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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Sep 18, 2009 - 03:17pm PT
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ACORN was a principal force in the sub prime housing collapse.
Lead StoryACORN’s illegal alien home loan racket
By Michelle Malkin • September 18, 2009 08:33 AM My column today blasts ACORN Housing Corporation’s criminal-enabling home loan program for illegal aliens. To paraphrase Jon Stewart: Where the hell is everyone?
AHC is one of the endless non-profit arms of ACORN. Their response to the BigGovernment.com sting videos hasn’t received as much attention as the national ACORN flagship’s. You can read AHC’s CYA reaction here.
***
ACORN’s illegal alien home loan racket
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009
There’s one thing more shocking than the illegal alien smuggling advice that an ACORN official in San Diego gave undercover journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. It’s the illegal alien criminal racket that ACORN has already been operating with the full knowledge of the U.S. government.
On Wednesday, O’Keefe and Giles published the fifth in a series of BigGovernment.com sting videos. ACORN official Juan Carlos Vera coached the pimp-and-prostitute-posing pair on how best to pull off a border-busting smuggling operation. It would be “better from Tijuana,” he counseled on videotape. Carlos Vera then generously offered the investigative couple his Mexican “contacts” to bring 12 illegal alien girls into the country for prostitution.
GOP California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now wants an investigation. But neither the Terminator nor any other California public officials raised a peep when the very same San Diego ACORN office publicly announced a partnership with Citibank to secure home loans for illegal aliens. In 2005, Citibank and ACORN Housing Corporation – which has received tens of millions of tax dollars under the Bush administration alone — began recruiting Mexican illegal aliens for a lucrative program offering loans with below-market interest rates, down-payment assistance and no mortgage insurance requirements. Instead of Social Security numbers required of law-abiding citizens, the program allows illegal alien applicants to supply loosely-monitored tax identification numbers issued by the IRS.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that “undocumented residents” comprise a vast market representing a potential sum of “$44 billion in mortgages.” Citibank enlarged its portfolio of subprime and other risky loans. ACORN enlarged its membership rolls. The program now operates in Miami; New York City; Jersey City, N.J.; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Bridgeport, Conn., and at all of ACORN Housing’s 12 California offices. San Diego ACORN officials advised illegal alien recruits that their bank partners would take applicants who had little or no credit, or even “nontraditional records of credit, such as utility payments and documentation of private loan payments.”
The risk the banks bear is the price they pay to keep ACORN protesters and Hispanic lobbyists from the National Council of La Raza screaming about “predatory lending” off their backs. These professional grievance-mongers have turned the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act – which forced lenders to sacrifice underwriting standards for “diversity” – into lucrative “business” opportunities. Or rather, politically correct blackmail. As the Consumer Rights League noted in a 2008 report on the group’s successful shakedowns of financial institutions, “an agreement with Citibank, a significant ACORN donor and partner, showed that some activists become less active when deals are in place.”
In the wake of the sting videos, ACORN officials are making a great show of clamoring for “reform.” ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis blamed the debacles across the country on the “indefensible action of a handful of our employees.” But the corruption is systemic. ACORN has long thrown rank-and-file operatives under the bus to cover for its management’s indefensible conduct. And ACORN’s highly-touted advisory watchdogs include inherently conflicted foxes guarding the henhouse:
ACORN advisory council member Henry Cisneros resigned from his post as Clinton HUD Secretary after lying to FBI agents about payments to a former mistress.
ACORN advisory council member Andy Stern is president of the SEIU, the Big Labor organization plagued by embezzlement scandals and inextricably linked to ACORN’s disgraced founder Wade Rathke. (And see my document drop here on ACORN’s “nurturing” of SEIU Local 100.)
And ACORN advisory council member Eric Eve of Citigroup is a champion of the ACORN/Citibank illegal alien loan program that openly undermines immigration laws and integrity in banking.
The truth is more sordid than any fictional scenarios caught on tape: ACORN is a criminal enterprise.
