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Obama Steals A Page From FDR
Forbes ^ | 8/29/2007 | Rich Karlgaard

Posted on 08/29/2007 9:22:31 PM PDT by bruinbirdman

"Fine the lenders!" writes Barack Obama here.

Hoping to prop up his poopy presidential primary campaign, Obama says we should round up "the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low-income borrowers into taking on loans they cannot afford" and treat them as "the criminals they are."

Who, exactly, are these criminals? How does one identify them? What laws does one use to punish them? Obama, the lawyer, oddly never answers these questions.

In her wonderful book, The Forgotten Man--the book of the year--Amity Shlaes writes how FDR would tell his minions to ignore or retroactively change the law when going after wealthy businessmen such as Andrew Mellon.

Shlaes writes:

The president told Congress that though Washington had raised its tax rates, the Treasury was still short $600 million. Roosevelt blamed not the arrangement but the wealthy themselves. Roosevelt, [Treasury Secretary Henry] Morgenthau would tell Treasury officials, "wants to say flatly that our estimates and our methods of estimating are correct, but the citizens--that's the word he used--found a trick way of finding loopholes." Roosevelt insisted that these "loopholes be closed and that they be retroactive."

If revenues were wanting, Roosevelt didn't mind investigating, prosecuting or legislating his way to them.

Panicked for cash, Morgenthau now had his Treasury set about trying to create dozens of Mellons. Roswell Magill of the department audited individual returns in New York and found, according to Morgenthau's diary, that citizens were using old tax breaks--legally, mostly. But Roosevelt was now set on erasing the old distinction between evasion and avoidance that the Treasury had danced around for so long.

Roosevelt also set out to prove that the intention of the taxpayer who failed to complete complex returns correctly was malign: Where there was ambiguity, taxpayers ought to be presumed guilty.

By 1937, investors and businessmen were sick of FDR's capriciousness. Capital went on strike. Businessmen stopped investing and hiring. The 1932-1936 recovery collapsed, leaving "a depression within a depression," writes Shlaes. Consequences were dire. In Brooklyn, in 1937, a 13-year-old boy named William Troeller hanged himself. The boy worried that his parents and five siblings weren't getting enough food.

When Obama calls mortgage lenders criminals but doesn't specify the laws broken, he's playing with fire. Retroactive prosecution, hinted by Obama, is tyranny, plain and simple.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: fdr

1 posted on 08/29/2007 9:22:33 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
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To: bruinbirdman

Maybe we should see where the cash is coming from.

First Quarter 2007 Summary
Money Raised*
$25,661,047Money Spent
$6,606,444Cash on Hand
$19,185,637First Quarter 2007 Tally Sheet Total Receipts $25,792,081

Individuals $25,700,414
PACs $3,050
Transfers $0
Candidate Loans $0
Net Contributions* $25,661,047
TYPES
For Primary $0
For General $0
Money Spent $6,606,444
Salaries $0
Refunds $42,416
Cash on Hand $19,185,637

* Net contributions are total contributions minus refunds and do not include loans or transfers. First Quarter data is for the three months preceding March 31, 2007.

Top States
California $4,161,861
Contributions 4,037
Avg. Contribution $1,030
Top Zip Codes
90210 $163,900
92037 $128,905
90049 $117,592

Illinois $3,763,553
Contributions 3,689
Avg. Contribution $1,020
Top Zip Codes
60614 $417,130
60611 $357,311
60610 $260,775

New York $2,775,722
Contributions 2,363
Avg. Contribution $1,174
Top Zip Codes
10021 $292,388
10128 $194,889
10024 $178,331


2 posted on 08/29/2007 9:34:06 PM PDT by Westlander (Unleash the Neutron Bomb)
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To: bruinbirdman

If Obama had had his way, a huge number of blacks wouldn’t be homeowners today.


3 posted on 08/29/2007 9:37:52 PM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (Elections have consequences.)
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To: bruinbirdman

S E N A T O R (D - IL)
Barack Obama

2001-2006 Total Receipts: $16,285,394
2001-2006 Total Spent: $15,964,724
Cash on Hand: $516,153
Debts: $0
Date of last report: December 31, 2006
First elected: 2004
Next election: 2010

Fundraising by Cycle:
2006: $1,321,210
2004: $14,935,520
2002: $28,664

Individual contributions
$14,797,034
(90.9%)

PAC contributions
$1,300,378
(8.0%)

Candidate self-financing
$1,000
(0.0%)

Other
$186,982
(1.1%)

PAC Contribution Breakdown

Business
$83,389
(83.9%)

Labor
$13,400
(13.5%)

Ideological/Single Issue
$2,600
(2.6%)

Quality of Disclosure:

Full Disclosure
$1,028,651
(93.3%)

Incomplete
$0

No Disclosure
$74,390
(6.7%)


4 posted on 08/29/2007 9:38:40 PM PDT by Westlander (Unleash the Neutron Bomb)
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To: bruinbirdman

The big-government-bureaucracy page or the selling-out-to-the-communists page?


