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WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities. The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate-income families at affordable rates.

Bush's "ownership society" has collapsed under the dead weight of debt. There is too much debt and too little income to support it. Please consider President shifts focus to renting, not owning. The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities. The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed...

Old: The 1980s ushered in a lasting change: the systematic transfer of risk from the government and employers down to individuals. Tax cuts on income and capital gains, for example, were meant to encourage you to invest more in stocks, buy homes, and start up businesses. These activities became the pillars of what George W. Bush would later dub the "ownership society." But the ownership society also forced you to take on risks and responsibilities that had previously been spread around, including paying for health care and ensuring your own retirement security. The 401(k), which sprang up in the early...

WH accuses Times of 'gross negligence' By: Mike Allen December 21, 2008 02:12 PM EST The White House on Sunday issued a blistering 500-word response to a scathing 5,000 word article on the front page of Sunday's New York Times that says President Bush and his style and philosophy of governing played a direct role in the mortgage meltdown that's crippling the nation's economy. The response accused the nation's largest Sunday paper of "gross negligence." "The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while...

The situation is so dire in some neighborhoods of Detroit that it's hard to believe that you're still in the world's strongest superpower, which continues to pump billions of dollars into foreign aid each year. In the semi-abandoned downtown area of Detroit, men gather at intersections, concealing the bottles of beer they're carrying in brown paper bags but unable to hide their swagger. Uninspired graffiti covers the crumbling walls of historic buildings and dubious bars tucked beneath skyscrapers, some of which are completely empty. No less telling of how bad things have become are signs put up on stores reading...

Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?End-to-End rundown on what caused it, who, and how. MustSeePC..

It was always tempting to dismiss the ownership society as an empty slogan--"hokum" as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it. But the ownership society was quite real. It was the answer to a roadblock long faced by politicians favoring policies to benefit the wealthy. The problem boiled down to this: people tend to vote their economic interests. Even in the wealthy United States, most people earn less than the average income. That means it is in the interest of the majority to vote for politicians promising to redistribute wealth from the top down. So what to do? It was...

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity. The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an "ownership society" really is an "on your own" society that has widened the gap between rich and poor. "I prefer a 'we're all in it together' society," she said. "I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none." Clinton said she would...

Before Hurricane Katrina flooded the tear ducts of our politicians and the vaults of our treasury, President Bush had us talking about America’s “ownership society.” This is one of the best things he has done. He did it prominently in his reelection campaign. He did it bravely in relation to Social Security, which risks the outrage of the media and the votes of older people who always vote. If he did it in some ways foolishly, never mind. It showed promise because it had us talking about something central for a change. This question of ownership is at the heart...

Bush's Ownership Society Why No One's Buying. By Paul Glastris ----------------------------- Conservatives have a knack for taking good ideas—say, patriotism or faith—to the sort of ideologized extreme that brands the ideas as theirs and leads liberals to abandon them. We're seeing that now with the issue of choice and individual empowerment. Those very concepts used to be associated with liberal causes like abortion and voting rights. But over the last couple of decades, conservative intellectuals have roped them to a larger agenda to revolutionize government. And they're perfectly open about it. Talk to scholars at the Cato Institute or the...

The Bravos were legal homeowners before they were legal residents. After nearly a decade living in a "dangerous" part of Richmond, the couple from Mexico City -- Guadalupe, 50, and Javier, 52 -- closed on a nearly $400,000 Pinole home in 2003. They had saved up money from years of cleaning homes and doing maintenance work, employed their daughter as an interpreter for their dealings with a real estate agent and found a mortgage lender that required only the tax identification number available to anyone who works in the United States. A growing number of banks are providing such loans,...

Before Hurricane Katrina flooded the tear ducts of our politicians and the vaults of our treasury, President Bush had us talking about America’s “ownership society.” This is one of the best things he has done. He did it prominently in his reelection campaign. He did it bravely in relation to Social Security, which risks the outrage of the media and the votes of older people who always vote. If he did it in some ways foolishly, never mind. It showed promise because it had us talking about something central for a change. This question of ownership is at the heart...

