Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system....

--Saul Alinsky

I feel lost a lot. And I recognize that the past is gone, and that change is in the nature of reality.

So how come I'm not supporting revolution?

Forgive me, but when I hear the word "change" (especially from people who seek greater power over me), I generally assume they want to make things worse -- but for what they claim is my own good.

One of my pet peeves involves ideologues who misuse the word "we" -- especially in a scolding manner which implies that "we" all oppress the poor, have abortions, engage in hedonism, hate God, etc. Whatever it is that that's the ideological complaint of the moment, "we" are said to all be guilty of it.

Predictably, the latest misuse of the "we" pronoun involves the economy. Richard Miniter tears into the idea that "we" did it in post titled "No, We didn't Cause This Wall Street Mess":

You must be as tired of hearing it as I am. Somehow, we are all at fault for Wall Street's meltdown. We demanded cheap loans for houses we couldn't afford and voted in corrupt dolts, who took from Fannie Mae and told us what we wanted to hear. Now, we are getting what we deserve.

Likewise, if McCain wins, I'll have to listen to the left complaining about how "we" are a very guilty and racist people for letting it happen. In neither case am I given credit for being an individual; I'm lumped into a group in which I don't belong, and my motives are impugned.

Miniter points out that "we" did not elect Barney Frank or Chris Dood:

Rep. Barney Frank was elected by a majority of the people of his district in Massachusetts. Senator Chris Dodd is brought to us by many but not all of the voters of Connecticut. And so on. Most of us never had the chance to vote for or against these solons. So why should we be blamed?

The regulatory changes that led us to this point were the work of lobbyists, bureaucrats and lawmakers including Dodd and Frank and corrupt executives, like Raines and Johnson. We know or can know their names.

The idea of blaming "all of us" is a way to avoid blaming those who did the deeds and reaped their ill-gotten gains.

The misuse of the "we" pronoun also helps the guilty parties escape blame:

What about cheap mortgages? Sure, some of us took them when they were offered. But who offered them and why? Yes, it is the Clinton-era changes to the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend more for "affordable housing." Law firms, including ones connected to Obama, sued banks that failed to meet their low-income quotas for mortgages. Bankers were not driven by greed, as everyone says, but by fear. Fear of the baying hounds of regulators and lawyers would call them racist and ruin their careers. But who unleashed the hounds on the bankers?

If you visit this blog regularly, you probably know that I have no tipjar, but that I occasionally urge readers to donate to other bloggers instead. Right now, Dean Esmay could really use your help. Details and tip jar here.

While it's a real drag to ask people for money, I'd like to give a couple of reasons why I think readers should donate to Dean.

One is that while I don't ask for money, I like to think that if readers like what they see here, they might consider it worth an occasional donation. So, as I'm lucky enough not to need to ask for money for myself, shouldn't I be allowed to redirect some of that "goodwill" to others? As I see it, I have a responsibility to use this blog that way if I can.

Two is that Dean is a great blogger and thoroughly worthy of a donation even if he wasn't in need (which he is). He's been a personal inspiration, and he was one of the first bloggers to link and encourage me when I was completely unknown and he was well established. Which means that any readers who like this blog and also like Dean's World have a double obligation to make this donation. In fact, I'd go so far as to say to any reader who likes both blogs, you have no excuse not to hit Dean's tip jar!

So please, go donate now.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post. Please help out if you can; I donated yesterday and I'm donating some more today. I'm not George Soros and I can't afford to match your contributions dollar for dollar, although I would if I could, because I think helping Dean is a worthy cause right now.

What's shocking (to me) about the clamor to "save people's homes" (see M. Simon's earlier post) is that in many cases, they're trying to "save" people who owe more than the house is worth.

I think it is economically dishonest to talk of "saving" homes in this context. When someone is allowed to walk away from a loan in excess of the property valuation, he is the opposite of a victim.

To illustrate, suppose I had bought a house with a $350,000 taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage, and the house is now worth only $250,000. I'm financially screwed, and I'm on the hook -- in a bad way. I'd be far better off renting.

If the bank is willing to let me walk away from the indebtedness (or will allow a short sale, which many do) I'd be ahead $100,000.

Being able to walk away from a bad investment and have the debt forgiven is hardly victimization. (It is even considered income by the IRS, although there's legislation pending to change that.)

How the left and the MSM are able to spin as victims people who manage to walk away from legitimately incurred debts is beyond me.

I used to think that buying a house was a big decision fraught with risk -- something to be engaged in by responsible adults. That contracts were binding, you should read them carefully, etc.

Something must have changed.

I think it might involve the profoundly evil meme that "housing is a right." I say "profoundly evil" because such a "right" cannot exist except at the expense of other people.

From where derives the idea that anyone has the responsibility to provide housing for anyone else? I'm not saying people who cannot care for themselves because of disability or mental incompetence should not be cared for, but there's a huge difference between that and defining housing as a "right."

Of course, it's easy for libertarian cranks like me to prattle on about how "we" don't define housing as a "right" here in the free United States.

Many of "us" do. And they vote.

Quite incidentally, the United States adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as part of its support for the United Nations. Article 25 provides as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

In her "Address to the United Nations General Assembly On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," US Ambassador Eleanor Roosevelt said this:

....my government has made it clear in the course of the development of the Declaration that it does not consider that the economic and social and cultural rights stated in the Declaration imply an obligation on governments to assure the enjoyment of these rights by direct governmental action. This was made quite clear in the Human Rights Commission text of article 23 which served as a so-called "umbrella" article to the articles on economic and social rights. We consider that the principle has not been affected by the fact that this article no longer contains a reference to the articles which follow it. This in no way affects our whole-hearted support for the basic principles of economic, social, and cultural rights set forth in these articles.

