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From The Mailbag

Five former governors will try to win
reelection in the worst economy since
the Great Depression. All of them are
citing "change..." Are you better off
today than you were before Nov., 2008?
Against the backdrop of a baleful prophetic warning from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on Wed., April 7, five former State governors decided the time was right to stage a comeback. In June, 2005 Greenspan, the first person to sound the alarm, predicted the collapse of the housing boom due to the use of toxic term ARM mortgages and comic book credit checks that qualified people living on welfare checks and food stamps to purchase homes that were guaranteed by Fannie Mae under a "racial equality" logic created in part in Chicago by community activist Barack Obama in 1999. Obama's one-city advocacy in Chicago was ultimately adopted by minority advocacy groups which forced banks in Illinois to make bad mortgage loans that Fannie Mae agreed to underwrite under the threats of being called racist. The advocacy used by Obama was a social justice strategy perfected in the 1970s by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton

The above, and the following, are offered as an explanation to rebut Obama's argument that the subprime mortgage collapse and the subsequent domino affect that topple the US mortgage industry was orchestrated by former President George W. Bush. Bush-43 has more than enough baggage of his own to carry into history without carrying something of Obama's making (before anyone outside of Illinois even knew his name). In 1999 Congress revised the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (Public Law 95-128, 12 USC § 2901. Those changes became part of the CRA when Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 into law. The Community Reinvestment Act was originally signed into law by Jimmy Carter to reduce "discriminatory credit practices against borrowers in impoverished areas," a practice known as redlining. In 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or as it is officially known, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 forced banks to make home loans, which would be guaranteed by Fannie Mae, to low income families who heretofore were not considered "sound risks" for a mortgage.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was stuck in the Senate. At the same time, Senators Christopher Dodd [D-CT] and Charles Schumer [D-NY] were hawking a bill that would repeal the Glass-Stegall Act of 1933 enacted (during the Depression) to separate commercial and investment banking, and to prevent banks from owning insurance companies. The Dodd-Schumer bill was stuck in the House. Schumer cut a deal with Sen. Phil Gramm [R-TX] to pass both pieces of legislation. The repeal of Glass-Stegall was accomplished by amending Chapter 16 of the Federal Deposit insurance Act to allow banks to merge or expand into other types of financial institutions. (When you purchase auto insurance today, the insurance company runs a credit report on you. Your credit score factors the rate you pay for your insurance. And you thought your rate was determined solely by how many accidents or tickets you had. If you missed a few credit card payments, or don't pay your utility bills until the utility companies are ready to turn off service, you will pay more for your car insurance than your neighbor who pays those bills on time. Yet, the same bank that owns the casualty insurance company that charges you a higher rate if you pay your bills slow, will make a mortgage loan to a minority home buyer who has no regular income, and who pays everything late, if at all.)

The Clinton Administration, followed by the Bush-43 Administration, created the illusion that the American economy was stable by manufacturing an artificial economic bubble by creating a product everyone wanted, and by making it not only available to everyone, but affordable for anyone—even those who could not afford to own the Great American Dream. Impoverished citizens on welfare could now buy their dream home. As the demand for homes escalated, the price of homes skyrocketed. The reason for the economic illusion? The princes of industry and the barons of banking and business were shipping thousand of industries and millions of jobs out the backdoor of the United States to China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and both Central and South America, and they needed something with which to replace those lost jobs, and lost incomes. The housing boom filled the void with a fragile house of cards, providing consumers with the discretionary income they needed to make the illusion appear real, and to keep the nation afloat for a whole decade until the money barons deliberately triggered the collapse to guarantee the election of the "man of change"—Barack Hussein Obama—in 2008. One of Obama's favorite campaign slogans was: "We live in the greatest country in the world...help me change it!" And, change it he did.

"Change" has become the mantra for five former governor, three Democrats and two Republicans, who believe they can use the economic upheaval to win reelection to the governor's mansions in their States. The Democrats, none of whom will likely win back their former jobs are former hippie Jerry Brown [D-CA] who served as California's governor from 1975-83. (Since he served as governor before California passed a term limits law for governors in 1990, he can go after the job.) Brown is currently the Attorney General of California. The only thing Brown has going for him is that his father, Pat Brown, was a popular governor who served from 1959 to 1967.)

Former Gov. Roy Barnes [D-GA] who lost his job because he redesigned the State flag and removed the Stars and Bars, believes he will be the first former governor in 50 years to win back the job he lost in 2003. Barnes, who lost his job in 2003 to a GOP mid-term sweep in 2002, apparently hasn't been watching the Tea Party Movement, or he hasn't connected it with another GOP sweep this November. Current governor Sonny Perdue cannot run for a third consecutive term.

Seven Republicans are vying for the GOP nomination: John Oxendine, Georgia Insurance Commissioner; State Sen. Eric Johnson, State Representative Austin Scott; businessman Ray McBerry; Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, 9th term US Congressman Nathan Deal and latecomer State Senator Jeff Chapman. Oxendine is favored at this moment, but my money is on Nathan Deal. A GOP run-off is very likely. Because of socialist Obama-fear, the people of Georgia will opt for a governor in 2011 who knows Washington. Deal, who knows how DC politicking works, quit his job in the House in disgust , staying only long enough to vote against Obamacare.

