of his "original" long version) birth certificate; and
2.
a certified copy of Obama's Certificate of Citizenship;
3. a certified copy of Obama's oath of allegiance.
"

In his original filing, Berg specifically asked for those three items.
Berg told the court that "...at the time Plaintiff's complaint was filed, Plaintiff was requesting protections from the court in order to stop Obama from being nominated by the DNC as the Democratic Presidential Nominee as Obama is not eligible to serve as President of the United States. However, Obama was nominated by the DNC...For that reason, Plaintiff must amend his complaint and will be amending this complaint to file a First Amendment complaint...."

Berg argued that he felt it was the role of the Federal Election Commission to ensure that presidential and congressional candidates are eligible to hold the positions for which they were seeking, and that those candidates run a fair and legitimate campaign.
"In vetting the presidential candidate," Berg argued, "the DNC and the FEC are required to ensure the eligibility requirements pursuant to our Constitution are met and the Presidential nominee, if elected, is qualified and eligible to serve pursuant to our United States Constitution. In order to be eligible to run for the Office of President of the United States, you must be a "natural born" citizen.

"There appears to be no question that Defendant Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a US citizen. It is also undisputed, however, that his father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a citizen of Kenya. Obama's parents, according to divorce recorded, were married on or about February 2, 1961.

"Defendant Obama claims he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. on August 4, 1961 and it is uncertain in which hospital he claims to have been born. Obama's grandmother on his father's side, his half-brother and half-sister all claim Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. reports reflect that Obama's mother traveled to Kenya during her pregnancy; however, she was prevented from boarding a flight from Kenya to Hawaii. at her late stage of pregnancy (which apparently are normal restrictions, to avoid births during flights). By these reports, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama gave birth to Obama in Kenya, after which she flew home and registered Obama's birth. There are records of a "registry of birth" for Obama, on or about August 8, 1961 in the public records office in Hawaii.
"

Berg's investigators revealed that Obama's own half-sister Maya Soetoro—with whom he was raised—seemed not to know where her own brother was born. In the Nov., 2004 interview by the Rainbow Newsletter Maya Soetoro said Obama was born on Aug.
4, 1961 at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. In February, 2008 Maya was interviewed by the Star Bulletin.
This time she told reporters that Obama was born on August 4, 1961 at the Kaliolani Medical Center for Women and Children.
On June 9, 2008 Wayne Madsen, a journalist with Online Journal published an article in which he said a research team went to Mombassa, Kenya and located a Certificate registering the live birth of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. to his father, a Kenyan citizen and his mother, a US citizen.

Berg's argument to the court was that under the US Nationality Act of 1940, Section 317 (b), a minor child follows the naturalization and citizenship status of his or her custodial parent. In Obama's case, Berg argued, a minor child follows the naturalization and citizenship status of his or her custodial father. Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetora signed a statement acknowledging Obama as his son, giving Obama natural Indonesian citizenship, which explains the name "Barry Soetoro" and his citizenship listed as Indonesian. Loss of US citizenship, under US law in effect in 1967 required that foreign citizenship be achieved through "application." Which, according to Berg, is precisely what happened to Obama when his mother married Soetoro and the family moved to Indonesia.

When Obama and his mother moved to Indonesia, Obama had already been enrolled in school—something that could not have happened under Indonesian law if Soetoro had not signed an acknowledgment (the application) affirming that Obama was his son, it deemed his son to an Indonesian State citizen. (Citizenship of Republic of Indonesia, Law No. 9 of 1992 dated 31 mar.
1992, Indonesia Civil Code): "...State children of Indonesia include: (viii) children who are born outside of legal marriage from foreign State citizen mother who are acknowledged by father who is Indonesian State citizen as his children and that acknowledgment is made prior to children reaching 18 years of age or prior to marriage; Republic of Indonesia Constitution, 1945.
" Furthermore, under Indonesian law, if a resident Indonesian citizen married a foreigner—in this case, Lolo Soetoro marrying Stanley Ann Obama—she was required to renounce her US citizenship.

In his lawsuit, Berg demanded a copy of Obama's Certificate of Citizenship, a document Obama must have applied for to regain his citizenship—which was lost in Indonesia. He will have that document only if the proper paperwork was filed with the US State Department when Obama returned to Hawaii in 1971 since that is the only way Obama could regain his US "natural born" status. Berg is convinced that Obama was never naturalized in the United States after his return. Obama returned to his maternal grandparents in Hawaii without his mother. Since she is the only one who could have filed for the reinstatement of his citizenship, it is unlikely it ever happened. If it did, his Certificate of Citizenship would affirm his right to seek the office of President. Without it, Barack Obama is just another resident alien who can't legally hold his seat in the US Senate.