In giving our approval to the Declaration today it is of primary importance that we keep clearly in mind the basic character of the document. It is not a treaty; it is not an international agreement. It is not and does not purport to be a statement of law or of legal obligation. It is a Declaration of basic principles of human rights and freedoms, to be stamped with the approval of the General Assembly by formal vote of its members, and to serve as a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations.

Needless to say, the US faces ongoing criticism like this for its failure to recognize what amounts to an obligation as a "right":

The refusal of the United States to recognise the right to housing is of course symptomatic of a wider problem in the international community which arises with the tendency to give a higher priority to civil and political rights over economic and social rights.

Consider the following proposals from his Democratic colleagues:

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of citizens of the United States to health care of equal high quality (Jackson, D-IL)--H.J.Res. 30. Creates a constitutional right to equal health care.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable housing (Jackson, D-IL)--H.J.Res. 32 and Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to a home (Rangel, D-NY)--H.J.Res 40. Creates a constitutional right to housing.

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to full employment and balanced growth (Jackson, D-IL)--H.J.Res. 35. Creates a constitutional right to full employment.

Considering that Jackson is Obama's national campaign chair, I think it's worth asking Obama how he defines rights.

But just as the word "socialism" is taboo, some questions can never be asked.

MORE: Suppose a clear majority of Americans decide that there is a "right" to property at the expense of others. Founder James Madison cautioned that what a majority might want is not necessarily an ideal standard:

There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore, needs more elucidation than...that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong. Taking the word "interest" as synonymous with "ultimate happiness," in which sense it is qualified with every necessary moral ingredient, the proposition is no doubt true. But taking it in the popular sense, as referring to immediate augmentation of property and wealth, nothing can be more false. In the latter sense, it would be the interest of the majority in very community to despoil and enslave the minority of individuals; and in a federal community, to make a similar sacrifice of the minority of component States. In fact, it is only re-establishing, under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right....

Letter to James Monroe, Octr 5th, 1786

It's comforting to know that such things were on the minds of the founders.

Victor Davis Hanson has one of the best analyses of the current predicament vis-a-vis the election that I have seen in recent days. (A must read.) He thinks time is running out (that's the title of the piece!), and even though the most moderate Republican in history is running against the most left wing Democrat in history, ordinary voters still don't get it:

The truth is that we have an election between a moderate Republican whose centrist positions worry conservatives, who is pitted against a fringe-hyper-liberal candidate who must somehow assure the voters he is merely liberal. Never in recent history, have Republicans nominated one so moderate, never Democrats one so hard left. Yet we are not getting from a proud and unapologetic Obama "My left-wing views have at last proven prescient and arrived, and McCain's namby-pamby moderation is not what these crisis times call for."

Instead, it is dissumaltion all the time, as Obama (for now) essentially has refuted most of his prior positions on the major issues. Even his tax-and-spend plans are now on hold, pending the Wall Street uncertainty. We know nothing really of his background between Columbia and Harvard Law School. Few can figure out exactly what he and Ayers were trying to do with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge other than to give someone else's millions to further the hard-left agendas of a number of cronies whose efforts did not result in any marginal improvement in the Chicago schools.

In other words, the most liberal presidential candidate in our memory is suddenly posing as a moderate centrist not much different from McCain (e.g., "I agree with John..." ad nauseam). And McCain thus far has not been able to scratch the thin veneer. Had Palin once worked in community organizing with a Timothy McVeigh, or had McCain been the member of a white supremacist church for 20 years, or had McCain been judged the most conservative member of the Senate, the McCain-Palin ticket would have long ago imploded.

Hanson thinks the race card has been played very skillfully:

The most brilliant prepping has been an anticipatory demonization of the white working class in an effort through shame, fear, or pity to sway them to vote Obama. The narrative advanced is that if McCain wins, the real reason is because working-class Democrats--once they collectively get into the privacy of the voting booth--sighed and voted against Obama because he is of half-African ancestry, despite telling pollsters they would not.

In the last two weeks I think I have read at least 20 op-eds with one of the following three premises: (1) warning: Many Americans are racists, and the election will thus hinge on race, so you have one last chance to get it right; (2) shame: The world is watching, and will either like or dislike us, depending on our support for Obama; (3) fear: If Obama loses, expect furor or even near riots.

The white working class is tiring of the constant sermons on race, either chauvinism or veiled threats or overt insults. Obama's supporters really need to cool it, and stop suggesting that at each dip in his polls, Americans are proving less than noble people. The only thing that will really lose them the working-class vote is the gun-to-the-head, you'd better vote this way or else attitude.

I grew up among the Democratic working classes, and I can vouch for one eternal truth about them: anyone who lectures them about what they "must" do--or else--will simply achieve the opposite result, every time....

Endless accusations of racism and thuggish Obama Truth Squad tactics may be McCain's best hope.

UPDATE: My thanks to Sean Kinsell for linking this post in a great discussion of elitism.

Stephen Strauss takes a look at big science and comes away unimpressed. He talks about two exhibits he saw. One for the $15 billion ITER (pronounced EATER - heh) and another about neolithic technology - mat weaving, pottery making, chipping stone axes.