And finally, we have Dr. John Kitzhaber [D-OR], a practicing ER physician, served two terms as governor (1995-2003). Oregon voters enacted term limits, Ballot Measure 3 in 1992, that affected both State and US Congressional offices, based on the prerogative of the States according to Article I, Sec. 4 of the US Constitution which gives the States latitude in the manner in which their lawmakers are chosen. Although Oregon has been trending left in recent years (through a migration of retiring Californians on fixed incomes who found living in California increasingly costly (without ever attributing those burdensome taxes to their own voting habits), I suspect those Oregon transplants have at least started to awaken to the reality that Obamacare is not about providing care for the elderly, but eliminating care by denying benefits as a means of reducing the Social Security shortfall by euthanizing the recipients to whom those funds are owed. Those who have not yet figured that out, are going to be the first fatalities of socialist (oops...socialized) medicine.

The two Republicans are former Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich and Terry Branstad [R-IA]. Ehrlich learned in Nov. 2006 that enough ACORNS can bring down even the sturdiest oak tree. He lost to Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley. O'Malley won the mayoral race in Baltimore in 1999 with 90% of the vote. He was reelected with 88% of the vote. Ehrlich's strength is in western Maryland and east to Frederick County where the State's working class conservatives live. O'Malley's strengths are in the unionized urban areas in Eastern Maryland. Frederick County, Maryland, which went for Ehrlich by 60% in 2006, will likely give him even more votes since this is an area of the State that has had to watch several hundred "American-branded" jobs exported to China. O'Malley was an early supporter of Hillary Clinton, and the second Democratic governor to endorse her. Obama held that against him for about six months, finally inviting O'Malley to join his "inner circle" of governors in August, 2008. By May, 2009, O'Malley was an official Obama booster—and, like Obama, he's a social progressive. O'Malley's downfall will come from his position on socialized medicine. In March of this year, O'Malley formed a healthcare reform council and, on March 22, announced his support of forced care (and enforced denial of care) under Obamacare when he said: "Under...Obama's leadership, finally, we will begin to control the rising cost of healthcare in America..." (I wonder if he read the bill and understands that the methodology to control the rising cost of healthcare is to deny treatment to seniors, cutting not only healthcare costs but, even more, curbing the rapidly rising cost of Social Security by euthanizing the recipients of those payments by denying them medical treatment because old age is now construed to be a terminal illness since you can't recover from it.) O'Malley is vulnerable because of his support of Obama. Over 80% of the American people oppose socialized medicine and have screamed it from the nation's rooftops and along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Congress. Arrogantly, the social progressives, ignored them.

Terry Branstad was governor of Iowa from 1983 to 1999. He was both the youngest and longest-serving governor in the State's history. Before he announced his candidacy, the media rated the governor's race as "leaning Democratic." Against most of the GOP wanabees that would have run against him, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver [D] would likely have had a close but safe victory. Independent polling in late 2009 gave Branstad a 70%+ approval rating. When he filed papers to seek reelection early this year, the race was called "dead-even" by the media. Talk to any Iowa Republican and they will assure you Branstad will win the nomination. Most of them will also assure you that he will win back the office he held for 16 years even though Iowa has also been trending to the left due to migrant Californians running away from the financial problems their votes caused in that State.

Note to all conservative voters in the United States: When you go to vote on Nov. 2 this year, plan to spend the day. Vote theft occurs at the voting precincts—while you are voting, or just before or just after. It will be rampant on Nov. 2. And, it will be even worse on 2012 when the invisible, nonexistent people "born in the USA" through the 2010 census will try to recapture the House and Senate and hold on to the White House (if it has not been repossessed by China) by using brand new people created by census officials in the War Room at the White House as Rahm Emanuel's Bureau of the Census (yes, I know that Dr. Robert Groves is "officially" the Director of the US Census Bureau) creates the people he "knows" have to live underground in the congressional districts or States the Democrats are going to lose in November. Once those "official people" are created, all they need are drivers' licenses to be registered to vote. We need to plan to spend the day at the voting precinct with our camcorders, recording everything from every angle. When busloads of voters show up, we need to record it. Then someone needs to follow those voters to the other precincts so the same voters, voting under different identities, can vote again and again.

Sadly, what we won't be able to see, or stop, are the fraudulent absentee ballots which will be voted under those fictitious identities. In the election of 2008, FEC records (before they were "revised" shortly after Nov. 29, 2009) noted that 56.8% of the 169 million registered voters voted in the Election of 2008. According to the statistics on both the FEC and White House websites, 69,456,897 votes were cast for Obama. Fifty-five million people and change voted for Sarah Palin with the tagalong designated loser, John McCain. The total votes counted (excluding the 19,156,869 conservatives who sat out the election because they didn't like McCain—who did?—was 132,618,580. The only problem is, according to the precinct statistics nationwide, the registered voters who voted totaled 96,992,000. There were 35,626,580 too many votes in the ballot boxes. We are losing our country—we are losing our liberty—through theft and apathy.

Finding good candidates to reverse Obama's socialist "change" can be done only if [1] we vote the Democrats out and Republicans in (I'm sorry, historically, third party candidates can't win—they aren't supposed to. Their job is to split the vote and elect the Democrat; [2] we need to make sure that someone isn't filling the ballot boxes with phony votes the night before. And, [3] in every voting precinct in the United States, the voters need to challenge every unexpected Democratic victory immediately. We need to force public recounts and compare the number of votes in the boxes with the number of registered voters who voted. A big part of taking back our country is taking back the integrity of the vote. Now, perhaps, we are ready for the Election of 2010.