It appears that working for Obama will not only put you in good stead with God but gain you some badly needed credits at the University of Massachusetts. School officials have moved to rescind an offer of two college credits for students who volunteer for Democrat Barack Obama. This follows a Denver professor who assigned students an essay to write critical things about GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Chaplain Ken Higgins sent an email to students on Sept. 18 e-mail that stated: “If you’re scared about the prospects for this election, you’re not alone. The most important way to make a difference in the outcome is to activate yourself. It would be just fine with McCain if Obama supporters just think about helping, then sleep in and stay home between now and Election Day.” He then said that an unnamed sponsor in the History Department would give them two credits for the work, even noting “It is relatively (easy) to do late add-ons.”
The school has nixed the idea but declined to name the history professor.
In the meantime, Professor Andrew Hallam, apart-time English teacher at Metropolitan State College in Denver, wanted to see such work himself. He ordered students to write essays critical of Sarah Palin as a formal assignment. He tells the students to address “her body language, facial expressions, the way she dressed, what she said and who she pointed out or talked about in her speech. How do these elements form a ‘fairy tale’ image about Sarah Palin as a person and as a politician that the Republican Party may wish its members and the American public to believe?”
For the Denver article, click here.
For the full story from UMass, click here.
rafflaw
1, September 24, 2008 at 12:15 am
As to your statement above that foreclosures only increased to the same amount that we relaxed the lending standards; according to some 2007 figures the foreclosures(loans in some stage of foreclosure) were up 79% over 2006 numbers which were up from the previous year according to this MSNBC article
I am familiar with the article and the company providing these figures, “Realty Trak”. In fact, Realty Trak is responsible for most of these doom and gloom figures that everyones been tauting now for the last several years.
A period which by the way coincides with the birth of this Irvine California based firm that just suddenly popped up in 2005 and began spouting doom and gloom figures in the real estate market.
As for their figures, they base them on some pretty loose criteria, including simply notices being sent, not actual foreclosures, and the figures themselves I think deserve closer scrutiny.
Even the figures in the article you point to seem askew, and don’t seem to jive. They claim a 79 percent increase from 06 to 07 in “foreclosure related warnings”, yet the figures they provide do not support that figure. They claim that foreclosure related warnings, something they appear to calculate into their “some stage of foreclosure” statistic, were up from 717,522 in 2006 to 1.3 million in 2007, which amounts to 55 percent, not the 79 percent the article is referring to, which makes me wonder as to the nature of these “statistics” and how they are arriving at them. And to what end.
Everything I’ve seen on the topic from official sources seems to point to between a half to one and a half percent growth in actual foreclosures nationwide, which the article itself abruptly states after providing these seemingly contradictory figures.
From your article;
More than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some phase of the foreclosure process last year, up from about half a percent in 2006, RealtyTrac said
So that also points to just over a 50 percent jump, not the 79 percent they are selling, and even higher numbers they are claiming this year (121 percent). They are clearly factoring in all sorts of erroneous and probably redundant data in an attempt to inflate the figures, to what end one can only guess. And they’re not being straight about the increase in high risk loans which inflates the figures. They’re pushing these figures as prime increase when in fact they include sub prime figures which drive the overall numbers up.
But across the board the fact is MOST mortgages in this country are stable, and the securities are good and deserve to be backed. If we don’t back them, we let our banks fail. And if our banks fail, we’ll enter our own version of the Great Depression, however considering we have about 400 million mouths to feed its probably going to look more like Mad Max.
Most analysts agree that if Hoover had established the RFC in 28 or 29 the Great Depression would have not been so great, and maybe wouldn’t even have happened, if he acted quickly enough, a factor that helped cost him the election. And right now dragging our feet is doing nothing but helping more banks to fail, and further devaluing our GOOD securities, and they are good, on the international market and leaving us open to economic collapse.
We don’t have a choice here. The democrats just want you to think we do. Because they don’t want to see an economic turnaround, right before an election.
Democrats love to talk about “sticking it to the man” so to speak. At least thats the mentality. “screw the mortgage companies”… the “fat cats”.
Truth is, those companies are us. If we stick it to them we’re sticking it to ourselves. Sure there are a few “fat cats” at the top, but they, and their money will be there when we’ve stabilized this trainwreck and gotten a handle on things. David Schuster made fun of Mitch McConnel today for pointing out that we don’t fix things mid stream, we fix them once we’re safe, but its the truth. We need a plan now. Not talk. And not speeches.
The democrats (and certain republicans who never wanted to see minorities buying homes)were out making speeches on camera the past two days talking about not “giving Wall Street a free pass”, which is not helping. Instead of being out on camera making speeches they need to be in an all night emergency session hammering the devil out of the details and getting this thing done.