At the recent European Science Open Forum conference in Barcelona, for example, I was strolling through exhibits aimed at -- please don't gag -- science outreach. The underlying theme of all these displays seemed to me to be: since their schooling actually teaches many ordinary people to be discomforted by -- if not to actually fear and loath -- science, let's see if we can't do something in these venues to get people to hate science a little bit less.

Right across from ITER was an exhibit in which a group of paleo-archeologists had set up a display to show the technology of the past in operation. So you had a guy sitting cross-legged, banging away at a rock to make a hand ax. Chip, chip, and chip. You had someone else weaving plants together to make a mat. Weave, weave, and weave. Someone else was taking clay and making a pot. There was no placard asking: Hand axe making, will it always be 40 years away? There were no critics of the effort calling it a huge waste of national resources.

So what does the juxtaposition of the two very different demonstrations of technology tell us about disbelief?

To begin with, the ITER project and all hugely expensive big science efforts -- think the International Space Station, think Large Hadron Collider, which recently has received a tonne of press -- aren't like making hand axes. I looked at the man diligently chipping away and realized that the price of his failure wasn't very high. So what if it turned out the rock type you made axes from wasn't strong enough to chop wood? You simply went back and made axes from something else until you got an ax that worked.

And you, in this case, would simply be some intrepid carver and not some large part of the Paleolithic science world.

On the other hand, if ITER fails, it is massively unlikely there is going to be another effort to correct its errors. Research on its level is simply too big and expensive and time-consuming. But what if it succeeds -- but only kinda? What if its results show that you can produce energy, but that it is 10 time times more expensive than energy from other sources? What if figuring out how to make that equation more favorable will require at least three iterations of ITER?

What you put in place with these vastly expensive research efforts is a "can't afford to fail" paradigm. Unlike trying to find the best plant material to weave into a mat, ITER, the Large Hadron Collider, etc., must succeed on first go-round. With ITER, there is no second kind of rock to be chipped away, no other plants to be woven, no different type of clay to be baked into a plate.

And that's what I so disbelieve about it. It's not really experimental science; it's risky, we-can't-fail, all-or-nothing science and I would respond to that paradigm with the wisdom of stone axe makers.

Sometimes your research should be based not on how glorious success might be, but on how little you will have lost if you screw up.

Of course I have my favorites. Here is one that I described in the Fusion Report of 29 August 2008.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

So who is to blame for the mess we are in? Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on the subject.

no one dares to ask what really drove the wheeler-dealer portfolio managers. Who re-elected these shady politicians of both parties? Who fostered the cash-in culture in which both Wall Street profit mongering and Washington lobbying are nourished and thrive? We citizens did -- red-state conservatives and blue-state liberals, Republicans and Democrats, alike. We may be victims of Wall Street greed -- but not quite innocent victims.

Let me explain. The profiteering was not just the result of a few thousand scoundrels on Wall Street or in Washington, as greedy and as bonus-hungry as many of them no doubt were. Look at the housing market as a sort of musical chairs in which everyone profited as long he grabbed a seat when the music stopped. Then those left standing -- with high-priced loans and negative equity when the crash came -- defaulted and stuck taxpayers with debt in the billions of dollars. But until then, most owners who had sold homes cashed out beyond their wildest dreams.

Thousands of dollars in past profits are still in sellers' bank accounts or were spent on their own consumption. If the shaky buyer at the bottom of the pyramid should not have borrowed to buy an overpriced house, then the luckier seller higher up hardly worried that the cash-strapped fool was paying him way too much with unsecured borrowed money.

We created the cultural climate for this shared madness. Television shows advised how to "flip" a house after putting in cosmetic improvements. Real-estate seminars and popular videos convinced us that homes were not places to live in and raise a family but rather no different from piles of chips on a Vegas table.

We created the phony populist creed that everyone deserved to own a house. So lawmakers got the message to relax lending standards in service to "fairness." But Americans forgot that historically nearly four in 10 of us aren't ever ready, or able, to sacrifice for a down payment, monthly mortgage bills, home maintenance and yearly taxes -- and so should stick to renting.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It is unwise to attribute to malice alone that which can be attributed to malice and stupidity.

We all know that smoking is conservative, because Republicans tend to defend tobacco, while Democrats tend to attack it.

With that principle in mind, I decided to look back in time at cigarette ads.

Sure enough, I spotted what can only be called "cultural conservatism" in this ad:

And there's no denying that genuine Paleo Conservatism is at play in this one:

Finally in the 1960s, LSD was added, and people started coming out of the TV!

But it was still a form of conservatism that had not yet been snuffed out.

(I hope there's no serious message here. I'd hate to think that conservatism might be as endangered as smoking. But nothing ever seems to remain the same. And therein lies the paradox.)

WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit.

In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.

In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.

What is going on in my opinion is nothing short of a coup attempt. The American Thinker explains who planned it and how they plan to pull it off. Obviously these events are way beyond my control. The only chance we have is on November 4th. If Obama gets in with a Democrat Congress you can kiss the Republic goodbye.

Let me add that Eric has a very nice chart from the American Thinker article that gives the basics in a very quick look.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Via Glenn Reynolds, I am delighted to see that the Ayers story is starting to be reported in the MSM.

Well, the New York Post might not be the New York Times, or the Washington Post, but it's a start:

CHICAGO - While Barack Obama has long downplayed his connection to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground radical group, new documents show the two worked much more closely together in starting an educational foundation than has been previously known.

