From the Family Research Council

The excitement over the spike in voter registrations has quickly turned to suspicion as officials in almost a dozen states have launched investigations to determine whether these nine million Americans are actually eligible. In the weeks leading up to November 4, the New York Post found dozens of people who have different names but share the same story. Most of the accounts, like Christopher Barkley’s, are from swing states and involve ACORN, the “community activist group” submitting the bulk of the new voter applications. Barkley says he was “hounded” to register by ACORN workers in Ohio, a crown jewel of the presidential race. “I kept getting approached by folks who asked me to register. They’d ask me if I was registered. I’d say yes, and they’d ask me to do it again.” Ohio voter Lateala Goins told a Post reporter, “You can tell them you’re registered as many times as you want; they do not care. They will follow you to the buses, they will follow you home…” Another man in Cleveland says he “was given cash and cigarettes” by ACORN representatives for registering a whopping 72 times in the last year and a half. The fraud gets even worse in Texas, where one county found that 4,000 of its registered voters were dead-but even that didn’t stop many of them from voting! In Florida, a state that President Bush won by less than 600 ballots in 2000, the Sun-Sentinel learned that more than 30,000 felons are still on the rolls, despite the law rendering them ineligible. Although 11 states are investigating ACORN’s role in widespread election fraud, time is short. With the nation on edge and Americans sharply divided as to who can lead us back, democracy cannot become corruption’s next victim. Regardless of who wins, we all have a stake in an honest process.

See more at NY POST: One Man, 72 Registrations

Kudos to the Louisiana Action Council for breaking the story of the practice of some Louisiana school districts of “re-routing” test scores from higher performing schools to make lower performing schools in the district appear better than they actually are.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Louisiana’s public education system is less than stellar in many districts across the state. We have yet another example of why this is. There is a potential trend forming in Louisiana that is pretty simple – if you aren’t up to par, ride on those that are. In now three school districts in Louisiana the test scores of high performing students are being used for accountability purposes as a way to defraud the system.

The situation is this: schools in these districts (Jefferson, Iberville and now East Baton Rouge) can “re-route” test scores from higher performing magnet schools to the lower performing district schools that those magnet students would have attended in their area. It is flat out cheating to use testing scores of a student who does not attend that school to raise overall performances. Why should these schools get credit for job NOT done? These children are being educated at magnet schools because they may be more advanced - but the district schools get to use their achievements to raise their performance levels.

The purpose of having an accountability system is to monitor performance of schools and students and ensure that these schools are providing a quality education as well as making adequate improvements. The action by these school districts is making a mockery of our accountability system and this should be stopped immediately. It is not right that a school that is low performing could detour around possible penalties or even receive rewards for progress not really made.

They need to not only end this unfair practice but also prevent it from occurring anywhere else. What’s next? Are we going to start using scores for students who aren’t in the public system at all, such as private school students and home schoolers?

The Department of Education needs to step in immediately and end this practice once and for all. Our public schools can never truly improve if we are refusing to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Parents deserve to know exactly what is going on in these public schools that their children are attending. This is not accountability – this is fraud.

FANNIE MAE EASES CREDIT TO AID MORTGAGE LENDING, by, Steven A. Holmes

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationw=de program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
‘’Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,'’ said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ‘’Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.'’

Demographic information on these bor rowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compare d to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

‘’From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'’ said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘’If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.‘’

Under Fannie Mae’s pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 — a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

From the Boston Globe

‘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 — many of whom have been learning lately just how pitiless the private sector’s discipline can be — 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.

All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. “Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor,” the Fed’s guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as “valid income sources” to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit.

As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained. But it didn’t take a financial whiz to recognize that a day of reckoning would come. “What does it mean when Boston banks start making many more loans to minorities?” I asked in this space in 1995. “Most likely, that they are knowingly approving risky loans in order to get the feds and the activists off their backs . . . When the coming wave of foreclosures rolls through the inner city, which of today’s self-congratulating bankers, politicians, and regulators plans to take the credit?”

Frank doesn’t. But his fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Time and time again, Frank insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in good shape. Five years ago, for example, when the Bush administration proposed much tighter regulation of the two companies, Frank was adamant that “these two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” When the White House warned of “systemic risk for our financial system” unless the mortgage giants were curbed, Frank complained that the administration was more concerned about financial safety than about housing.