When an Orange County judge issued a ruling in mid-August in favor of one of the three breakaway churches that seceded from the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles last summer, he confirmed that the parish was in conformity with U.S. cultural assumptions about ownership.St. James, Newport Beach, along with All Saints, Long Beach and St. David's, North Hollywood, associated itself with the Diocese of Luweero, in Uganda, in August 2004, and its leadership claimed that the parishioners were the rightful owners of all of the church's property. The diocese and ECUSA sued the three congregations,...

A new national organization of black Republicans is set to launch Monday, hoping to effectively represent the party's ideals in the African-American community. The National Black Republican Association will make its announcement at a Washington, D.C, law firm. "The creation of the National Black Republican Association is the product of the dreams and efforts of scores of black Republicans across the nation," said interim Chairperson Frances Rice, co-founder of a black Republican group in Sarasota, Fla. "Black grass-roots activists have always been involved locally and nationally within the Republican Party, but there was always agreement that we needed a national...

President Bush's fifth State of the Union address laid out an agenda that is perhaps the most ambitious domestic agenda of any second term President. The President's plan for an “ownership society” could go a long way in giving citizens more control over their own lives. Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, has compiled a book that provides a short, easy-to-read defense of President Bush's policies entitled Bullish on Bush: How George W. Bush's Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger. Originally written before the 2004 election in order to persuade voters that President Bush's policies are better for...

The 20th Century’s energizing dynamic was totalitarian socialism. Leading that parade were proponents like Stalin and Communist Russia, Hitler and his National Socialist Party, China’s Chairman Mao and a host of lesser lights like Saddam Hussein in Iraq. All preached the equality of outcomes for their people despite their own personal power-hungry obsessions. All seduced the world with their “humanity” that no one should paid more for their work than any other. They all preached a socialism that elevated the group at the expense of the individual. Fortunately for America, their citizens continued their abiding devotion to individualism during the...

Clinton appearing now on CNN Larry King Dead: "I am sympathetic to the President. I like the idea of an ownership society. We tried to do this for welfare when I was president."

Many of the older generation still have emotional scars from the Great Depression seared into their souls. Even Baby Boomers had parents that lost everything and imparted that fear into their children. It made them life long Democrats and gave that party an almost uninterrupted congressional run from 1932 until 1994. When faced with a suggestion that a New Social Security plan would improve that system, they have a knee jerk reaction to reject it emanating from deep within. I am convinced that no amount of logic, facts or argument will ever change that reaction. It is planted too deep....

BrookesNews.Com Headline: United Airlines says it can't pay $9.8 Billion in Pensions. Yet they have an infinitesimal problem compared to the Congress of the United States. Congress has an unfunded $11 Trillion Social Security "pension" they haven't either put in the bank or recorded on the people's books. The pilots and stewardesses think they have a problem. Wow, they have no idea what a problem really is. Yet our MSM, the Democrats, the liberal elite, Democrat Congressmen all proclaim "Hey, no problem, No hurry, we can obstruct Republicans" until the unrecorded liability is $25 Trillion (and we have to cancel...

Last week the Pew Research Center came out with a study of the American electorate that crystallized something I've been sensing for a long time: rich people are boring, but poor people are interesting. The Pew data demonstrated that people at the top of the income scale are divided into stable, polar camps. There are the educated-class liberals - antiwar, pro-choice, anti-tax cuts - who make up about 19 percent of the electorate, according to Pew. And there are business-class conservatives - pro-war, pro-life, pro-tax cut - who make up 11 percent of voters. These affluent people are pretty well...

Increasingly, the public perceives the certainty of the President's promise to reduce benefits in exchange for the uncertainty of future returns from private investments. Weekly, we read of new complicated solutions, grasping at impossible straws. All looks dangerous, complicated, expensive, discriminatory, and bleak. It is time to consider strong new ideas to reverse the ebbing trend of opinion and turn it to enthusiastic acceptance. What has been missing and is now imperative are these three definitive features: 1) clear, vigorous assertion and incontrovertible proof of the true munificence of stock returns and their surprising lack of risk entailed; 2) inviolable...

Mark Winston Griffith has spent most of his career helping low-income and minority families enter what President Bush calls "the ownership society."p . . .The central flaw in Bush's ownership society, Griffith believes, is that its key elements actively encourage such tunnel vision. Vouchers that allow parents to send their children to private school, for instance, provide a lifeline for some, but invite them to flee a shared investment in public schools. Reducing guaranteed benefits under Social Security, and urging workers to make up the difference with individual investment accounts, erodes the program's role as a shared safety net for...