Recently released board-meeting minutes for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge show the two were present together at least six times in 1995 as the foundation's members discussed how to organize and operate the project, which was Ayers' brainchild.

So, in addition to getting this story out, there needs to be an effort to remind people that doing things like blowing up an NCO club is way uncool. Definitely not part of the mainstream.

And that people who were into stuff like that but wish they were more successful, well maybe they shouldn't really get to be mainstream.

And maybe their close cronies shouldn't get elected president.

I'm of two minds about the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" theory of Obama and Ayers, which is explained here and represented in the following chart:

While I first heard about it last night thanks to a comment from Donna Barber, it is a very interesting theory and it might well be true. In that respect, it is worthy of study. As is Gramscian Marxism.

However, there's another side of me that tends to worry about conspiracy theories (whether true or not) being used as an obfuscatory tactic, especially when they complicate relatively simple issues and appear out of nowhere and muddy the waters just when relatively simple issues have become tough to ignore.

I refer to Bill Ayers, and his close association -- possibly even mentorship of --Barack Obama, over a long period of time. Over the past few days it has struck me that this is just about to "break through" from the blogosphere and talk radio and into the MSM. And now that it seems about to do that, there's a sudden interest in what may or may not be the "root cause" of the Ayers-Obama association.

Forgive me if I seem blunt, but what's damning is Obama's association with an unrepentant terrorist.

A guy wearing a bracelet bearing the name of an NCO killed by a terrorist IED was a close collaborator and friend of a guy who wanted to kill other American NCOs with IEDs, and who regrets he did not do enough.

This -- the one thing that will outrage middle America more than anything about Obama -- is the subject of a desperate media and campaign coverup.

Yet suddenly, the topic shifts to a tactic floated by obscure Columbia professors in 1966.

Again, the theory might be correct. But why right now?

I'd hate to think that when Obama is finally asked about Ayers, he'll be able to snark back with something like, "Yes and they're also saying that my friendship with Ayers is part of something called the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy,' which I'd never heard of until now" -- to great laughter from a pliant and clueless audience.

If Obama is elected, there will be plenty of time to look for root causes. I may be wrong, but right now, I think the focus should be on Ayers.

MORE: M. Simon aptly summarizes the Cloward-Piven strategy as a practical application of Lenin's "Worse is better," and Alinsky's Rules for radicals. No doubt it is both.

As I've noted many times, the fact that socialism does not work because it requires more socialism means that failure is success. But saying that won't win an election.

The Boston Globe, normally a reliable liberal paper, says that Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D - Corruption) has a lot to do with the mortgage crisis. It opens with a quote from Cong. Frank

'The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it."

That's Barney Frank's story, and he's sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by "bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector," Frank said; the country is in dire straits today "thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best." And that philosophy goes "back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, 'Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.' "

In fact, that isn't what Reagan said. His actual words were: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.

Because while the mortgage crisis convulsing Wall Street has its share of private-sector culprits they weren't the ones who "got us into this mess." Barney Frank's talking points notwithstanding, mortgage lenders didn't wake up one fine day deciding to junk long-held standards of creditworthiness in order to make ill-advised loans to unqualified borrowers. It would be closer to the truth to say they woke up to find the government twisting their arms and demanding that they do so - or else.

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites.

The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued.

However, I just came across an American Thinker article which asks the question: are the people behind this stupid? Or was it a plan?

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The American Thinker article points out that the strategy behind it has a name. The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis. Lenin also had a name for it: Worse Is Better.

I think a deeper look into what the American thinker has to say is in order:

Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

H/T commenter Dan at Classical Values for the Boston Globe bit.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

ACORN is about vote fraud in Michigan.

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.
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The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN's Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

"There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications," said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office. "And it appears to be widespread."

Chesney said her office has had discussions with ACORN officials after local clerks reported the questionable applications to the state. Chesney said some of the applications are duplicates and some appear to be names that have been made up. The Secretary of State's Office has turned over several of the applications to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

I think it would be instructive to learn more about ACORN.

If you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation's inner cities, and you're likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12-hour days to "organize the poor" and bring about "social change." The largest radical group in the country, ACORN has 120,000 dues-paying members, chapters in 700 poor neighborhoods in 50 cities, and 30 years' experience. It boasts two radio stations, a housing corporation, a law office, and affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. Not only big, it is effective, with some remarkable successes in getting municipalities and state legislatures to enact its radical policy goals into law.

Community organizing among the urban poor has been an honorable American tradition since Jane Addams's famous Hull House dramatically uplifted the late-nineteenth-century Chicago slums, but ACORN and Addams are on different planets philosophically. Hull House and its many successors emphasized self-empowerment: the poor, they thought, could take control of their lives and communities through education, hard work, and personal responsibility. Not ACORN. It promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor. As a result, not only does it harm the poor it claims to serve; it is also a serious threat to the urban future.

It is no surprise that ACORN preaches a New Left-inspired gospel, since it grew out of one of the New Left's silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization. In the mid-sixties, founder George Wiley forged an army of tens of thousands of single minority mothers, whom he sent out to disrupt welfare offices through sit-ins and demonstrations demanding an end to the "oppressive" eligibility restrictions that kept down the welfare rolls. His aim: to flood the welfare system with so many clients that it would burst, creating a crisis that, he believed, would force a radical restructuring of America's unjust capitalist economy.
The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams. From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy.

What else has ACORN been involved in? Would you believe that part of their organizing has been an effort to get voters enrolled in states other than Michigan? And that in the original bail out plan ACORN was to get money from the plan?