© 2008 Jon C.
Ryter - All Rights Reserved

[Read "Whatever Happened to America?"]

Jon Christian Ryter is the pseudonym of a former newspaper reporter with the Parkersburg, WV Sentinel. He authored a syndicated newspaper column, Answers From The Bible, from the mid-1970s until 1985. Answers From The Bible was read weekly in many suburban markets in the United States.

Today, Jon is an advertising executive with the Washington Times.
His website, www. jonchristianryter. com has helped him establish a network of mid-to senior-level Washington insiders who now provide him with a steady stream of material for use both in his books and in the investigative reports that are found on his website.

E-Mail: BAFFauthor@aol. com

http://www. newswithviews. com/Ryter/jon252. htm

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Fwd: Not your typical Wednesday in NYC.( Worth a read DS)

Forwarded by Jack

Can you explain the Netorei Carta? I cannot. They are the same "rabbis" who appeared in full Haredi regalia carrying placards, on Shabbat, to pay homage to Arafat. 

 

Jack

I want to share my Wednesday with you. 

 

Parviz Morewedge, an astute scholar in Medieval Philosophy and a well-known publicist, approached me yesterday. My first assumption was that this man was a simpleJ ewish man from Long Island (that's obviously before he told me his name). He first started talking to me about the chicken and the egg and which came first. We were then interrupted by what could have been a simple phone call from his wife. But then I overhead him say 'elle presidente' and ended his conversation with 'I'll see you tomorrow, I love you'. I asked him what was going on and what president he was referring to. He then proceeded to tell me that the president of Iran, Achmadinijad, would be speaking to 350 students. (You have to understand that my trip from Hofstra University into Manhattan is about an hour and twenty min commute, and by chance, Parviz was headed in the same direction. This 74-year-old professor was my entertainment for the next 84 min of my life). He told me he was coordinating the lecture with Achmadinijad and immediately asked for my attendance. And before I rsvp'd, I said, I was just at a rally against him. What else could I have said at that moment? I was nothing but honest. We began talking and he was extremely inquisitive and very intrigued by my studies in aging. He even asked me for advice about how to prepare for his older years. I gave him my usual shpeal. Use it or lose it.

In any event, the train ride consisted of him telling me that I was like steak and vegetables and that I looked like a shiksa among a variety of other things. Just when he told me I was like a beautiful melon, I decided to direct our conversation to Achmadinijad. I asked him a million questions and he answered them as if he was talking about a great Gd. Our journey together had finally come to an end and I ventured home.

 

Parvizsent me an email at 6:30am the next morning and told me where Achmadinijad would be speaking. Since I was out late the night before, I forgot to set my alarm and slept through the lecture. However, I decided to take a long shot and see if I could catch the tail end.

 

I rushed to Grand Central station on the 6 train and walked into the lobby of theGrand Hyatt on 42nd St.. The first man I saw was an Orthodox Rabbi draped in propaganda. His pins said 'Anti Zionist' with a big red ex crossingover the flag of Israel. I was clearly at the right place. I had asked him if the lecture had begun, and he said it had not. Confused and nervous I asked him to direct me. He directed me to the mezzanine and introduced me as media to the coordinator of the event. Before I knew it, I was being searched and directed into a small room with about 30 seats around a 'U'-shaped table. This was 100% not the lecture Parviz had invited me to. 

 

I waltzed in there like a true media relations person, along with press from The New York Times and other revered media groups.  We sat at the back of the room.

 

And then, Achmadinijad walked in. A man not much taller than myself with big glossy brown eyes. My own eyes popped out of my head and I could not get over the fact that a man who holds identical values to Adolf Hitler was 10 feet away from me. I remained strong although I was in great shock. At one point I had full eye contact with this villain, a man whom the black hats saw as a 'distinguished man' and I wanted to be sick. As soon as he entered the room, he was immediately swarmed by the black hats who greeted him with great admiration and gratitude. I quickly realized that this was a private meeting between Rabbi Weiss and his comrades and President Achmadinijad; and somehow, this small Jewish/ Zionist Toronto girl who just recently moved to NewYork had made her way in. I became a witness to one of the most disturbing meetings of all kind. I took notes and captured the essence of the meeting just like a true media relations person. Rabbi Weiss spoke of how happy he was that Achmadinijad understood the 'difference between Zionism and Judaism and that this made for a happy occasion.' Rabbi Weiss further said that the more 'Jewish you are, the less Zionist you are'. How does that make sense? I think I'm pretty Jewish and I am a damn proud Zionist. But that does not mean anything to the black hats. He kept repeating how happy he was that Achmadinijad understood the difference between Judaism and Zionism. Rabbi Weiss also said that Achmadinijad respected Jews and tried to justify that Achmadinijad did not want to see the Jewish people wiped out! Rabbi Weiss also said that the Iranian president never denied the Holocaust. These dudes are seriously delusional. 