Now that the bubble has burst and the “systemic risk” is apparent to all, Frank blithely declares: “The private sector got us into this mess.” Well, give the congressman points for gall. Wall Street and private lenders have plenty to answer for, but it was Washington and the political class that derailed this train. If Frank is looking for a culprit to blame, he can find one suspect in the nearest mirror.

Links and post from Michelle Malkin.com

Read the Senate Bail Out Bill HERE.

The massive, unprecedented trillion-dollar-plus (remember, they just pulled the figure from thin air) Bailout Crap Sandwich With Sugar On Top returns to the House. A vote is expected on Friday. I keep hearing and reading that public opposition to this rushed-through monstrosity has “softened” in the wake of the Senate’s approval last night. I’m not sure why the bailout pimps keep touting that talking point when countless Americans trying to express their vehement disapproval can’t even get through the FUBAR House e-mail system!

Now is the time for the fiscal conservative House Republicans who voted against the bailout on Monday (before it ballooned to four times its size) to buckle down. Refuse to be bought off. Refuse to be co-opted by the Orwellian “It’s a ‘rescue,’ not a bailout” propaganda ministers. Refuse to be pressured and panicked and bullied by the Apocalyptics. Refuse to submit to Pelosi/Frank/Paulson’s collective will. Refuse to flip-flop. Refuse to swallow.

The bailout peddlers need 12 Republicans to turn. The payoffs are in the works:

“We need 100 Republican votes to pass this,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters at a Wednesday afternoon briefing.

House leaders “are bringing in the small business lobby and the banking lobby to buy the 12 Republican votes they need,” said Bob Borosage, the co-director of the progressive group Campaign for America’s Future.
To quote the great Lady Thatcher: “This is no time to go wobbly.”

The People’s House needs to hear from the people. Get your fingers dialing for Operation Hold The Line. Because so many of you asked, I’ve compiled the phone numbers for each and every one of the House GOP members who voted no on Monday. They need to hear from you again. Area code is 202 for all numbers:

Aderholt R AL legislator No 225-4876
Akin R MO legislator No 225-2561
Alexander R LA legislator No 225-8490
Bachmann R MN legislator No 225-2331
Barrett (SC) R SC legislator No 225-5301
Bartlett (MD) R MD legislator No 225-2721
Barton (TX) R TX legislator No 225-2002
Biggert R IL legislator No 225-3515
Bilbray R CA legislator No 225-0508
Bilirakis R FL legislator No 225-5755
Bishop (UT) R UT legislator No 225-0453
Blackburn R TN legislator No 225-2811
Boustany R LA legislator No 225-2031
Broun (GA) R GA legislator No 225-4101
Brown-Waite, Ginny R FL legislator No 225-1002
Buchanan R FL legislator No 225-5015
Burgess R TX legislator No 225-7772
Burton (IN) R IN legislator No 225-2276
Buyer R IN legislator No 225-5037
Capito R WV legislator No 225-2711
Carter R TX legislator No 225-3864
Chabot R OH legislator No 225-2216
Coble R NC legislator No 225-3065
Conaway R TX legislator No 225-3605
Culberson R TX legislator No 225-2571
Davis (KY) R KY legislator No 225-3465
Davis, David R TN legislator No 225-6356
Deal (GA) R GA legislator No 225-5211
Dent R PA legislator No 225-6411
Diaz-Balart, L. R FL legislator No 225-4211
Diaz-Balart, M. R FL legislator No 225-2778
Doolittle R CA legislator No 225-2511
Drake R VA legislator No 225-4215
Duncan R TN legislator No 225-5435
English (PA) R PA legislator No 225-5406
Fallin R OK legislator No 225-2132
Feeney R FL legislator No 225-2706
Flake R AZ legislator No 225-2635
Forbes R VA legislator No 225-6365
Fortenberry R NE legislator No 225-4806
Foxx R NC legislator No 225-2071
Franks (AZ) R AZ legislator No 225-4576
Frelinghuysen R NJ legislator No 225-5034
Gallegly R CA legislator No 225-5811
Garrett (NJ) R NJ legislator No 225-4465
Gerlach R PA legislator No 225-4315
Gingrey R GA legislator No 225-2931
Gohmert R TX legislator No 225-3035
Goode R VA legislator No 225-4711
Goodlatte R VA legislator No 225-5431
Graves R MO legislator No 225-7041
Hall (TX) R TX legislator No 225-6673
Hastings (WA) R WA legislator No 225-5816
Hayes R NC legislator No 225-3715
Heller R NV legislator No 225-6155
Hensarling R TX legislator No 225-3484
Hoekstra R MI legislator No 225-4401
Hulshof R MO legislator No 225-2956
Hunter R CA legislator No 225-5672
Issa R CA legislator No 225-3906
Johnson (IL) R IL legislator No 225-2371
Johnson, Sam R TX legislator No 225-4201
Jones (NC) R NC legislator No 225-3415
Jordan R OH legislator No 225-2676
Keller R FL legislator No 225-2176
King (IA) R IA legislator No 225-4426
Kingston R GA legislator No 225-5831
Knollenberg R MI legislator No 225-5802
Kuhl (NY) R NY legislator No 225-3161
Lamborn R CO legislator No 225-4422
Latham R IA legislator No 225-5476
LaTourette R OH legislator No 225-5731
Latta R OH legislator No 225-6405
Linder R GA legislator No 225-4272
LoBiondo R NJ legislator No 225-6572
Lucas R OK legislator No 225-5565
Mack R FL legislator No 225-2536
Manzullo R IL legislator No 225-5676
Marchant R TX legislator No 225-6605
McCarthy (CA) R CA legislator No 225-2915
McCaul (TX) R TX legislator No 225-2401
McCotter R MI legislator No 225-8171
McHenry R NC legislator No 225-2576
McMorris Rodgers R WA legislator No 225-2006
Mica R FL legislator No 225-4035
Miller (FL) R FL legislator No 225-4136
Miller (MI) R MI legislator No 225-2106
Moran (KS) R KS legislator No 225-2715
Murphy, Tim R PA legislator No 225-2301
Musgrave R CO legislator No 225-4676
Myrick R NC legislator No 225-1976
Neugebauer R TX legislator No 225-4005
Nunes R CA legislator No 225-2523
Paul R TX legislator No 225-2831
Pearce R NM legislator No 225-2365
Pence R IN legislator No 225-3021
Petri R WI legislator No 225-2476
Pitts R PA legislator No 225-2411
Platts R PA legislator No 225-5836
Poe R TX legislator No 225-6565
Price (GA) R GA legislator No 225-4501
Ramstad R MN legislator No 225-2871
Rehberg R MT legislator No 225-3211
Reichert R WA legislator No 225-7761
Renzi R AZ legislator No 225-2315
Rogers (MI) R MI legislator No 225-4872
Rohrabacher R CA legislator No 225-2415
Ros-Lehtinen R FL legislator No 225-3931
Roskam R IL legislator No 225-4561
Royce R CA legislator No 225-4111
Sali R ID legislator No 225-6611
Scalise R LA legislator No 225-3015
Schmidt R OH legislator No 225-3164
Sensenbrenner R WI legislator No 225-5101
Shadegg R AZ legislator No 225-3361
Shimkus R IL legislator No 225-5271
Shuster R PA legislator No 225-2431
Smith (NE) R NE legislator No 225-6435
Smith (NJ) R NJ legislator No 225-3765
Stearns R FL legislator No 225-5744
Sullivan R OK legislator No 225-2211
Terry R NE legislator No 225-4155
Thornberry R TX legislator No 225-3706
Tiahrt R KS legislator No 225-6216
Tiberi R OH legislator No 225-5355
Turner R OH legislator No 225-6465
Walberg R MI legislator No 225-6276
Wamp R TN legislator No 225-3271
Westmoreland R GA legislator No 225-5901
Whitfield (KY) R KY legislator No 225-3115
Wittman (VA) R VA legislator No 225-4261
Young (AK) R AK legislator No 225-5765
Young (FL) R FL legislator No 225-5961