Washington, Sep 27 - House Republicans have made clear that they will fight for an economic rescue package that protects the interests of families, seniors, small businesses, and all taxpayers. And as discussions continue in order to forge an agreement that reflects these principles, the American people are taking note of a left-wing giveaway Democrats are pushing to force taxpayers to bankroll a slush fund for a discredited ally of the Democratic Party. At issue is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - better known as ACORN - an organization fraught with controversy for, among other scandals, its fraudulent voter registration activities on behalf of Democratic candidates. Here are just some examples of ACORN's most recent scandals and unlawful activities:

- "ACORN is a long-time advocacy group with whom Obama was once associated. Recently, though, ACORN workers in two states have pleaded guilty to election fraud, an unlikely recipient of federal largess." (Fox News Report, 9/26/08)

- "Seven ACORN workers were charged with 'committing the biggest voter-registration fraud in [Washington] state history.'' (The Seattle Times, 7/26/07)

- ACORN workers submitted "just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up - all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes... The ACORN workers told state investigators that they went to the Seattle public library, sat at a table and filled out the voter registration forms. They made up names, addresses, and Social Security numbers and in some cases plucked names from the phone book. One worker said it was a lot of hard work making up all those names and another said he would sit at home, smoke marijuana and fill out the forms." (Fox News Channel, 5/02/08)

So who else was going to benefit from the mortgage bail out bill?

The housing package signed into law by President Bush extends an unlimited line of credit to troubled mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and rescues homeowners near or in foreclosure. The measure also increases the federal debt limit by another $800 billion -- and sends millions of dollars in aid to [the National Council of La Raza] and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, says she finds it "unconscionable" that the legislation included funding for the two groups, which serve as political action arms of the Democratic Party.

I wonder why ACORN has not been prosecuted under the RICO Statutes?

WASHINGTON, Sept 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- James Terry, Chief Public Advocate for the Consumers Rights League, today testified at a joint House Administration and House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on "Federal, State and Local Efforts to Prepare for the General 2008 Election," where he highlighted "corruption at every level of ACORN including embezzlement, cover-ups, misuse of taxpayer funds and voter fraud." An excerpt of his testimony follows:
James Terry, Chief Public Advocate, Consumers Rights League:
"ACORN routinely says it will clean up its act. Yet, given its decade-long history of voter fraud, embezzlement, and misuses of taxpayer funds, ACORN's pattern of fraud can no longer be dismissed as a series of 'unfortunate events.'
"The problem of voter registration fraud raises serious questions for this committee, and the Consumers Rights League appreciates that the right questions are being asked.
"Here are the most important questions right now: We know about the thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registration cards turned in by ACORN and caught by officials. But given the size of ACORN's efforts and the fact that the abuses appear to be systemic, we believe it is fair to question how many more fraudulent registrations have not been discovered, Furthermore, as this mega organization with a decades long history of violating the law is turned to get out the vote efforts, we believe it is fair to question how many fraudulent registrations may lead to fraudulent votes or what other activities they are willing to undertake to influence the election.

Oh yeah. If you want to learn more about how ACORN was also involved in mortgage fraud may I suggest reading: The Best Congress Fannie Could Buy.

Update: 29 Sept 008 0723z

Here is a present for ACORN that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank included in the mortgage bail out bill (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). A similar provision in the Wall Street bail out bill has been eliminated in the current version. So I'm told.

H/T commenter JBean at Just One Minute.

Update: 29 Sept 008 1129z

The American Thinker has an article that explains that the above documented methods of vote fraud are not an accident but part of a plan. Fraudulent names. The same name multiple times. Names out of the phone book etc.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A sports blog this is not.

Regular readers know that the above might even be understatement, as I have less than zero interest in athletic events. Where it comes to sports, I'm like an alien visiting a strange planet. This has never been more true than since the move to Ann Arbor, Michigan where I find myself living just a block away from the Michigan athletic complex, in an area dominated by students, many of whom would be stereotyped as "jocks." However, I very much like the fact that even though they have loud parties, they generally mind their own business, don't care what other people do (nor do they express busybody fears of "pit bulls"), and I can enjoy the relative anonymity of being an older guy who happens to live in the neighborhood.

Just because I'm generally uninterested in organized athletic events does not mean that I'm hostile, though. I'm also ignorant about science fiction, but I'm not hostile to that. Why, were I to be plunked down in the middle of a Science Fiction Fair somewhere, I'd probably be curious enough to at least ask questions, and maybe read some of the most important things. (You know, the stuff that SciFi folks might see as basic "cultural literacy.")

Additionally, there's that slogan "When in Rome." Considering the absolute intensity of what happens when there's a football game down the street, I don't think it is any exaggeration to say that living here and not attending a football game at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor would be a bit like time-traveling back to ancient Rome and not bothering to attend a gladiatorial event. You'd not only be violating the "When in Rome" rule, you'd be missing out on an important aspect of the culture.

I think that's enough by way of a background explanation of what happened to me yesterday, which was in and of itself a highly unusual event in my life:

I went to a football game.

And not just any football game, but Michigan versus Wisconsin. The Wolverines versus the Badgers! Yes, by a process of inverse anthropomorphism, football apparently turns people into animals -- in this case it was a battle of the mustelids versus a weasel like group. Interestingly, both animals are quite vicious in real life, and although combat is unlikely in nature, I think wolverines could defeat badgers. (As happened yesterday with the human variety.)

