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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (119719)	4/2/2008 7:34:48 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 173976

Hillary's Delta Blues By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY \| Posted Monday, March 31, 2008 4:30 PM PT Election '08: Hillary Clinton blames predatory subprime mortgage lenders for creating the housing mortgage crisis. She should know. Her campaign manager sat on the board of one. Sen. Clinton has spent a considerable amount of campaign time bashing the Bush administration's handling of the subprime lending crisis. She paints a picture of economic disaster as financial wolves huff and puff to repossess everybody's home, though 96% of mortgagees have been making their payments on time. She should be very familiar with the subject, since she has as her campaign manager one Margaret "Maggie" Williams, who has sat on the board of one of the nation's largest, and now bankrupt, subprime mortgage lenders accused by consumer advocates and the federal government of predatory lending practices. Williams joined New York-based Delta Financial in April 2000, less than a month after one federal official said Delta's practices were "turning the American dream of homeownership into a nightmare." In March 2000, the federal government had charged Delta with violating consumer fair lending and consumer protection laws by approving and funding loans regardless of the borrower's ability to pay. Delta Financial, and subsidiary Delta Funding, made much of its money by turning around and selling its loans at a profit. At the time Williams joined Delta, it had a 5% foreclosure rate — double the industry standard. Until Delta's bankruptcy last December, Williams sat on the board of the ninth-largest subprime lender in the nation, handling subprime loans worth more than $800 million in the third quarter of 2007 alone, according to National Mortgage News. As of last September, Williams owned 12,500 shares of Delta's common stock and by year-end had earned in the neighborhood of $175,000 for her board service, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Records show that she was able to cash in some of her stock options for a profit of $15,000 during a temporary rise in Delta's stock price last July. Williams has a way of popping up at the most unusual times. When Bill Clinton was president, Johnny Chung, a bagman for the Chinese military, sought a photo-op with the Clintons for himself and a few close friends. Rebuffed by then-DNC Chairman Don Fowler, Chung showed up at the White House with a $50,000 check that he handed to Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff. Williams also was seen by a Secret Service agent taking files from Vince Foster's office the night of Foster's alleged suicide. Foster, White House counsel for the Clinton administration, was Hillary Clinton's law partner at the Rose Law Firm and was tied to the Whitewater scandal. Williams also served as chief of staff for the William J. Clinton Foundation, contributors to which include the Soros Foundation. George Soros is the patron saint of MoveOn.org. The foundation's Form 990 IRS return from 2006 shows that none of the top 13 donors was identified. Curiously, donations rose nearly 50% to $138.5 million that year, about the time Hillary decided to seek the White House. Williams isn't the only Clintonian who made money from an industry Hillary has denounced. Henry Cisneros, Bill Clinton's former secretary of housing and urban development, grossed more than $5 million in stock sales and board compensation from Countrywide Financial, one of the nation's largest subprime lenders. Judging by her choice of staff and her truth-deficit disorder, it's clear Hillary Clinton isn't ready for prime, or even subprime, time.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (119719)	4/2/2008 7:35:56 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Informed Decisions By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY \| Posted Friday, March 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT Climate Change: Al Gore says that those of us who are skeptical that man is warming the planet have a flat-Earth mind-set. But if Gore would open his mind, he'd learn that more than likely the opposite is true. In Sunday's appearance on CBS' "60 Minutes," Gore tells reporter Lesley Stahl that the skeptics of man-made global warming are "almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat." "That demeans them a little bit," he says, "but it's not that far off." In addition to being gratingly sanctimonious, Gore is wrong. A study conducted by Texas A&M professors found that the more Americans know about global warming, the more likely they are to dismiss it. "More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming," the researchers write in "Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA," an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis. The authors of the study and the accompanying article believe that Americans' strong confidence in scientists has made them less concerned about global warming. It seems the public believes science can solve any problems that might arise. Just as plausible, though, is the probability that when Americans learn about the facts, they understand that the anthropogenic global warming theory is filled with holes. That would explain why the "more informed respondents . . . feel less personally responsible for global warming." The study was no put-up job by oil interests. It was conducted by Paul M. Kellstedt, a Texas A&M associate professor of political science, who said the findings that were "just the opposite" of what they were expected out to be. Co-authors were Arnold Vedlitz, the Bob Bullock chair in government and public policy at A&M's George Bush School of Government and Public Service, and Sammy Zahran, now an assistant professor of sociology at Colorado State University. That sociologists tend to back candidates from the Democratic Party, such as Gore, is no secret. But the Nobel Prize/Oscar winner isn't running this time. He has, however, been nominated by columnist Joe Klein, who wrote in Time magazine last week that Gore would be "the answer to the Democratic Party's dilemma" that has been created by the Clinton-Obama brawl. To Klein's suggestion we say: Run, Al, run. His candidacy would let us get this global warming issue aired out so we can finally be done with it. Maybe then the country will think back to this weekend's asinine Earth Hour, when we were all expected to turn off our lights, and realize it was a metaphor for the darkness that global warming alarmists have been operating under.