 

Sickto my stomach, Achmadinijad began to speak. He started off reciting a prayer for peace, which was probably the biggest oxy moron I could witness. And then he went on to say that 'Jews are the first victims of Zionism.' He concluded his speech and reassured the black hats that he sees a bright future where Zionism no longer exists. This was just a snap shot of what he said. The rest I recorded on my camera.

 

I don't know who poses a larger threat on the State of Israel and to the Jewish people. However, what I do know is that Achmandinijad and these anti ZionistJews are equally manipulative and evil and that I have never been more afraid for the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Furthermore, I also know that I have never been more proud to be both a Jew and a Zionist. 

Just like you, I can't believe I was witness to this. This was not a typical Wednesday in New York City.

Feel free to share this with others. 

--

--
Best,


Elise S. Kayfetz
elisekayfetz@gmail.com
347-308-0221

Fwd: HEATING UP! OBAMA CHOOSES TERRORIST'S LAWYER TO FIGHT FORGED BIRTH DOC LAWSUIT!

from A.M.

THE FORGED OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE CASE HAS HIT THE COURTS!

OBAMA USES TERRORIST'S LAWYER TO FIGHT THE LAWSUIT

 

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepadcom/

The plot thickens. The lawsuit Philip Berg filed based on my blockbuster expose of Obama's birth certificate forgery has taken a bizarre and disturbing twist. Why is a Presidential candidate using a terrorist lawyer? Every alliance, every allegiance, malevolent.

Barack Hussein  has recently admitted to dual citizenship . but the media yawned, too busy going through Sarah Palin's trash (at least they are in their own element). How ironic that what we need is a federal elections specialist. Obama is considered an expert in this area having taught it for several years at University of Chicago law school after his stint at the left-wing ACORN.

Here's some info from a site that has it all:

OBAMA is USING TERRORIST'S LAWYER to Defend LAWSUIT 
Rather than just product the birth certificate (sure looks like he's trying to hide something!) Obama's legal team filed a motion to dismiss. One of the lawyers filing the motion was Joe Sandler (sandler@sandlerreiff.com) of the Washington law firm Sandler, Reiff, and Young (see the document below).

Well, so what?

If Mr. Sandler's name sounds familiar it should. He is the legal "Hit Man" for the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR is an organization, founded by terrorists, with current terrorist ties, and has been named as an un-indicted co-conspiritor in the US government's Holyland Foundation Hamas Funding trial.

Sandler's role for CAIR has been to stifle people from telling the truth about Islam. For example, last year he tried to get jihad-expert Robert Spencer banned from speaking to the Young American Foundation by using a threatening letter. Sandler followed up by threatening columnist Mike Adams for daring to write about the Spencer incident.

Please ask the Obama people to explain why - of the tens of thousands of available lawyers - they chose a man with Joe Sandler's pro-islam, PRO-TERROR reputation to defend Obama?  INEXPLICABLE....unless....

--
Allan, Chapter Director
ACT For America. (NY & LI)

L A N  A S T A S L E M
I will NOT submit to islam!

Fw: THE REAL REASON FOR AMERICA'S FINANCIAL COLLAPSE

Another article on the same topic:

sent by bill.

 

Subject: THE REAL REASON FOR AMERICA'S FINANCIAL COLLAPSE

Clinton Democrats are to blame for the credit crunch

Dennis Sewell

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

Our current financial turmoil is not the fault of greedy bankers, says Dennis Sewell. In fact, the banks were bullied into lowering their lending standards by left-wing idealists intent on equal opportunities at any cost

'Let us be clear: this is a crisis caused on Wall Street,' insisted Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her consensus-strangling speech on Monday, shortly before her fellow members of the House of Representatives voted to reject the President's $700 billion bail-out plan. Out on the campaign trail, Barack Obama ventured that the root cause of the trouble in the markets was that 'too many people in Washington and Wall Street weren't minding the store'.