The human variety of wolverine can be just as wild as the natural variety, especially when seen in its characteristic blue and gold phase:

Yes, that's me on the left, wearing a very fraudulent T-shirt. This year's official T-shirt is bright yellow gold. Too bright for me. So my blue color is out of date, plus I never attended Michigan Law School. And even though I am a lawyer, my only connection with "Michigan Law" is a blog post I wrote criticizing one. But I'll leave the T-shirt ethics to others; I am in Rome doing as Romans do, and that shirt is the "When in Rome" equivalent of a toga.

When I first entered the stadium, here's what it looked like:

Eventually, it was filled to capacity; around 110,000.

The first half of the game went so poorly that I was beginning to wonder whether everyone was a bit deluded about the Wolverines being such a great team. The Badgers scored two touchdowns and a couple of field goals, and were ahead 19-0. But finally, in the third quarter, the Wolverines showed their stuff. During halftime, I had heard someone talking about how they had "worn out" the Badgers and allowed them to get ahead, but they'd definitely come back and finish them off, but I thought this was wishful thinking. To my astonishment, the Wolverines did just that, and pulled off a wildly impressive upset victory. I don't think I've ever heard a crowd go as wild.

A couple of action pictures I took:

In the stands, a couple of very blue Wolverine fans:

And in the air, the Goodyear Blimp was replaced by the DIRECTV Blimp!

The final score was 27-25.

Here's a video of the final "Hail to the Victors" as the team leaves the field in triumph.

To show what a total ignoramus I am, I was already familiar with the tune, but because I'd heard it played repeatedly at Republican events and conventions I had assumed that it was a traditional celebratory tune intended for political rallies. Once I learned that it is the official Michigan victory song, I put two and two together, and realized that it had been seared into my memory as a "political" tune only because I had heard it played for years to honor President Jerry Ford, who was a noted football star here in the 1930s. (Fool that I am, I had unwittingly put a political spin on something that wasn't political.)

I can't believe that I had so much fun doing something I'm not supposed to like.

Gateway Pundit has the details.

This is MacRanger of Macsmind. As you know I was hacked by operatives of the Obama Campaign last month. Well, it happened again. Basically they flooded the site with "sql bombs" according to the host that caused the shared server to stop running. Subsequently be had to disable the site. This had to do with running the "Obama wants to Disarm America" post which more than 2 million people viewed on the site. Just like the goons in Missouri, the Obama truthers can't let the truth be known. I've now moved the blog back to blogspot at macsmind.blogspot.com at least temporally. Because of the hacking job I had to move to another host but unfortunately they haven't got the server up yet to redirect the traffic to blogspot. I would appreciate a mention to your readers. I'm getting a couple of hundred emails about "what happened", but as you can imagine it hard to get the word out by reply.

Thanks,

MacRanger

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Remember Barack Obama's "me too!" bracelet? In an amazing twist, it turns out that the woman who gave it to him does not want him to wear it anymore:

Ryan's father Brian -- who is no longer married to Tracy -- told Wisconsin Public Radio that his ex-wife had misgivings about Obama wearing the bracelet and mentioning their son on the campaign trail. It seems as though just as Tracy Jopek supports Obama and wants to end the war, Brian Jopek has a different take on what should happen in Iraq and may be more inclined to support McCain.

(You can listen to Brian Jopek about 10 minutes into THIS CLIP.)

After pointing out that he and Tracy are not married anymore, Brian says that "from what I understood from email exchanges with Tracy....she wanted to put a name, she wanted Sen. Obama to know Ryan's name...She wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event...She just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself."

Bryan Jopek went on to say that "because of some of the negative feedback she's gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of... or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it... and that sort of thing, she has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn't, she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasn't. She had told me that in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet anymore at any of his public appearances."

Conservatives are now criticizing Obama for exploiting a fallen soldier whose mother has asked him to stop wearing the bracelet or mentioning her son's name. I'm not sure what the reality is behind this story -- I have a call into the Obama campaign and Tracy Jopek to find out more about this story, and will let you know what they say.

What seem not to be getting much attention are the dead soldier's thoughts on the war. What did Sgt. Ryan Jopek think?

Who knows?

When I read that Ryan Jopek's father had also served in Iraq, I just found myself wondering. Obviously, there's a family quarrel underlying this story, and if there's one thing I've learned, there are always two sides in a family dispute.

If Obama has weighed in on the mother's side, and she has changed her mind, it doesn't make his campaign look any better.

But any better than what?

Considering what Obama's friend Bill Ayers and his Weatherman group had in mind for Army NCOs back in 1970, I don't see how anything could make his campaign look worse. I'm not a member of the military, but according to Wiki, all grades of sergeants are NCOs. Which means Sgt. Jopek (the guy whose name is on Obama's bracelet) was an NCO.

Here's what was planned for the NCOs at the Fort Dix NCO Club:

In less than the blink of an eye, the blast of eight tightly-bound sticks of dynamite shattered the brittle wooden shell of the building hastily constructed during the Second World War, adding jagged splinters and rusting nails to the shrapnel that ripped through cheap tables and chairs, taffeta and chiffon, uniforms, and flesh.

Before the concussive shock waves reverberated off nearby buildings, half a dozen human beings closest to the outside wall of the NCO Club became mist.

The roof, lifted skyward by the explosion and suddenly absent a supporting wall as it returned to earth, crashed down on the dead and dying. Leaking bottles from the shattered bar fed the rapidly spreading flames, and deafened, dazed and bleeding survivors crawled or stumbled towards escape in ones and twos.