Social Security Reform No. 123 Inherent in our political system is the glaring flaw that 535 people can pull the wool over the eyes of 300 million. People don't vote on bills before Congress, they rely on those 535 people.. When those elected minions do the wrong thing, seldom do the people even know about it. That failure is compounded by a MSM dedicated to keeping the truth from the people if it would hurt the Democrat party. So we come to Social Security and the single greatest criminal fraud in the history of man. Try a $1.7 Trillion collateral...

Several recent columns make the point (intentionally and unintentionally) that there is a significant shift underway in the way that conservatives view, and talk about, the welfare state and government benefits. A liberal writer in the Baltimore Sun compares President’s Bush’s talk of an “ownership society” as conservatism’s latest attempt to destroy the welfare state. In large part he is correct, though the point of conservatism has never been to delight in the misfortunes of the poor, the sick, the elderly, etc. Rather, conservatism opposed the welfare state for because (depending on the speaker and the period): (a) the welfare...

The government is playing accounting games with taxpayer money by spending withheld income while it should still be the property of the wage-earner. The concept of ownership society is the backbone of the Bush administration's actions on Social Security, lifetime savings accounts, and health care savings accounts. The motivation behind these issues is the desire to enhance personal choice; the final goal is to increase savings and to foster the opportunity for even the poorest members of society to create wealth. These preferentially tax-treated accounts are designed to fundamentally change the way the public saves money by creating incentives to...

The shorthand version of the "ownership society" is a society of people who individually fund their own retirement, medicare insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, survivor insurance and long-term care and who only look to government to enforce withholding a portion of the of their wages and earnings during their working life and the caretaking of those funds in a real "lockbox" until needed. People own the funds in their account. People own nothing under the present program. The ownership society will get government out of people's lives. It will eliminate the need to redistribute income to the poor, it will...

........... "The younger African-Americans who really are not familiar with the Civil Rights Movement, those 35 and under, who are clueless about the pressures and violence that took place are looking for something totally different," said Vivian Berryhill, a Republican and founder of the National Coalition of Pastors' Spouses. "The challenge is how will the Democratic Party be able to maintain an African-American base for whom the civil rights mantra of 'we shall overcome' doesn't even resonate," she said. She said young blacks are largely college educated or entrepreneurs interested in homeownership and lower taxes, and that the Republican ownership...

An ownership society values responsibility, liberty, and property. Individuals are empowered by freeing them from dependence on government handouts and making them owners instead, in control of their own lives and destinies. In the ownership society, patients control their own health care, parents control their own children's education, and workers control their retirement savings. President Bush says he wants America to be an “ownership society.” What does that mean? People have known for a long time that individuals take better care of things they own. Aristotle wrote, "What belongs in common to the most people is accorded the least care:...

It's in this context that we should understand President Bush's campaign for Social Security reform. It is part of the large and coherent world view that has evolved out of compassionate conservatism. What has always made America exceptional is limitless opportunity for everyone, at all levels--the ability to find a job, to advance up the ladder as you prove yourself, and to prosper. The poor especially have flocked to these shores for just this chance, and have proved the promise true. A giant welfare state--whether its clients are the poor, the "lower third of the economy," or a cohort of...

"Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. Social Security. It's Time for E*Trade." That's the message on a San Francisco billboard. It's saying that stock trading on the Internet provides a better shot at a secure retirement than depending on the government. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., less enthusiastic about the market, warns that President Bush's plan to allow workers to privatize and invest a portion of their Social Security taxes "turns a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble." She's right about the "guaranteed gamble" part. Most things are a gamble. Picking a major in college is a surefire gamble. So...

Font Size: AARP Invests in Hypocrisy By James K. Glassman  Published   02/15/2005  The President has made fixing Social Security his number-one domestic objective, but the fight won't be easy -- in part because of fierce opposition by the AARP, the seniors' lobby, with 35 million members. The AARP is using an old strategy: trying to scare the wits out of old people. The organization's executives want its members to think that Social Security will be destroyed by offering young people the option of personal accounts. The President's plan will likely allow workers to put up to four percentage points...