Pinning the blame for the crisis on greedy bankers and incompetent regulators may have seemed plausible enough during the turmoil of the past few days. Writing in The Spectator last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury noted how 'we find ourselves talking about capital or the market almost as if they were individuals, with purposes and strategies, making choices, deliberating reasonably about how to achieve aims'. Not this week, we didn't. We talked about the markets as if they were thoroughly unreasonable, out of control, perhaps even raving mad. Following Monday's rejection of the bail-out plan, stock markets, impatient with Congress's delay in tying up a deal, threw a massive hissy fit, which wiped billions off the value of shares. The next day, they made a partial bounce back, based presumably upon a belated recognition that talks to thrash out another bail-out plan were already in progress. Meanwhile, the sullen banks remained obdurate in their reluctance to lend to one another, let alone anyone else, despite a massive injection of liquidity from central bankers around the world. Not much there to inspire confidence in the system.

Consequently, this hardly seems the most appropriate moment to mount a defence of capitalism in general, and American bankers in particular, against the threats posed by meddlesome politicians and excessive regulation. But, what the heck. Unless we take advantage of this hiatus between the crashing of financial institutions to take an honest look at the origins of our current predicament, then today's spin and myth-making will quickly harden into tomorrow's firm conviction. Let us be clear: this crisis was not caused on Wall Street — it was caused in the White House. The root problem was not financial — it was political, and those truly responsible for this fiasco were not bankers, nor even Bush Republicans; they were Clinton Democrats.

For generations, America's bankers have been firmly refusing credit to those they judged unworthy of it. Yet the mountain of toxic subprime debt that has threatened to overwhelm the entire financial system, and the astonishing number of mortgage foreclosures across the United States, is proof that, at some point in the relatively recent past, bankers radically altered their behaviour and began to shower mortgages on borrowers who had no realistic prospect of keeping up their repayments. What could possibly have induced them to act so recklessly, and so out of character? The facile answer to that question is greed, the lure of a fast and easy buck. The correct answer is that banks were bullied, cajoled and coerced into lowering their lending standards by politicians in pursuit of an ideological agenda.

Let's wind back to 1993 and Roberta Achtenberg's arrival on the Washington political scene. Achtenberg had made her name in San Francisco as a civil rights lawyer and activist, campaigning to keep open the city's gay bathhouses, and (I promise I'm not making this up) pressing for an increase in the number of gay Scoutmasters. Bill Clinton offered her a job in his new administration, and Roberta Achtenberg became the first openly lesbian nominee ever to receive a Senate confirmation. She duly took up her post as Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The main thrust of the Clinton housing strategy was to increase home ownership among the poor, and particularly among blacks and Hispanics. White House aides, in familiar West Wing style, could parrot the many social advantages that would accrue: high levels of home ownership correlated with less violent crime, better school performance, a heightened sense of commun-ity. But standing in the way of the realisation of this dream were the conservative lending policies of the banks, which required such inconvenient and old-fashioned things as cash deposits and regular repayments — things the poor and minorities often could not provide. Clinton told the banks to be more creative.

Meanwhile, Ms Achtenberg, a member of the kickass school of public administration, was busy setting up a network of enforcement offices across the country, manned by attorneys and investigators, and primed to spearhead an assault on the mortgage banks, bringing suits against any suspected of practising unlawful discrimination, whether on the basis of race, gender or disability. Achtenberg believed racism was a big factor in keeping minorities from enjoying the same level of home ownership as whites. She doubted if much could be done to change people's attitudes on racial matters, but she was confident she, in cahoots with Attorney General Janet Reno, could use the law to change the behaviour of banks.

However, when little or no overt or deliberate racial discrimination was discovered among the mortgage lenders, HUD's investigators turned to trying to prove 'disparate treatment' of minority groups, a notion similar to that of unintentional 'institutional racism'. If a bank refused loans to proportionally more black applicants than white ones, for instance, the onus would fall on it to prove it had good grounds for doing so or face settlement penalties running into millions of dollars. A series of highly publicised cases were brought on this basis, starting in 1994. Eventually the investigators would turn somewhat desperately to 'disparate impact', a form of discrimination so abstract and rarefied as to be imperceptible to its supposed victims, and indeed often only discernible at all through the application of multivariate regression analysis to information stored on regulators' databases. In fact, by 1995 Achtenberg was actually having to rein in her zealots, issuing a clarification that the use of the phrase 'master bedroom' in a property advertisement was, despite its clear patriarchal and slave-owning resonances, not actually an actionable offence under the anti-discrimination laws.