A bail out is not a new idea. It was done in 32. It was done in 89. And both times it worked well enough to pull us out and get things rolling again. The great depression lasted as long as it did because the govt refused to bail out the banks for 4 years. It wasn’t until 1932 when Hoover established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to bail out failing banks that things began to improve. When FDR took over a in 33 and declared his “Bank Holiday” it was to establish broader powers for the fed to bail out failing banks. This paved the way for the Glass-Steagall Act establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which put global faith back into the US markets and stabilized the economy.
This is a time proven method and the only reason people are against it is a lot of partisan rhetoric coming from the democrats and some republicans in congress about “bailing out the fat cats”. We need to get past the partisanship here and fix this now before it really does get bad.
Rafflaw
Why don’t we just give the $700 Billion to the mortgage holders and payoff all of the “bad” debts and those people whose loans are now paid in full will have more money to spend and help the economy and the fat cats will have to allow the “free market” to solve the crisis.
While on the surface I’d be down with that purely for selfish reasons, I am also keenly aware that such a move would not pull us out.
It would not get the mortgage lenders lending again. In fact it might break them, considering suddenly every mortgage in America would be paid off early, most without prepaid interest, meaning the mortgage companies would be in hock for the interest. They would however have a lot of capital on hand, so who knows? It might work. You’d have to write in a clause however that says they have to in turn reinvest their newly found capital into making new loans, which I don’t see how you could enforce considering you just screwed them out of a couple of decades worth of interest.
rafflaw
1, September 24, 2008 at 12:19 am
CMM,
I think Bob,Esq.may have intended to use statism.
I know.
😐
That was a joke.
rafflaw
1, September 24, 2008 at 12:15 am
If you say in one breath that the so-called “crisis” isn’t that bad, then there is no reason to rush into a quick fix that gives Paulson Supreme power to spend almost a Trillion dollars with no oversight.
I didn’t say the crisis wasn’t that bad. I said it was “much ado about nothing”.
And much ado it is.
The crisis is serious because if foriegn investors pull their funds, which they have, everything freezes up, like it has.
Its all tied to the mortgage lending industry, and last October when the dems started bloviating and passing legislation going after the mortgage lenders they effectively froze up the market. When mortgage lenders won’t lend, buyers can’t buy.
When buyers can’t buy, builders can’t build. And that means a complete collapse of about a thousand peripheral industries, and jobs are lost across the board, on a massive scale. Everyone from the realtor right on down to the janitor at Home Depot feels the pinch, and it just spreads out from there. Think of the factory workers at roofing plants, aluminum siding factorys, etc. They all feel it in lower wages and mass job cuts. And they in turn can’t pay their mortgages, credit card bills, etc, and the downturn spirals on down.
Alan Greenspan warned us not to let the housing market stall, because thats whats been propping up our economy since the dot com bubble burst. And yet we let it stall. The only thing that will get this economy going again is to get the mortgage lenders lending again so people start buying and selling homes. Unless that happens, nothing will change.
No stimulus package, no incentives, no tax rebates, nothing. Nothing will fix this unless we get the mortgage lenders lending again.
But I agree that the oversight clause needs to be removed. And thats easy. Its a no win battle so why they put it in seems to me to be a throwaway, so they could give something up.
The dems need to take that clause out.
CMM,
I think Bob,Esq.may have intended to use statism.
Here. I corrected a typo for you Bob.
😀
U.S. under G.W. Bush = pure satanism.
CMM,
If you say in one breath that the so-called “crisis” isn’t that bad, then there is no reason to rush into a quick fix that gives Paulson Supreme power to spend almost a Trillion dollars with no oversight. Bailing out the industry by giving the same people who screwed the pooch originally, $700 Billion to spend without review, is not my idea of a successful plan. Plus, Paulson can hire anyone he wants to review the securities and guess who he will hire for that job? More of the same people who sold the bad loans in the beginning. How can you add oversight gradually after the $700 Billion is already spent? That makes no sense. This is the Bush Regime getting relief for their corporate friends, period. Why don’t we just give the $700 Billion to the mortgage holders and payoff all of the “bad” debts and those people whose loans are now paid in full will have more money to spend and help the economy and the fat cats will have to allow the “free market” to solve the crisis. As to your statement above that foreclosures only increased to the same amount that we relaxed the lending standards; according to some 2007 figures the foreclosures(loans in some stage of foreclosure) were up 79% over 2006 numbers which were up from the previous year according to this MSNBC articlehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22893703/. To state that the relaxing of lending standards as you put it was expected to cause a higher default rate is to admit that the lenders purposely lent money to people that they expected to default. That would be a great example of a curious business practice to put it mildly. As I think of it, it does sound alot like a Bush type of plan.
Authoritarian right = fascism (e.g. Nazism)
Authoritarian left = communism (e.g. Stalinism)
U.S. under G.W. Bush = pure statism.
