This article was published in the July 26, 2011, issue of The News-Sentinel newspaper.
By Donna Volmerding
In his July 12 guest column, B. J. Paschal asks the question, “Will the voters be snookered again in 2012?” Perhaps, especially if voters are as misinformed as he is.
He stated that Wall Street is the cause of our economic woes. Certainly, Wall Street played a part in the financial meltdown of 2008, but the cause stems from flaky ideology and government intervention.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act. According to Business Insider, “The CRA … evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded … by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.”
In many cases, the banks were strong-armed into making loans to those who couldn’t afford them — at lower-than-market interest rates.
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two quasi-governmental lending institutions at the epicenter of the financial implosion, assured the banks that these loans would be solvent because the full support of the U.S. government was behind them.
Subprime lending was vastly expanded in the early ‘90s under President Bill Clinton, which led directly to the housing crisis. Several former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, including President Obama’s cronies Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, are being investigated.
According to a Reuters article by Jim Meyers dated April 1, 2011, “Top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were paid more than $35 million in the past two years while the two bailed-out mortgage finance giants were receiving $153 billion in support from taxpayers.
“Although the enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) have lost billions of dollars and continue to depend upon federal support to remain in business,” states a report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General, “their senior executives continue to receive multi-million dollar salaries.”
Even after the 2008 financial debacle, congressional liberals asked Fannie and Freddie to ease mortgage-loan standards. This is from a June 22, 2009, press release from Reuters:
“Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said.”
Who were those lawmakers who wrote the letter to the CEO’s of both companies? Representatives Barney Frank, former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner, now disgraced former congressman.
(For more information, read “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.)
Yet Obama’s financial regulatory bill is a “disaster,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who sat on the Senate banking, budget and appropriations committees, and its proposed consumer protection agency would create a Fannie and Freddie “on steroids,” he said.
“The bill is a disaster because it doesn’t address the fundamental underlying causes of the economic issue. You’ll basically have a consumer protection agency which decides to … say, ‘well, everybody who’s XYZ should have a loan, even though the local community bank says XYZ shouldn’t have a loan, because if we give them a loan, we know they’re not going to pay back,’” Gregg said. “It’s going to become an agency that defines lending on social-justice purposes instead of safety and soundness purposes.”
Paschal asks “Why do we Americans ‘believe’ against our own self-interest by not blaming Wall Street for causing our financial mess?”
Perhaps it is because informed voters want to rescue (and preserve) the great country we once had and remove via ballot a despotic, bloated central government that is responsible for the 2008 financial catastrophe.
Will the voters be snookered again in 2012? Gee, I hope not.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
US must not turn its back on our only real friends in the Middle East
This article was published in the Friday, June 3, 2011, issue of The News-Sentinel newspaper.
By Donna Volmerding
On June 4, 2008, Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and said, “Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state with secure, recognized, defensible borders, and Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
Obama said he spoke “from his heart and as a true friend of Israel.” Then in May 2011, in a dramatic about-face, he said that Israel must give up the land it has owned and occupied, and return to pre-1967 levels, which would necessarily include the division of Jerusalem. (The six-day war in 1967 was not started by Israel, but it was finished by Israel.)
Obama reneged on a promise “as a true friend of Israel,” and he cut that friendship off at the knees. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, termed Obama’s decree “indefensible” and said “that asking Israel to negotiate with Hamas is like asking the United States to negotiate with al-Qaida.”
Recently, wrote Jordan Sekulow, director of policy and international operation for American Center for Law and Justice, “Fatah, the U.S.-backed Palestinian National Liberation Movement, signed an agreement to form a unity government with Hamas, a U.S.-listed foreign terror organization. ... Hamas’ own foreign minister has stated that Hamas ‘believe(s) that negotiations with the Israeli enemy are in vain.’
“The Hamas charter calls for Islam to ‘abolish’ Israel and for Muslims to ‘fight the Jews and kill them.’ It further proclaims, ‘There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except jihad.’”
Israel is a country that is about 8,000 square miles with a population of about 7.5 million. It is surrounded by Arab countries that will not even acknowledge its right to exist.
Netanyahu said, “If Arab nations would lay down their arms, there would be peace. If Israel would lay down its arms, there would be no Israel.”
Yet Arab Palestinians, Arab countries and President Obama want little Israel to give up its land. Why? Why can’t Arab nations give a portion of the millions of acres of land they own to help their brother Palestinians?
The Middle East is on fire, with great unrest, revolutions and economic turmoil in Arab countries. Palestinian Arabs have now united with a terror organization, and Muslim leaders are threatening the total annihilation of Israel.
Arab nations have so much land, so much wealth, so much oil, yet they want to deny little Israel the land it won in a war they started.
We cannot turn our backs on our only real friends in the Middle East, the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the only stable, democratic government in the region.
