“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
William K. Black and L. Randall Wray: Foreclose on the Foreclosure Fraudsters, Part 1: Put Bank of America in Receivership
After a quick review of its procedures, Bank of America this week announced that it will resume its foreclosures in 23 lucky states next Monday. While the evidence is overwhelming that the entire foreclosure process is riddled with fraud, President Obama refuses to support a national moratorium. Indeed, his spokesmen on the issue told reporters three key things. As the Los Angeles Times reported:
A government review of botched foreclosure paperwork so far has found that the problems do not pose a “systemic” threat to the financial system, a top Obama administration official said Wednesday.
Yes, that’s right. HUD reviewed the “paperwork” problem to see whether it threatened the banks — not the homeowners who were the victims of foreclosure fraud. But it got worse, for the second point was how the government would respond to the epidemic of foreclosure fraud.
The Justice Department is leading an investigation of possible crimes involving mortgage fraud.
That language was carefully chosen to sound reassuring. But the fact is that despite our pleas the FBI has continued its “partnership” with the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The MBA is the trade association of the “perps.” It created a ridiculous on its face definition of “mortgage fraud.” Under that definition the lenders — who led the mortgage frauds — are the victims. The FBI still parrots this long discredited “definition.” That is one of the primary reasons why — in complete contrast to prior financial crises — the Justice Department has not convicted a single senior officer of the large nonprime lenders who directed, committed, and profited enormously from the frauds.
Glenn Greenwald The real danger from NPR’s firing of Juan Williams
I’m still not quite over the most disgusting part of the Juan Williams spectacle yesterday: watching the very same people (on the Right and in the media) who remained silent about or vocally cheered on the viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others, spend all day yesterday wrapping themselves in the flag of “free expression!!!” and screeching about the perils and evils of firing journalists for expressing certain viewpoints. Even for someone who expects huge doses of principle-free hypocrisy — as I do — that behavior is really something to behold. And anyone doubting that there is a double standard when it comes to anti-Muslim speech should just compare the wailing backlash from most quarters over Williams’ firing to the muted acquiescence or widespread approval of those other firings.
But there’s one point from all of this I really want to highlight. The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies: that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans. That fact is illustrated by a Washington Post Op-Ed today from Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is as standard and pure a neocon as exists: an Israel-centric, Iran-threatening, Weekly Standard and TNR writer, former CIA Middle East analyst, former American Enterprise Institute and current Defense of Democracies “scholar,” torture advocate, etc. etc.
David Sirota: The Tea Party Test Case
What is the tea party? Many have tried to answer that question ever since CNBC’s Rick Santelli first launched the backlash with his trading-floor rant against the poor.
Democratic operatives, for instance, say the tea party is merely a Republican Party facade. As proof, they point to GOP-linked corporate groups’ involvement in tea party events, and cite the absence of tea party deficit and bailout protests during George W. Bush’s presidency.
Social scientists, meanwhile, suggest that the tea party is not the entire Republican apparatus, but specifically the extreme conservative edge of the GOP. The data add credence to that argument: As the Public Religion Research Institute and the University of Washington report, tea party followers are disproportionately part of the Christian right and are more racially resentful than the general public.
Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III: Racist Elements in the Tea Party Movement?
On Wednesday, October 20, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights in conjunction with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) released the report “Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope and Function of Its National Factions.” According to the report, it examines histories and the “… corporate structure and leadership, finances and membership concentrations …” of “… six of the national organizational networks at the core of the Tea Party Movement.” The six Tea Party organizational elements examined are the Freedom Works Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet and Tea Party Express (the “Movement”).
The report is very clear from the outset: ” … the majority of Movement supporters are people of good will.” But integrated into their calls for a reduction of the budget deficit, greater focus on the national debt and smaller government are concerns about race, sexual orientation, national identity, national birth rights and who qualifies to be an American. As the Tea Party Movement has taken shape amid calls for less government, lower taxes and less government spending; racist, white nationalist, anti-immigrant, homophobic and anti-Semitic elements have found their way into the Movement.
