O'S Dangerous Pals

by Stanley Kurtz - September 29th, 2008 - The New York Post

[Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama] 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 "affirmative-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 turns out that Barack Obama had more than a minor role in causing this financial meltdown. This article critiques Obama's role in supporting the ACORN organization, a group which employed Obama as a "community organizer" and which used him to train them in activist techniques, such as the militant techniques of anti-American Saul Alinsky.

He specifically backed actions by ACORN leader Madeline Talbott to force banks to lend to people who were not credit worthy under any reasonable rules. Now these same people, backed by ACORN, are insisting that the bad loans that were granted be written off but the people who got the loans get to keep their houses. That is sort of like robbing a bank. Then when caught demanding that you get to keep what is left of the proceeds.

If you think that makes sense, I guarantee you are voting for Obama. If you think this is unreasonable, I guarantee you are voting for McCain.