Fannie, Freddie Loom as Liabilities for Clinton Amid Fears of Another Bailout

/2 Comments/in , /by

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are hurtling toward another possible taxpayer bailout, a development that could put an uncomfortable election light on the Clintons’ record of enabling the government-backed mortgage giants to engage in risky practices that led to the 2007 financial crisis.

There is growing consensus in financial circles that the seeds of the mortgage market collapse were sown during Bill Clinton’s presidency in the mid-1990s. That was when he helped push through changes that empowered Fannie and Freddie to give more mortgages to minorities and lower-income Americans, often at below-prime interest rates and with little down payments.

When the Federal Reserve and other respected voices began warning a decade ago that those changes were threatening the mortgage markets, Hillary Rodham Clinton joined fellow Democratic senators, including Barack Obama and John F. Kerry, in providing the votes to block Republican reforms designed to stave off a collapse.

The one-two punch could prove a political liability for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid, portraying her and her husband as facilitators for highly compensated mortgage brokers and undercutting her argument that she has been a longtime champion of the middle class.

“I certainly think we’re going down the path of another bailout of the mortgage market. If we keep on this path, it’s inevitable. It’s a concern people have,” said Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. “It’s going to be a tough needle for her to thread — people on the left still believe Fannie and Freddie was a good model and that the housing crisis was all about Wall Street greed. She’s got a tough road to walk on this.” (Read more from “Fannie, Freddie Loom as Liabilities for Clinton Amid Fears of Another Bailout” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

LA Times: Obama Moving to Ban Millions of Social Security Recipients From Owning Guns

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Obama administration wants to keep people collecting Social Security benefits from owning guns if it is determined they are unable to manage their own affairs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The push, which could potentially affect millions whose monthly disability payments are handled by others, is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with laws that prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the United States illegally, and others, according to the paper.

The language of federal gun laws restricts ownership to people who are unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease” – which could potentially affect a large group within Social Security, the LA Times reported.

If Social Security, which has never taken part in the background check system, uses the same standard as the Department of Veterans Affairs – which is the idea floated – then millions of beneficiaries could be affected, with about 4.2 million adults receiving monthly benefits that are managed by “representative payees.”

The latest move is part of the efforts by President Obama to strengthen gun control following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012. (Read more from “Obama Looks to Ban Social Security Recipients From Owning Guns” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Huffington Post Announces Refusal to Cover Donald Trump as a Real Candidate: You Can Find Him ‘Next to Our Stories on the Kardashians’

/4 Comments/in , /by

By Kaitlyn Schallhorn. Donald Trump’s campaign coverage has a new home on the Huffington Post’s site — the entertainment section.

Announced Friday morning, the news outlet called Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination a “sideshow” and vowed it “won’t take the bait.” Instead of ignoring any and all Trump news, the Huffington Post will now feature Trump coverage “next to [their] stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.” (Read more from “Huffington Post Announces Refusal to Cover Donald Trump as a Real Candidate: You Can Find Him ‘Next to Our Stories on the Kardashians’” HERE)


______________________________________________________________________

Leftist Rag Announces They Are Banning Donald Trump From Political Coverage

By Matthew K. Burke. Leftist news site The Huffington Post announced on Friday that it will censor Donald Trump from political coverage from the publication, even though recent polls show Trump is currently leading the field of over a dozen 2016 Republican presidential candidates.

Sounding like a Soviet politburo, Huffpo’s Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim and Editorial Director Danny Shea released the following statement, a clear attempt to discredit the GOP frontrunner, stating that Trump’s candidacy is a “sideshow” and claimed they would not “take the bait.”

Instead of unbiasedly reporting news about Trump’s campaign alongside other presidential candidates, Huffpo announced that news about Trump would be relegated to the “Entertainment” section “next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.” (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Clintons Facilitated Donor’s Haiti Project That Defrauded US out of Millions

/3 Comments/in , /by

A federal agency rushed to approve funding for a Clinton donor’s sham Haiti recovery project that ended up defrauding the U.S. government out of millions, according to court transcripts and internal government documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Miami businessman Claudio Osorio, who is currently serving 12 years in federal prison on fraud charges, leveraged his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton to help his company InnoVida obtain a $10 million loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for a Haiti housing project in 2010.