P.S.: I'm not blaming McGovern. Virtually all right thinking sophisticates were for a guaranteed annual income when McGovern proposed it. I was too. But the voters hated it. Only later did it become clear to many in the center and left that the voters were right--welfare-for-the-abled bodied was sustaining an underclass.

What are KIDS accounts? KIDS accounts are small savings accounts that were proposed as part of the Americans Savings for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education Act (the ASPIRE Act), legislation introduced by Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Representatives Pat Kennedy (D-RI), Harold Ford (D-TN), Tom Petri (R-WI), and Phil English (R-PA) on July 22, 2004. The legislation would provide every child, at birth, a small savings account that can be used to build assets. The bill is S.2751 in the Senate and H.R.4939 in the House. ASPIRE will provide a KIDS account for every child born...

President Bush said he was open to other people's ideas on how to fix Social Security, so I hope he'll listen to mine. My idea starts with a blunt political observation. Personal accounts - as they are currently envisioned - are going to be hard to pass. Every important Democrat opposes them. Jim McCrery, the Republican who is chairman of the House Social Security subcommittee, says the president's plan will have to fundamentally change if it is to have a chance. So my idea is this: If the president's current version of personal accounts stalls, he should consider another version...

President Bush has said that progress for African-Americans - for all Americans - requires a healthy, growing economy. Indeed, it is hard to realize one's dreams if we are in a recession, but it's impossible to realize those dreams if there is no opportunity. America has traveled a long and tumultuous road to achieve the ideals of our founding, to realize the dreams of all our people and open the doors of opportunity to all our children so that they can achieve the American dream. And while we have not yet reached our destination, our hopes and dreams are now...

President Bush's State of the Union address provided an opportunity for him to once again advance his vision of an ownership society. He didn't let that opportunity go to waste. The signature piece of Bush's ownership society? Social Security reform. In the context of reforming Social Security, Bush advocated the creation of personal retirement accounts, which would give younger workers some ownership over the money they put into Social Security. In short, this means that the government would allow people to do what they usually do to save for retirement -- stick the money some place where it can actually...

The fight over Social Security is, above all, about what kind of society we want to have. But it's also about numbers. And the numbers the privatizers use just don't add up. Let me inflict some of those numbers on you. Sorry, but this is important. Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises....

During his term in office, President Clinton declared Social Security a “ looming crisis.” Recently he said that not reforming Social Security was something he regretted. Yet, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said there is no Social Security crisis today. He said this despite the fact that a bipartisan commission appointed by President Bush in 2001, which included liberal Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan, said something must be done to reform the Social Security system soon. The commission determined that participants should invest a portion of Social Security funds in private accounts. Unfortunately, the campaign to reform Social Security is...

WASHINGTON - Race became a significant factor in the debate over Social Security on Tuesday when President Bush told black leaders that the government retirement program shortchanged blacks, whose relatively shorter life span meant they paid more in payroll taxes than they eventually received in benefits. Bush's comments came during a private White House meeting with 22 black religious and business leaders who backed his re-election last year - marking a new line of argument in the president's attempts to win support for adding worker-owned investment accounts to Social Security.

Senator Schumer kicked off his membership on the Senate Finance Committee yesterday by accusing President Bush of a scheme to "get back at the 'blue states'" through the tax-simplification initiative the White House is preparing. In a speech delivered to the Association for a Better New York, Mr. Schumer invoked Senator Moynihan, saying he had told Mr. Schumer to "do everything I could to get a seat on the Finance Committee." As a member of that committee, Mr. Schumer said, blocking proposals to eliminate the deductibility on federal returns of state and local income tax would be his "no. 1...

"On the campaign trail last year, President Bush said a priority of his second term would be to 'build an ownership society, because ownership brings security, and dignity, and independence.' Sounds good to us," reads a Wall Street Journal editorialtoday. "But the rhetoric doesn't square with news that the administration may file an amicus brief against property owners in an upcoming Supreme Court case concerning eminent domain." The Cato Institute also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case Kelo v. City of New London, except Cato's brief is on behalf of the property owners. It argues that the city has...