Foreign investors got scared by all of the default talk coming out of Washington. Talks of skyrocketing defaults scared foreign securities investors in turn devaluing securities backed by US mortgages. This snowballed into the current situation where the government will have to back those securties themselves which is what this bailout will do.
But, that in turn will cause the lending markets to open up again, and the housing market will take off again, which will prop up the economy.
When they announced the bailout idea last the markets skyrocketed. Then, everyone on the left and some on the right, started complaining about it. Denouncing it as bailing out fat cats.
Well, its much more than that. Its bailing out us all. And these delays are doing nothing but making matters worse. The market told us last week that if the fed would back the securities then it would respond favorably. And we in turn, we who have been suffering under a falling stock market and economy, said “naaaahhhh, we’d rather go bankrupt.”.
Now, hopefully, more people are starting to see that a bailout is not an unAmerican principle and its not bailing out “the fat cats”. Its backing our mortgage securites which are good debt, not bad. Foreign investors just don’t want it because we scared them off of it.
Thats the dirty little secret some democrats in congress doesn’t want you to know. Most of these notes are GOOD. And half of the bad ones could be good with just a few adjustments. People are paying their mortgages, and the bailout is only backing something that foriegn investors are scared away from because of a lot of hype coming out of Washington about mortgage rising default rates. Something we knew would happen and were supposed to be compensating for with higher fees and interest rates for high risk loans. That money is whats in question here, and tracking it is important. But we don’t have to write it all into this one bill.
Its not like this is the last bill Congress gets to pass. We can work on oversight, legislation, etc, GRADUALLY. So as not to “shock” the markets. But coming down hard on lenders just did exactly what I predicted it would do several months ago. It froze lending which stalled the economy and sent it into a spiral.
Make no mistake about it. The market and the economy will not return until the mortgage industry returns. Until lenders begin lending nothing will improve, and in fact, will deteriorate even more. We have to get the lenders lending again. Now. Today. Not next month. Not next week. But now. And this bill can do it.
We did it in 1932. We did it in 1989 with the establishment of the RTC. And we can do it now.
But I assure you the last thing the democrats want prior to November, is a economic rebound.
rafflaw
1, September 23, 2008 at 9:53 pm
however, they are not trying to extend the “financial crisis” until after the election. They are simply doing something that Bush and his cohorts are not used to doing. And that is actually looking at the genesis of the problem(s) and figuring out what to do to solve it and to prevent a reoccurrence.
I disagree.
The time to re-evaluate the ship building procedures that led to a defect in the Titantic is not when you’re in the middle of the ocean taking on water.
When you get the ship and passengers safely to shore, thats when you can worry about the problems that led you there.
The truth is this crisis is much ado about nothing. It shouldn’t have happened, but too many people decrying the mortgage defaults, which were up, but not drastically, from previous years, due to the new ARM loan programs.
Its true the ARM loan programs introduced by Cheney and Phil Graham and others were the catalyst, mostly due to mismanagement and exploitation of the “new programs”, but lets get it straight. They weren’t all bad.
In fact, loan defaults weren’t up that much more than we expected from previous years.
We KNEW the defaults would be higher with these new programs which made home buying an option to more Americans. We KNEW this would happen because we were giving loans to people with lesser credit scores.
We relaxed lending standards so naturally the percentage of mortgages resulting in default would climb.
Duh.
The problem here I think is mostly hype. And I hate to say it, but a lot of democrats in congress were doing the hyping. They scared foreign investors with talk of skyrocketing defaults, when in fact, defaults only increased in line with the relaxed credit standards.
Higher rates were supposed to offset these defaults so we need to figure out where that money went and thats where you’ll find the mismanagement.
But as I said above, we KNEW this would happen. No one doubted when we relaxed lending standards that defaults would climb. And they did. But they didn’t “SOAR” like people are saying. They rose in direct relation to the amount we relaxed standards for lending. And the offset was supposed to be the interest on the ARM loans. That was supposed to cover it.
And I’m guessing it did.
So figuring out where the money went from the increased interest rates on the ARM’s is important.
But making sure that these loans are not devalued further is also important. In fact its critical.
And congress is purposely dragging its feet, and has been since the onset of this crisis. They’ve been doing nothing since it began last year, other than scaring off foreign investors with talk of rising delinquincy rates in the mortgage industry. The bailout is our only option at this point other than economic collapse, and the dems know this. They just don’t want the economy rebounding prior to November, which could hurt them at the polls.
So they sit back and watch the Dow tumble two days straight while they make speeches about protecting the little people.