OPIC is an independent government agency that submits its annual budget requests through the State Department and works closely with the agency.

Bill Clinton helped arrange for a high-powered Florida law firm to represent Osorio during loan negotiations with OPIC, according to court testimony. An internal OPIC memo said Hillary Clinton was prepared to marshal State Department resources to assist with the donor’s project.

InnoVida was supposed to use the funding to build houses in Haiti after the earthquake, but it defaulted on the loan and the homes were never built. (Read more from “Clintons Facilitated Donor’s Haiti Project That Defrauded US out of Millions” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

6.6 Million People Just Learned the Hard Way How Much It Costs to Be Uninsured Under Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known also as Obamacare, was signed into law by President Obama in March 2010, but it didn’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2014. Despite the more than three years for insurers, states, the federal government, physicians, and consumers to prepare for the coming overhaul of our healthcare system, there were still plenty of hiccups (and challenges) when the calendar changed over.

Pretty much from the get-go of the first enrollment period there were technical issues with the online marketplace servers and software that prevented consumers from completing the enrollment process. But even bigger challenges would be fought at the legal level with the constitutionality of the individual mandate penalties coming into question in 2012, and more recently the challenge to the federal government’s ability to divvy out subsidies to enrollees on behalf of 34 states. The defense proved victorious in both challenges, which made it to the Supreme Court . . .

The individual mandate is the actionable component of Obamacare that requires individuals to purchase health insurance or face a penalty. The penalty in 2014, the first year Obamacare was fully in effect, was the greater of $95 or 1% of your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). This year the penalty for not having insurance, which is officially known as the Individual Shared Responsibility Payment (ISRP), jumps to the greater of $325 or 2% of your MAGI. In 2016, another sizable spike to the greater of $695 or 2.5% of your MAGI. In 2017 and beyond the penalties rise on par with the level of inflation.

Why is there even an individual mandate penalty in the first place, you wonder? When Obamacare became the law of the land, one of the stipulations was that insurers could no longer pick and choose who they wanted to become members. In other words, people with preexisting conditions couldn’t be turned away. This meant that through the process of adverse selection some sick and elderly consumers who are costly to insurers would be quick to enroll, while healthier young adults, which are needed to help offset the high costs of the elderly and terminally ill, would possibly shun being forced to buy insurance. The individual mandate penalty was put into place in order to encourage younger adults to enroll, otherwise they’d have to pay a penalty come tax time. . .

Just how many people were required to pay the penalty in 2014? According to a report released by National Taxpayer Advocate via the IRS, some 6.6 million people owed an ISRP due to not having health insurance. What may have come as a big surprise to many of those who owed was the fact that the penalty was the greater of $95 or 1% of their MAGI, not the lesser. Thus, the average penalty paid by these 6.6 million people was double the lower-bound figure, $190, since their MAGI often came into play when calculating their penalties. (Read more from “6.6 Million People Just Learned the Hard Way How Much It Costs to Be Uninsured Under Obamacare” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama Is Collecting Unprecedented Personal Data on Americans and Here’s Why

/2 Comments/in , /by

A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.

Big Brother Barack wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.

So civil-rights attorneys and urban activist groups will be able to exploit them to show patterns of “racial disparities” and “segregation,” even if no other evidence of discrimination exists. (Read more from “Here’s Why Obama Is Collecting Your Personal Data” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Carson: Black Voters ‘Waking up’ to GOP

/4 Comments/in , /by

Ben Carson on Saturday said African-American voters are “waking up” to the possibility of supporting GOP candidates for office like himself.

“I think there’s a lot of people who are waking up,” the neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate said at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa.

“I met with a group of black pastors yesterday and people are waking up in droves,” he continued. “I think they’re realizing what’s been happening here.”

Carson said he converted to the Republican Party after growing up and going to school in Democratic strongholds during the Reagan administration.

“I started listening to Ronald Reagan … and I said he doesn’t doesn’t sound like that,” he said, noting he had heard horror stories about conservatives during his entire upbringing. (Read more from “Carson: Black Voters ‘Waking up’ to GOP” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.