As soldiers from nearby buildings ran to help the bleeding and burned, a carefully-crafted 12″ pipe-bomb studded with roofing nails hidden in a nearby trash can went off, turning rescuers into additional victims.

Just outside Fort Dix confused onlookers sat in stunned amazement, as a pair of nondescript young women nervously laughed and counted ambulances for a half hour before losing count and heading back to the townhouse in Greenwich Village. The message had been sent.

Though he would have no way of knowing it at the time, the Weatherman's attack on the non-commissioned officer's dance would stand as the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil for 25 years, 1 month, and 13 days, until Timothy McVeigh drove into Oklahoma City and infamy.

Oughton dedicated herself to the school and teaching and designed a fund-raising button that read, CHILDREN ARE ONLY NEWER PEOPLE.[13] It was at CCS that Diana Oughton met Bill Ayers. The two fell in love and soon began living together. In 1968, when the school ran into severe problems and lost its funding, Oughton and Ayers sought to become active elsewhere in the community.

I'm sure Ayers considers his deceased ex worthy of a bracelet; I don't. However, I find irony in the wearing of a bracelet to honor an American NCO killed by an improvised explosive device, by someone who befriended a guy who believed passionately in killing American NCOs by an improvised explosive devices.

Should I? Am I making more of this than I should? I realize that Obama was just a kid when the improvised explosive device failed to kill the NCOs, and took out Ayers' girlfriend instead.

But Ayers has expressed a lack of remorse, and has said he was sorry he and his group didn't do more, has he not?

My question is simply this:

Should someone who worked closely with a guy like that and may have been his protege be elected president?

I can't believe it's necessary to pose a question like that. But it's a damned serious question, and it isn't being asked. Seriously, of all the reasons Obama should not ever be elected president, I think the Ayers issue is Reason Number One. It's why I keep writing post after post after post about it.

Forgive me for saying this, but I'm seeing more irony than sincerity in Obama's wearing of the bracelet with that NCO's name on it.

MORE: Here's Joe Trippi (who thinks the election will be a rout for Obama):

In my view McCain may have sounded more dangerous to voters as he tried so blatantly to make them think Obama wasn't a safe bet in this very "scary" world.

Anyone who thinks McCain is scarier than Obama needs a dose of reality.

Is there a First Amendment right to intimidate people?

What is intimidation?

I don't see easy answers to these questions, because to a certain extent, demonstrations -- and demonstrators -- are intended to intimidate. (I have experienced this personally on a number of occasions, and I won't bore readers by quoting yet again from numerous posts.)

Not only do demonstrators fully intend to intimidate their targets, but their goal is to discourage people from sympathizing with their targets. If the target is popular (or sympathetic), the goal is to make him unpopular (and unsympathetic). And if the target is unpopular or unsympathetic, the goal is to send a message along the lines of "Don't even think of sympathizing with this scum!" Open mindedness becomes a casualty. In the name of "free speech" of course.

Whether demonstrations constitute intimidation in the legal sense is another issue. The standard legal definition provides no clear line:

INTIMIDATE - means to intentionally say or do something which would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities to be fearful of bodily harm. It is not necessary to prove that the victim was actually frightened, and neither is it necessary to prove that the behavior of the person was so violent that it was likely to cause terror, panic or hysteria.

Where this gets especially dicey is in the case of demonstrators targeting people who have to be at a certain place -- i.e. a captive target group. If you have to go to work, and the Teamsters are there in force, they have their First Amendment rights, but what about your right to earn a livelihood? And what if the demonstrators target your home? Even if that's done in a "peaceful" manner, it's enough to make most people give way to whatever the demands are. So I would call it intimidation.

What about jurors? While there are strict laws prohibiting "jury intimidation," these laws typically contemplate criminals, mob cronies trying to frighten individual jurors. Where it comes to demonstrators, it's a fuzzy area.

Not so fuzzy, though, to have escaped the attention of the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff. Writing about the trial of a police officer in the Abner Louima shooting case, he describes the scene:

And when this federal jury declared itself seriously divided, Reverend Al, in a televised weekend press conference, urged his supporters to insist that Schwarz [the accused cop] be thoroughly convicted. Accordingly, on the following Monday, while the jury continued to deliberate, busloads of anti-Schwarz demonstrators descended on the courthouse, shouting dire epithets and becoming so boisterous that Schwarz and his attorney, Ronald Fischetti, needed a police escort to get through. The intent was to convince the jury to do the right thing. Remember: This jury was not sequestered.

Remember, these jurors are not like military recruits trained and hardened in boot camp. They are ordinary people, who have to ride the subway home, and they know that what they are doing is a matter of public record, and that thuggish activists will remember whatever they do long after the case has faded away into oblivion. How many people remember Abner Louima today? Two groups: political junkies and angry activists. Political junkies won't hurt you, but it's in the nature of activists to always be angry, and never forget.

The thing is, our legal system requires that these cases be tried, and juries have to hear them. But who in the hell would want want to be a juror in a high-profile case that attracts the presence of demonstrators? This is not to say that demonstrators are necessarily wrong (in some cases I would agree with their position), but I do think their very presence has an intimidating on those inclined to be fair and impartial.

These are just a few examples. I can't draw the exact line, but I think there is real tension between the First Amendment and the right to be free from intimidation.

Hmm....

Maybe I should have titled this post "Why Activists Win, Part IV"

I've been in Ann Arbor for almost two months now, but I've hardly met anyone other than a few people in the neighborhood.