The bailout was a good plan in 32. It was a good plan in 89. And its a good plan now. If we get moving on it before further wealth is lost and further damage done.
rafflaw
1, September 23, 2008 at 9:53 pm
CMM,
I can agree with the first part of your post, but merely voting for the war, which was a big mistake, is not related to the definition of fascism; i>
The Hitler doctrine of Pre-emptive war is not associated with Facism?
😐
Who knew?
rafflaw,
I do mean the left can be VERY fascist. At their best neither liberals nor conservative espouse or support fascism. At their worst, they both do. The events described in this post show a left wing attempt at thought control. A thoughtful professor teaches students to think deeply and wisely for themselves. In both cases above, “Palin sucks and Obama is great” is the starting point for the assignments. The real starting point should be, “let’s look carefully at what the candidates are saying, examine their record, see how they manipulate public perception and see what you come up with after a careful anaylsis”. It’s not any different from a right wing religious group telling their members Obama sucks and Palin is great–don’t think about it, just vote as you’re told.
CroMM mentioned other aspects of the left supporting totalitarianism. It is a mistake to think that only the far right is complicit in the war, domestic spying and the financial collapse of this nation. It’s also a mistake to think that only liberals will stand against these things. Conservatives of principle will stand against them as well.
The far left brought us Stalin and Mao. The far right gave us Hitler and Mussolini. None of these people are fairly described as just ignorant. (Mike, I’m tired and not writing things as clearly as you and rafflaw deserve. I think it does go beyond ignorant people, although I completely agree with your statement on that. But left and right wing ideologies do seem to have a fascist element. If I didn’t do a good job here, I apologize.)
CMM,
I can agree with the first part of your post, but merely voting for the war, which was a big mistake, is not related to the definition of fascism; however, they are not trying to extend the “financial crisis” until after the election. They are simply doing something that Bush and his cohorts are not used to doing. And that is actually looking at the genesis of the problem(s) and figuring out what to do to solve it and to prevent a reoccurrence. This $700 billion blank check is preposterous. The original suggested bill from Paulson states that noone and no court of law can review what the Treasury Sec. does with the money! This is the same guy who was in charge during the freefall and his former company is in line to get the most money. With those kind of facts, wouldn’t it make sense to stop and actually look closely at the fine print?
Rafflaw said…
The left wing espouses just the opposite of what fascism espouses, doesn’t it?
Well it purports to.
But then it votes for war, Domestic spying, etc.
And right now I think they’re purposely trying to extend the financial crisis until after the elections.
So yea, I guess Jills right. There is a facist “aspect” to it.
Jill,
I must also disagree, but I think on different grounds. It’s not that the far left wing has a fascist aspect to it, it is that ignorant people can be of any political persuasion. Although I am of the Left, some might say far, I’ve long recognized that people who might agree with me politically can still be asses and have some friends who are quite right Wing. No political persuasion has a lock on thinking people. By the same token I can’t stand Pat Buchanan and Noam Chomsky equally, because both of them while politically polar opposites, exhibit similar intolerance for different points of view.
Jill,
I am confused(even more than usual) about your statement that the left wing has a “strong fascist aspect to it”. Are you sure you don’t mean the right wing has a fascist aspect to it? Or maybe I am just too tired to read your post correctly. The left wing espouses just the opposite of what fascism espouses, doesn’t it? The right wing wants the merger of religion and government and the powerful control of corporate entities. And isn’t that close to the definition of fascism?
Hello mnoble,
I still think you are not from the US but your birthplace is not important to your arguments. I think we should answer each others’ arguments and not worry about whether a person is foreign. The truth is we are all foreign somewhere! I thought this way before and still think the same.
And I do wish the left or right wing opinion page was kept much more separate from the content formerly known as news.
Amen Jill. But I would add the bias is more one way than the other, which is not to argue for an offsetting bias but rather no bias at all.
P.S.
When I disagreed with your opinion in an earlier forum your conclusion was that I must be a foreigner, now that I agree with your opinion is your conclusion that I must not be a foreigner?
Both these cases are disturbing. These are actions worthy of Regent University. It is intellectually dishonest to analyze one candidate instead of all of them. Hallam could have put all the candidates names, evenly divided, into a hat and had the students pull them out randomly and talk about their findings with the rest of the class. History professor X could offer credit for political work by students for the candidate of her or his choice.
The left wing has a strong fascist aspect to it. At their best both conservatives and liberals teach free thought–how to analyze, how to examine, how to make informed judgements. At their worst they both advocate the most mindless conformity.
I have lost all respect for the alternative left wing media because of just this type of intellectual dishonesty. They have pretty much ceased any real analysis of their chosen candidates. This makes their arguments lose all credibility. Their work has all the weight of Fixed news. This is both unethical and dangerous. A mindless subservience to one candidate allows that candidate to get away with votes and programs that they really shouldn’t. It makes them unaccountable to the people and weaker in the long run.