Posted in: ACORN Watch, Immigration
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Bertrand
Trad climber
SF
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Sep 18, 2009 - 03:26pm PT
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Chris Mac, Will you PLEASE NUKE this asinine thread!!!!! It is ruining your otherwise awesome forum.
I know this posting of mine will again bump it to the top, but I'm doing it now, because it is already near the top and my bump wont change its position much.
I f'ing cringe when I see it on the front page. Dr. F, go ruin some other climbing forum!
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Sep 18, 2009 - 04:54pm PT
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http://www.drudgereport.com/
Hey...all the curious Liberal needs to know about why The Whitehouse is being kicked down the sidewalk like an empty 40oz Mickey's Malt Liquor can.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Sep 18, 2009 - 05:20pm PT
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Another flaw in government health care
is they can't repossess it if you don't
make the premiums like its possible for
repo dudes to do cars, boats,
and your company jet.
Dr F - post a pic of your George Soros shrine.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Sep 18, 2009 - 06:13pm PT
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Corniss Chopper, it's time to take off the black lace teddy, fish net stockings and high heels. Be a man.
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WandaFuca
Gym climber
A survey where 68% preferred this Fuca over others
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Sep 18, 2009 - 06:27pm PT
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Another flaw in government health care
is they can't repossess it if you don't
make the premiums like its possible for
repo dudes to do cars, boats,
and your company jet.
Yeah, it would make great TV to have some burly dude come knock
a 90 year-old's door down and cut out her hip replacement
because she didn't keep up on her payments . . .
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Sep 18, 2009 - 08:14pm PT
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Ricky - thanks I guess.
perhaps more sad is that Chris Wallace
has accurately labeled the Obama Administration
as the biggest bunch of crybabies he's ever covered.
Talk about they're need to grow a pair.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 18, 2009 - 08:19pm PT
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He always ends up back near the crotch.
Curious.
Very curious.
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
Idaho, also. Sorta, kinda mostly, Yeah.
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Sep 18, 2009 - 09:55pm PT
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Do they actually have Mickey's in 40 cans?
Maybe in a perfect world......40's are glass, & therefore treacherous.
Careful.......
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apogee
climber
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Sep 19, 2009 - 01:46am PT
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Man, it's good to have Dr. F around again.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Sep 19, 2009 - 04:03am PT
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Who wants to bet that Dr Noda did 'not' deliver our President at his birth?
Ronald Reagan's birthplace, a second-story apartment over what
was once a small-town tavern in Tampico, Ill., is today marked
by a museum. John Adams' birthplace is a national park. Even
Rutherford B. Hayes, whose birthplace is today covered over by
a BP gas station, merits a metal plaque commemorating the
location.
But while most of America's 44 presidents have tourist
attractions or monuments of some kind marking their
birthplaces, President Barack Obama – for several reasons – may
not be granted the honor
hah hah!
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jstan
climber
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Sep 19, 2009 - 06:58am PT
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Many of us have wondered what the costs are for administering/executing our
health care system as it exists today. I won’t try to pull out the numbers for you
in the study below.
Enjoy.
Canadian Health Care, Even With Queues, Bests U.S. (Update1)
By Pat Wechsler
Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Opponents of overhauling U.S. health care argue that
Canada shows what happens when government gets involved in medicine,
saying the country is plagued by inferior treatment, rationing and months-long
queues.
The allegations are wrong by almost every measure, according to research by
theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other
independent studies published during the past five years. While delays do occur
for non-emergency procedures, data indicate that Canada’s system of universal
health coverage provides care as good as in the U.S., at a cost 47 percent less
for each person.
“There is an image of Canadians flooding across the border to get care,” said
Donald Berwick, a Harvard University health- policy specialist and pediatrician
who heads the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
“That’s just not the case. The public in Canada is far more satisfied with the
system than they are in the U.S. and health care is at least as good, with much
more contained costs.”
Canadians live two to three years longer than Americans and are as likely to
survive heart attacks, childhood leukemia, and breast and cervical cancer,
according to the OECD, the Paris- based coalition of 30 industrialized nations.