5 posted on 08/29/2007 9:41:17 PM PDT by marsh_of_mists
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To: bruinbirdman

For the second time since signaling his plans to run for president, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is battling allegations of ethical misjudgment.

The latest incident comes courtesy of today’s New York Times, which reports that shortly after arriving in the Senate Obama bought stock in two companies whose investors included several major donors to his campaign. One of the companies — AVI Biopharma — was developing an avian flu treatment even as Obama began work to secure increased federal funding for the disease.

The controversy comes on the heels of Obama’s acknowledgment late last year that he made a “boneheaded” mistake in purchasing a property in Chicago on the same day that the Democratic fundraiser Tony Rezko bought an adjacent parcel of land. Less than a year later with Rezko under federal investigation Obama paid $100,000 to the fundraiser and his wife for a piece of the property.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/03/obamas_problems.html


6 posted on 08/29/2007 9:46:50 PM PDT by Westlander (Unleash the Neutron Bomb)
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To: bruinbirdman
Just making everything FREE. Its lunatic but at least its the liberal idea of utopia. Why not come out and say so?

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

7 posted on 08/29/2007 9:49:24 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: bruinbirdman

Former vice-presidential candidate, Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) repeated his call for the creation of a “home rescue fund” and a crackdown on “predatory lending.” As a show of “good faith,” Edwards promised to sell his shares in the Fortress Investment Predatory Lending Group. “I will sacrifice millions in additional profit I could’ve made from this investment,” Edwards offered. “Will my opponents do as much?”

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Fortress Investment Predatory Lending Group has been actively exploiting New Orleans homeowners struggling to overcome Katrina’s aftermath.

read more...

http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm


8 posted on 08/29/2007 10:41:47 PM PDT by John Semmens
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To: bruinbirdman
Obama Steals A Page From FDR

Here is the book he stole it from.


9 posted on 08/30/2007 3:32:36 AM PDT by SkyPilot
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To: bruinbirdman
The Obama File
10 posted on 08/30/2007 7:24:31 AM PDT by Beckwith (dhimmicrats and the liberal media have .chosen sides -- Islamofascism)
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To: bruinbirdman
I actually came across this page by doing a blog search for The Forgotten Man, which I am currently reading. It is a terrific sketch of how the soul-crushing nanny state was built. I never really appreciated how powerful the National Recovery Administration was. The Schechter brothers, obscure Jewish poultry merchants who litigated against its predations and were vindicated by the Supreme Court unanimously, are American heroes every bit as much as Rosa Parks. I am angry that our schools tell us so little about these ordinary businessmen deceived and abused by the federal government.

That is the historical background for Sen. Obama's gluttonous invocation of the police power against mortgage lenders, most of whose business involves allowing people to buy into the American dream.

11 posted on 08/30/2007 11:57:24 AM PDT by untenured
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To: untenured
"National Recovery Administration was. . . . I am angry that our schools tell us so little about these ordinary businessmen deceived and abused by the federal government."

That's because the NRA was a glorious triumph for the education establishment.

yitbos

12 posted on 08/30/2007 12:14:32 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds." -- Ayn Rand)
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To: bruinbirdman
That's because the NRA was a glorious triumph for the education establishment.

I'll wager a majority of the beltway bureaucracy owes it's livlihood to FDR and the New Deal.

13 posted on 08/30/2007 12:21:38 PM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: bruinbirdman
Retroactive prosecution is not only tyranny, it is unconstitutional.

If there are indeed no laws on the books that have currently been broken, any attempt by the Congress to pass a law criminalizing (and punishing) behavior that was legal in the past would be a direct violation of Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

14 posted on 08/30/2007 12:24:40 PM PDT by billakay
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To: billakay
"Retroactive prosecution is not only tyranny, it is unconstitutional."

The Constitution, you say! No one hates it more than socialists. It is in writing, the supreme law of the land. Commies have been trying to destroy it for about 150 years one way or another. The most effective means is the United States Supreme Court. Ask FDR who needed it to verify his particular brand of socialism. When The Court would not, he tried to add a few more commies to the US Supreme Court.

yitbos

15 posted on 08/30/2007 4:36:43 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds." -- Ayn Rand)
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To: bruinbirdman
In 1960, Mort Sahl said that Americans elected Eisenhower because he was a father figure, and now with Jack Kennedy, they've got the "son figure" they want.

When I read that I thought of Obama. True, he's older than JFK was when he was elected, but the appeal's the same. People who are going to vote for Obama aren't going to be put off by boyish signs of inexperience. That's what they like about him.

16 posted on 08/30/2007 4:52:26 PM PDT by x
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To: x
with Jack Kennedy, they've got the "son figure" they want. When I read that I thought of Obama. True, he's older than JFK was when he was elected, but the appeal's the same. People who are going to vote for Obama aren't going to be put off by boyish signs of inexperience. That's what they like about him.

The "son figure" trick. Son of Paul Robeson.

yitbos

17 posted on 08/30/2007 5:21:10 PM PDT by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds." -- Ayn Rand)
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