One of the coolest things about blogging, though, is that it can turn out you know more people in more places than you realized. I tend not to think of bloggers in terms of their geographic location, and perhaps for that reason, I had not realized (or remembered) until a couple of weeks ago that one of my very first friends in the blogosphere -- the legendary Dean Esmay -- lives within driving distance of here, and visits Ann Arbor regularly. So after touching bases by email, we arranged to meet up for a post-lunch coffee today at Mark's Midtown Coney Island, where I'd never been (I'm still finding my way around), but very much enjoyed.

It was a real honor for me to finally meet Dean after all these years. There aren't all that many classical liberals, but Dean is one of them, and he's been an ongoing inspiration to this blog from the very beginning. We might not always reach identical results in our thinking (does anyone?), but we share the same principles, and I wish there were more bloggers like Dean, whose integrity is impeccable, and whose ability to see through bullshit is second to none.

It's incredibly cool that I've moved more or less into Dean's hood. Having a respected old friend living in the area makes Ann Arbor go up in my estimation.

And speaking of hoods, after we had coffee and talked for a couple of hours, we went outside and posed on the hood! (Of Dean's car, that is....) There was no one around to take the picture, so I positioned my camera on a USA Today box, and set the timer.

Here are the two troublemakers on the hood:

And if you don't find that picture enlightening enough, you'll definitely be enlightened by Dean's bumper, which has the bumpersticker to end all bumperstickers:

Dean's own design, of course. Naturally I'm jealous, as they can't be bought anywhere.

Of course, now that I've unleashed Dean's logically unassailable meme on the world, just watch some leftist whiner design another bumpersticker that says,

"If Bumper Stickers Are the Answer, Then What Was the Question?"

While it's probably just a coincidence, I see that since our little get-together, Dean has issued a death threat against his readers. (Geez, he seemed so peaceful over coffee....)

Seriously, though, it's not easy being in a new place, and I'm grateful to Dean for making me feel welcome here. It's amazing to think that I was lucky enough to have an old friend, right here in my new place.

Another lesson in the magic of the blogosphere.

H/T No Quarter

I don't think I've ever said "I'm not an economist" as many times as I have in the past few weeks.

But I'm not.

My point is that I, along with a lot of people who are not economists, continue to sound off on a daily basis about extremely complex economic issues of vital importance to the country, without really knowing what we're talking about. While this is our sacrosanct right as American citizens, I somehow find myself doubting we would do quite the same thing if the issue involved the details of whether Ted Kennedy's brain surgery had been performed correctly.

Oh, I'm no brain surgeon either. But it doesn't a brain surgeon to comprehend that brain surgeons know more about brain surgery than non-brain surgeons.

With that it mind, I could readily understand what leading economist Greg Mankiw said about Ben Bernanke and the bailout plan:

I know Ben Bernanke well. Ben is at least as smart as any of the economists who signed that letter or are complaining on blogs and editorial pages about the proposed policy. Moreover, Ben is far better informed than the critics. The Fed staff includes some of the best policy economists around. In his capacity as Fed chair, Ben understands the situation, as well as the pros, cons, and feasibility of the alternative policy options, better than any professor sitting alone in his office possibly could.

If I were a member of Congress, I would sit down with Ben, privately, to get his candid view. If he thinks this is the right thing to do, I would put my qualms aside and follow his advice.

If only Greg Mankiw were a member of Congress right now.

He's not, though -- any more than I'm an economist.

My admitted ignorance about economic matters is analogous to my admitted ignorance of military matters. I can't count the number of times I've pointed out that I'm not a war blogger, and it's one of the reasons I can't offer much more than stressing the importance of victory. I want our side -- meaning this country -- to win.

While I know it's not an exact analogy, I tried to point out earlier that economists are like generals. Especially Ben Bernanke, who strikes me as the economic equivalent of General Petraeus:

If we were going to face the conditions which might trigger another Depression, we couldn't pick a better man to possibly prevent it than Ben Bernanke:

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has written extensively. On Milton Friedman's ninetieth birthday, November 8, 2002, he stated: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

I think it's fair to say that (at least in academic terms) Bernanke's Depression-prevention expertise is roughly analogous to General Petraeus's Vietnam-prevention expertise.

I just wish our politicians and the chorus of self-appointed experts would try listening to him before grandstanding.

This is not to say "the experts" are always right.

But what kind of track record does Congress have? Why did they ignore Alan Greenspan's warnings?

BAIER: The legislation was blocked.

In 2005, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan added his voice on Fannie and Freddie, after Fannie leaders admitted major accounting screwups. "Enabling these institutions to increase in size - and they will once the crisis in their judgment passes - we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."

Adding later at another hearing on the topic -

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN GREENSPAN, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: If we fail to strengthen GSE regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency in crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: But the two mortgage giants had staunch defenders. Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer said, "I think Fannie and Freddie over the years have done an incredibly good job and are an intrinsic part of making America the best-housed people in the world. If you look over the last 20 or whatever years, they've done a very, very good job."

And Sen. John McCain co-sponsored legislation pushing for regulation, delivering a speech on the Senate floor in 2006. "For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market, the GSEs need to be reformed without delay."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAIER: That bill made it out of the Senate Banking committee with a party-line vote. All of the Democrats voted against it. But fearing that they didn't have the votes to pass it, Republicans didn't even bring it up on the Senate floor. Sen. Obama did not weigh in on that bill.