Deaths considered preventable through health care are less frequent in Canada
than in the U.S., according to a January 2008 report in the journal Health
Affairs. In the study by British researchers, Canada placed sixth among 19
countries surveyed, with 77 deaths for every 100,000 people. That compared
with the last-place finish of the U.S., with 110 deaths.
Infant Mortality
The Canadian mortality rate from asthma is one quarter of the U.S.’s, and the
infant mortality rate is 34 percent lower, OECD data show. People in Canada are
also 21 percent more apt to survive five years after a liver transplant.
Yet the Canadian “bogeyman,” as U.S. President Barack Obama called it at an
Aug. 11 gathering in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, may have “all but defeated”
the idea of a public option in the U.S., said Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care
economist at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Democrat from Montana,
introduced on Sept. 16 compromise health-care legislation that, unlike other
House and Senate bills, omits a government-backed choice for the uninsured
living in the U.S. who can’t afford private coverage.
Insurance Mandate
Private insurers, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession fear
the “market power” of a public plan, Reinhardt said. They “deployed certain
think tanks to find horror stories around the world that can be used to
persuade Americans a public health plan in the U.S. would bring rationing.”
Given that Congress is likely to pass a mandate to cover the uninsured,
Americans forced to buy policies will be left with no alternative to coping with
“double-digit rate increases” on commercial premiums, Reinhardt said.
“Both systems ration medical care,” he said. “In Canada, they make people wait.
In the U.S., we make people pay.”
Fifty-four percent of chronically ill Americans reported skipping a test or
treatment, neglecting to go to a doctor when sick, or failing to fill a
prescription because of the cost, according to a 2008 survey by the
Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that focuses on health care, and pollster
Harris Interactive. That was more than twice the number in Canada, data from
those New York-based groups showed.
Payment Worries
As the price of health care in the U.S. has risen three to four times faster than
the rate of inflation, surveys show that Americans have become concerned they
won’t be able to pay medical bills. Forty-three percent of consumers in a June
poll by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor said they worried they might
not be able to afford care, even with insurance.
“Canadians value fairness, and they cannot conceive of a system in which
someone can’t get health care,” said Wendy Levinson, a Canadian who runs the
department of medicine at the University of Toronto and worked in the U.S.
from 1979 to 2001.
The U.S. spent $7,290 on health care for each person in 2007, 87 percent more
than Canada’s $3,895, according to the latest OECD data. The U.S. also devoted
the highest percentage of gross domestic product to health care, 16 percent,
OECD numbers show. Canada’s expenditure was 10.1 percent.
Canada’s system consists of 10 provincial and three territorial nonprofit
insurance plans that cover all citizens, including those with pre-existing
conditions. It operates like Medicare, the U.S. program for the elderly and
disabled. In Canada, the government uses taxpayer funds to pay claims by
doctors, who mostly work in private practice or for a hospital and are paid fees
for their services.
Effect of Technology
Care is free where it’s provided, as in a doctor’s office, except for dentistry,
nursing home stays, prescription drugs outside hospitals, and rehabilitation
services. The elderly and low-income residents get help with pharmaceutical
purchases.
Technology partly explains the cost discrepancy between the two nations.
There are 67 percent more coronary-bypass procedures in the U.S. than in
Canada and 18 percent more Caesarean sections, OECD data show. In 2006,
the U.S. had more than four times the number of magnetic resonance imaging
units - - 26.5 for every million residents compared with 6.2 for every million in
Canada -- making Americans three times more likely than Canadians to get a
scan, according to the OECD.
In the U.S., technology is “overused” because doctors have to justify equipment
purchases with revenue, according to Gerard Anderson, a professor of public
health and medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Canada in the
1960s was about as expensive as the U.S., he said.