George W. Bush's remarkable vision of an "Ownership Society" was perhaps the one fresh, bold, and exciting idea to emerge from the 2004 presidential campaign, and it clearly struck a responsive chord with the American electorate. In a novel twist on the usual top-down, government-centered themes that previous chief executives have employed to define their presidencies -- the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society -- Bush actually proposed a radical bottom-up, people-centered philosophy to guide the agenda for his second term. Its liberating message is clear and pointed: Return control of their lives to individuals...

January 2005 | 106 » Essays » Red-state sneer Many Democrats blame the unenlightened people of red-state America for John Kerry's defeat. But most working-class Americans remain politically centrist and a rising number simply want to live in the fast-growing suburbs of middle America. Liberals should stop sneering at the people they aspire to lead Michael Lind /snip The election of 2004 confirmed the status of the Republican party in the US as the majority party at all levels - but it did not prove that Americans have turned into reactionaries. Unlike Nixon and Reagan, who were re-elected in landslides,...

<p>IN THE past fortnight, the Democrats have come up with lots of comfort-food explanations of George Bush's victory&#8212;from the idea that the rascal stole the election for a second time (there were a mere 3.3m votes in it, after all) to the notion that he rode into Washington, DC, at the head of an army of hooded fundamentalists. But perhaps the most dangerous of all these myths is the idea that Mr Bush terrified the voters into re-electing him. He divided the country along &#8220;fault lines of fear&#8221;, according to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times; he relied on &#8220;fear of and hatred for modernity&#8221;, added Garry Wills, polymath and devout Catholic. Sooner or later every Democrat starts saying that the president used terrorism to partisan advantage.</p>

Since his re-election, President Bush has spoken a number of times about domestic reforms designed to create an "Ownership Society." Among the best known of those proposed reforms are personal Social Security accounts and health savings accounts that would give individuals, rather than government, control over their financial futures and health care. Both of those initiatives are essential reforms, and an Ownership Society itself is desperately needed. But there is a third component that should be included in this agenda: education. If an Ownership Society means anything, it should mean giving parents control over their children's education. When children are...

During a campaign stop in West Palm Beach, President George W. Bush wasted no words in explaining his vision of an ownership society: "No one ever washes a rental car. When you own something, you care about it." And so, the theory behind the "ownership society," whether we're talking about health care, tax cuts or Social Security, is quite simple. When it comes to retirement planning, it says we'll care more, and therefore be more efficient, if we own our own retirement accounts and are in charge of moving our money around between various mutual funds in order to maximize...

In NEW YORK story of Nov. 5 headlined, "No bonanza for funds seen in Social Security reform," please read "... Pozen ..." instead of "... Pozens ..." throughout. (Correcting name) A corrected repetition follows: By Herbert Lash NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The bonanza many believe President Bush has handed the mutual fund industry with his plans to reform Social Security may be a mirage, industry leaders said on Friday. How workers will be allowed to invest some of their payroll taxes in the stock market is far from clear, but there is a presumption it will be windfall...

...Nonfarm payrolls added 337,000 jobs in October -- almost double expectations. Revisions also added 113,000 more new jobs for the months of August and September, meaning that the economy has generated 2.1 million jobs in the past year.... Both outlays for heavy machinery and business construction now look perky and, given the huge amounts of cash that companies are sitting on, capital spending should continue to post gains.... The good jobs news might also be due in part to slowing third-quarter productivity growth -- to 1.9%.... Although real growth of 3.7% was slower than expected, any growth over 3.5% will...

November 6, 2004--At his post-election press conference President George W. Bush made it clear that Social Security reform will be on his second term agenda. Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters support the President's approach that would allow workers invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 34% are opposed. Support jumps to 67% if the personal accounts are accompanied by a guarantee that everyone who wants to remain in the current system can do so and receive their promised benefits. Only 19% are opposed to such a proposal. Significantly, if...

There is a dirty little secret about Social Security privatization -- and why John Kerry tried to scare seniors about a trumped up Bush "January surprise" to take away their benefits by privatizing their program. The secret has nothing to do with protecting seniors, or Bush intending to take away their benefits, as Kerry falsely claimed. So, what is it? A poll released Tuesday conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, at the behest of Investor's Action, a new group founded by TCS host James Glassman found that Bush has an 8 percentage point advantage over Kerry among the 71 percent of...