Taylor Marsh: Sarah Palin’s Team Sends Smoke Signal on 2012
Jonathan Martin of Politico really touched a raw Palin nerve with “Hurricane Sarah”. She tweeted Martin, calling him a liar, with Rebecca Mansour of Conservatives4Palin.com firing away, too.
Interesting that Mansour would cite “primary 2012.” Nobody’s flagged it, but it reads like a smoke signal sent before the charge. . . .
Recognizing the money Palin can raise, Grassley’s team said it wanted to have her do a luncheon fundraiser. Palin, however, indicated that she didn’t want to raise money, but preferred a “message” event on a policy issue. So no event took place.
Grassley aides remain puzzled as to why she would offer her help, then refuse to do what the veteran senator thought was most beneficial to his bid for a sixth Senate term.
“It says to me she’s not serious about running for president,” said a source close to Grassley, suggesting that a real White House hopeful would not have snubbed a figure like the senior senator in the state that begins the nomination process.
What’s clear about Sarah Palin is that she’s hoping the victories she’s stoked in a 2010 House takeover by the Right will evolve into an incarnation of the Ronald Reagan revolution. However, the Republican she most resembles is Barry Goldwater, the Tea Party akin to the Goldwater grass roots movement more than anything else.
What’s clear about Sarah Palin is that she’s hoping the victories she’s stoked in a 2010 House takeover by the Right will evolve into an incarnation of the Ronald Reagan revolution. However, the Republican she most resembles is Barry Goldwater, the Tea Party akin to the Goldwater grass roots movement more than anything else.
Bill Maher: New Rule: Christine O’Donnell Has to Stop Saying “I’m You” in Her Campaign Ads
New Rule: Christine O’Donnell has to stop saying, “I’m you” in her campaign ads. It doesn’t get truer the more you say it. Because it’s not a spell. And also because a recent poll by Harvard confirms that my views are actually more aligned with America’s views than are Christine’s or Sarah Palin’s or Carl Paladino’s or any of the other nuts that spilled out of the nut bag this year.
When I hear Christine O’Donnell say “I’m you” I take it personally, because I think back to how our love-making was so raw and powerful it was hard to know where my body ended and hers began, but if I were you, I’d really want her to stop saying she was you. Eighty-six percent of Tea-baggers think climate change is a hoax — that’s not you! Tea Partiers want to repeal the health care law, but two thirds of AMERICANS either like it or want it to go further. Fifty-nine percent of AMERICANS support gay marriage and civil unions. The Tea Partiers support traditional gender roles, where men are in charge, like Glenn Beck, and women are soft and emotionally fragile, with spooky mood swings, like Glenn Beck. Six in ten Americans think illegal Mexicans should have a path to citizenship and be allowed to stay here. And the other four in ten are illegal Mexicans.
Ellen Dannin: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor
Two hundred thirty-four years ago, our country’s founders concluded this country’s founding document by declaring: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” How odd that the document we call the Declaration of Independence concludes as a Declaration of Inter-Dependence.
Furthermore, that interdependence was not just some feel-good, wishy-washy sentiment. Rather, it demanded that we put all toward the general good – not just money, but everything we are and ever will be.
As Americans, we are their heirs. They pledged this country’s future as one built through the efforts of people who are willing to give their all to the common enterprise.
This wasn’t a one-shot doctrine.
Alexander Cockburn: Down With Sarko and Osborne; Three Cheers for the French Strikers
The strikes and demonstrations that have brought France to a near-halt are provoking the usual patronizing commentaries across the Channel and on my side of the Atlantic. Those pampered French workers, not to mention schoolkids, are at it again, raising hell just because sensible President Sarkozy points out that the French pension system is simply not affordable and the retirement age must be raised from 60 to 62. It’s time for a reality check, of the sort just being imposed by Chancellor Osborne, proposing to carve $128 billion out of spending and entitlements.
Across Europe, the slash-and-burn crowd is in full cry, calling for tighter belts — though not to any stringent degree those ample ones circling the portly tums of the richer classes. Cheering them on are the neoliberals here in the U.S., urging similar retrenchment, starting with Social Security “reform” — a higher retirement age and reduced pensions. The mainstream press here, starting with The New York Times, has been florid with homages to Osborne’s estimable zeal to pare back the welfare state “excesses” of 60 years.
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