No. 1 in Cost
“The real difference has been their ability to control technology costs,” said
Anderson, who directed reviews of health systems for the World Bank and
developed U.S. Medicare payment guidelines for the Health and Human Services
Department. “The only thing the U.S. is consistently No. 1 in when it comes to
international comparisons with Canada and other OECD countries is cost.”
Less technology and, according to a 2007 report from the World Health
Organization, 20 percent fewer doctors in Canada than in the U.S. have led to
longer lines north of the border.
In 2008, 20 percent of chronically ill Canadians surveyed by the Commonwealth
Fund reported waiting three months or more to see a specialist. Five percent of
Americans polled said they had to wait that long.
Television Commercial
Washington-based lobbying groups including Americans for Prosperity and
FreedomWorks have seized upon the delays, arguing that Obama’s proposal for
a public option would eventually put private insurers out of business and force
everyone to live with government-paid coverage and substandard care.
FreedomWorks is led by Dick Armey, a former Republican congressman from
Texas.
An educational foundation affiliated with Americans for Prosperity paid $3.3
million to run a 60-second television commercial on U.S. stations in which
Shona Holmes, a 45-year-old native of Waterdown, Ontario, accused the
Canadian health-care system of almost causing her to die by delaying critical
treatment, according to Amy Menefee, a spokeswoman for the foundation. The
ad ran for three weeks and was repeated on Sept. 9 after the president’s
speech.
The TV spot first aired in May. Holmes, a mother of two and a self-employed
family mediator, said in the ad that she went to the U.S. for care. She traveled
2,237 miles (3,599 kilometers) to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, and
spent $97,000 for treatment of a benign brain tumor rather than wait for
insurance-paid care in Canada, she said in a telephone interview.
Bridge to Canada
“I felt strongly I could speak out because I’ve seen both systems,” Holmes said.
“I have seen how government involvement plays very negatively.”
Obama administration officials are trying to use the public option as “a bridge”
to a system like Canada’s since “they realize it isn’t politically acceptable to go
directly to that,” said Phil Kerpen, the director of policy for Americans for
Prosperity.
In Ontario, where Holmes lives, the average waiting time for surgery to remove
a tumor was 99 days in the second quarter, according to the Ontario Health
Insurance Plan’s Web site. If a patient was willing to go closer to Ottawa, the
wait was 36 days at Pembroke Regional Hospital Inc. in Pembroke, 460 miles
from Waterdown and 93 miles northwest of the Canadian capital. Closer to
Waterdown, a patient could go to St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, less than 10
miles away, with a 56-day wait.
Ontario Appeal
Holmes began speaking out publicly, she said, after she couldn’t get Ontario in
July 2005 to speed removal of her craniopharyngioma, a type of slow-growing
cystic tumor that can put pressure on the brain or optic nerve. She is now
pushing for the province’s insurance plan to reimburse her for the money she
spent on surgery, tests and follow-up, she said in the interview.
Andrew Morrison, a spokesman for the Ontario plan, said Canadians need
approval before getting care outside the country if they want to be reimbursed.
He declined to comment on the Holmes case. Lori Coleman, registrar for the
Toronto-based Health Services Appeal and Review Board, which handles
complaints about the Ontario plan’s eligibility and payment decisions, also
declined to comment.
Even with the waits, a majority of Canadians balk at the idea of turning
government insurance over to private hands. In a July Harris/Decima poll, 55
percent of respondents said improvement should be made through the public
plan, while 12 percent favored a private solution.
Doctor Visits
In both the U.S. and Canada, 26 percent of people interviewed told the
Commonwealth Fund survey of chronically ill adults they got a same-day
appointment with a doctor when they were sick -- the lowest number in any of
the eight countries polled by the foundation. Thirty-four percent of the
Canadians said they had to wait six days or more, compared with 23 percent of
the Americans.
Canadians visited their doctors more frequently: 5.9 visits per person compared
with four for those in the U.S., according to 2005 OECD data.
The U.S. leads industrial countries in the portion of the health-care dollar
devoted to processing claims and paying providers, the Commonwealth Fund
said.