These mortgage banks, which have been responsible for issuing about three quarters of the dodgy subprime loans that are proving troublesome today, quickly took the hint. From the mid-1990s they began to abandon their formerly rigorous lending criteria. Mortgages were offered with only 3 per cent deposit requirements, and eventually with no deposit requirement at all. The mortgage banks fell over one another to provide loans to low-income households and especially to minority customers. In the five years from 1994 to 1999, the number of African-American and Latino homeowners increased by two million.

The national banks, responsible for the remaining quarter of the current subprime loans, were put under a different kind of pressure by the Clinton team to boost their low-income and minority lending too. Changes were made to the Community Reinvestment Act to establish a system by which banks were rated according to how much lending they did in low-income neighbourhoods. A good CRA rating was necessary if a bank wanted to get regulators to sign off on mergers, expansions, even new branch openings. A poor rating could be disastrous for a bank's business plan. It was a different kind of coercion, but just as effective. At the same time, the government pressed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two giants of the secondary mortgage market, to help expand mortgage loans among low and moderate earners, and introduced new rules allowing the organisations to get involved in the securitisation of subprime loans. The first package was launched in 1997 in collaboration with Bear Stearns.

So, by the end of the 20th century most of the ingredients that would combine to cause today's subprime crisis were already in place. Nevertheless, the 1990s can seem a long time ago, and to grasp the connection between the situation then and what is happening now, it's important to realise that only a small proportion of the subprime loans made since George W. Bush became President have gone to new, first-time buyers. A huge number of them have been refinancing loans, replacing mortgages originally taken out perhaps eight, ten or 12 years ago.

Imagine yourself in the place of one of those low-income householders who acquired a property in the late 1990s as a result of the Clinton home-ownership drive. What happened next? Chances are you managed OK for a while, but after a few years found that like most poor Americans, your income wasn't going up, it was declining. Around 2003, with your credit cards maxed out, you desperately needed to release some equity from your home. Luckily there was equity there to release, so you refinanced for the first time and enjoyed having some real money for a change. A couple of years later a pushy mortgage broker called to suggest you do it all again, squeezing out the last drops of equity and opting for a low-start mortgage. So you did — and that was fine while it lasted, but the interest rate just sky-rocketed. You will never pay off that loan, it is pure poison to you, just like it's pure poison to the investment bank that ended up with it on its books. You will just walk away. It's not your fault. It's not the bank's fault. And it certainly isn't George W. Bush's fault — every attempt he has made to reform the mortgage market has been blocked by Congressional Democrats.

So that's how we get from there to here, from crude attempts at social engineering during the early, heady days of the first Clinton administration to the turmoil on Wall Street today. There may be many technical lessons to be learned about selling and buying mortgages, about the best ways to price and manage risk, and about the regulation of financial markets, but I believe the most important lesson of all is an ethical one: it's about not behaving ruthlessly when trying to change the world for the better.

Bill Clinton's team, like so many progressives here in Britain, were not content to wait and see what fruits equal opportunities might bring. They felt compelled to secure their equal outcomes by any means necessary, even if that meant debauching institutions, corrupting professions and trying to skew the operation of markets. That only ever leads to chaos.

The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP. All Articles and Content Copyright ©2007 by The Spectator (1828) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Excellent article on Obama's role in the financial and banking collapse

Thanks for this great article, ET!

DS

 

A good detail explanation  about how the current Financial Fall Out was created back in the early 1990's. 

 

O'S DANGEROUS PALS

BARACK'S 'ORGANIZER' BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/os_dangerous_pals_131216.htm?page=0

By STANLEY KURTZ

Chutzpah: ACORN's drive to lower mortgage standards paved the way for the meltdown - yet last week, it was holding protests like this one in Florida, trying to get a cut of the financial-market-rescue bill.

Posted: 3:53 am
September 29, 2008

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity 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.

Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed still further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets.

ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in "direct action" - organizers' term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a "living wage" law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and protested being boxed into an "affirmative-action lending policy." The following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint using the "community support requirements" of the 1989 savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first "bank fair" at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank "summit" in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting - for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott's program as "affirma- tive-action lending" and ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."

Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff.

He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. Chicago ACORN sought out Obama's legal services for a "motor voter" case and partnered with him on his 1992 "Project VOTE" registration drive.

In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted.

MORE, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report ac knowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Hmm. Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological. Sound familiar?

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.

In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer."

IN short, to understand the roots of the subprime-mort gage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

Then you'll truly know what community organizers do.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

 

Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster.

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