Private-insurance administrative costs in the U.S. are 12.7 cents of a dollar, and
as high as 18 cents for some companies, said Karen Davis, president of the
Commonwealth Fund. Government plans, including Medicare and Medicaid,
spend 5.8 cents excluding costs of private drug plans, she said. In Canada 4.2
cents is spent on administration.
“If we lowered our administrative costs to that of the lowest three countries
with mixed public-private health-care systems, we could save $50 billion a
year,” Davis said. “This would go a long way toward financing coverage for the
uninsured.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Pat Wechsler in New York atpwechsler@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 18, 2009 12:22 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a_zs1Y1FspIM#
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shut up and pull
climber
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Sep 19, 2009 - 11:51am PT
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From Powerline blog today - the best center-right blog out there:
We noted here that the United States has the most progressive income tax system in the developed world. That's right--embarrassingly enough, more progressive than Sweden's.
Actually, a generation of economic stagnation has taught the Swedes a lesson. They've learned that government does not produce wealth, and if they want more people to work, jobs have to pay better, after taxes. Sweden is therefore in the midst of a series of tax cuts aimed at preserving the long-term viability of its economy. Today's headline: "Sweden slashes income tax further to boost jobs."
It's an interesting comparison: Sweden experimented with the nanny state, learned that it was devastating to the economic and moral health of its people, and is moving back toward individualism. Here in the U.S., we had the world's most dynamic economy, and the lesson we took away from that--some of us, anyway--was that we were doing something wrong and needed to socialize everything. Curious.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 19, 2009 - 12:09pm PT
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John...good post.
I was talking to a nursing student last night and she tells me that she is against a public option because of selfish reason...she wants to make as much maoney as possible...then she quotes that look at what nurses make in Canada...8.50 hour...a friend told her that.
I laughed and then looked up the average pay for nurses in Canada...it ranges from $19.56 to 29.00 per hour.
Lies and misinformation are everywhere...mostly from the right when it comes to healthcare in Canada and other countries with government run health care.
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the Fet
Supercaliyosemistic climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Sep 19, 2009 - 12:53pm PT
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I want to believe conservatives are good people. That they
want what is best. They just have different belief systems
that lead them to different conclusions. I know many are like
that, like Fattrad, he's a good dude, just coming from a
different perspective. Many of my older relatives are also
good conservatives. Bluering wants to be a good person too, if
he can just get past his temper.
But I'm just disgusted by the lies and focusing on everything
but the issues by many other conservatives. The birthers, the
people like suap/CC/etc. I don't see NEARLY as much hatefull
bullshit coming from the liberals. Why is that? Why are these
supposedly moral people so willing to sacrifice truth and
integrity for their ideals? Why do they put their ideals so
far ahead of pragmatic solutions? Why are they so willing to
believe the obvious lies of the right wing pundits? Why would
anyone watch the hate filled, anxiety producing diatribe of
these right wing pundits, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulture, et
al?
How can people be so brain washed? What would it take to get empathy for other points of view from these people?
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 19, 2009 - 01:22pm PT
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Fat makes fun of Pelosi...I can feel her pain. After seeing JFK, MLK and Bobby Kennedy go down it is not a joking or laughing matter.
Republicans like to see compassion as a weakness...one can only feel sorry for them.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Sep 19, 2009 - 01:30pm PT
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Fat wrote: jstan,
Why is that those seeking a socialization of medicine always use Canada as a comparative? The population size and demographic are non-correlated. The root cause of "lack of insurance" is a lack of education and income.
The evil one
Let's try England or France...and if it is lack of education which leads to lack of income...
Why are republicans always ready to chop funds to education and increase funding to the military?
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Sep 19, 2009 - 02:07pm PT
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Bob and Fatty: Your nursing student friend is perhaps overlooking that her potential wages are being in part held down by the millions in unreimbursed care that hospitals and doctors dole out every year. I don't really see how a public option would do much to affect nurses wages, but getting everyone insurance will only INCREASE wages as more people actually get access to care and are able to pay for it.
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