By Donna Volmerding
On June 4, 2008, Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and said, “Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state with secure, recognized, defensible borders, and Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
Obama said he spoke “from his heart and as a true friend of Israel.” Then in May 2011, in a dramatic about-face, he said that Israel must give up the land it has owned and occupied, and return to pre-1967 levels, which would necessarily include the division of Jerusalem. (The six-day war in 1967 was not started by Israel, but it was finished by Israel.)
Obama reneged on a promise “as a true friend of Israel,” and he cut that friendship off at the knees. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, termed Obama’s decree “indefensible” and said “that asking Israel to negotiate with Hamas is like asking the United States to negotiate with al-Qaida.”
Recently, wrote Jordan Sekulow, director of policy and international operation for American Center for Law and Justice, “Fatah, the U.S.-backed Palestinian National Liberation Movement, signed an agreement to form a unity government with Hamas, a U.S.-listed foreign terror organization. ... Hamas’ own foreign minister has stated that Hamas ‘believe(s) that negotiations with the Israeli enemy are in vain.’
“The Hamas charter calls for Islam to ‘abolish’ Israel and for Muslims to ‘fight the Jews and kill them.’ It further proclaims, ‘There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except jihad.’”
Israel is a country that is about 8,000 square miles with a population of about 7.5 million. It is surrounded by Arab countries that will not even acknowledge its right to exist.
Netanyahu said, “If Arab nations would lay down their arms, there would be peace. If Israel would lay down its arms, there would be no Israel.”
Yet Arab Palestinians, Arab countries and President Obama want little Israel to give up its land. Why? Why can’t Arab nations give a portion of the millions of acres of land they own to help their brother Palestinians?
The Middle East is on fire, with great unrest, revolutions and economic turmoil in Arab countries. Palestinian Arabs have now united with a terror organization, and Muslim leaders are threatening the total annihilation of Israel.
Arab nations have so much land, so much wealth, so much oil, yet they want to deny little Israel the land it won in a war they started.
We cannot turn our backs on our only real friends in the Middle East, the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the only stable, democratic government in the region.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Arguments for slavery mirror those on abortion
By Donna Volmerding
This is a reprint of an article first published in the August 1989 issue of The Fort Wayne Lutheran.
One of the most heated arguments in our country stems from the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade, an issue that has since divided our country into warring factions. Since the right to an abortion was made legal in 1973, I have felt this issue to be a parallel one to that of slavery. Granted, the biggest difference is the fact that one enslaves human life, the other is its ultimate destruction. But in so many other ways, I find several similarities.
Particularly in the 1850s, slavery was an issue so hot it was already threatening to divide the country into open warfare. These arguments to defend slavery mirror those used today to defend abortion:
• You have no right to impose your moral beliefs on me. If you think slavery is wrong, don’t own any slaves, but don’t tell me what to do.
• Slavery rights are simply a matter of freedom of choice. I have the right to choose slavery, and you have the right not to.
• Are you willing to take care of thousands of freed slaves who have no job skills, education or means of making a living?
• Do you want to destroy the South and an entire way of life? Do you want to see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families thrown off their property because they can’t make it without the help of slaves?
• Slaves aren’t really people; they’re just property. (Unfortunately, the Supreme Court fanned the flames to this belief with the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declaring that no black — free or slave — could claim United States citizenship. The decision also stated that Congress could not prohibit slavery in United States territories.)
• It’s my property, and I have a right to do with my own property what I see fit.
Just as we have today concerning abortion, there were many violent outbursts and conflicts between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Because the country was divided almost equally, there seemed to be no chance for compromise; either one believed that slavery should be allowed to exist, or one believed it was morally reprehensible and should not exist in any state of the Union.
Abortion is another “all or none” decision. Those who feel abortion to be morally wrong cannot, in good conscience, say it is all right for someone to take the life of an unborn child growing in another’s body. Nor could an anti-slavery person say it was all right for someone else to own slaves as long as he or she personally did not.
While the lines of conflict are not so clearly drawn as they were during the Civil War, we have a modern day “civil war” brewing as federal and state legislatures hash out this issue and other life issues, such as embryonic stem-cell research, cloning, etc.
Slavery, abortion and other life questions are moral issues with moral consequences, not mere matters of private convenience. I think we all need to quietly sort out on our own, away from the screeching crowds, how we feel about such explosive issues. More importantly, we need to ask our God what He would have us do. We have to sift through so much diatribe to ask ourselves the same question that many devout Christian people 170 years ago asked themselves about slavery: “What is morally correct? And how would God want us to respond?”
This is a reprint of an article first published in the August 1989 issue of The Fort Wayne Lutheran.
One of the most heated arguments in our country stems from the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade, an issue that has since divided our country into warring factions. Since the right to an abortion was made legal in 1973, I have felt this issue to be a parallel one to that of slavery. Granted, the biggest difference is the fact that one enslaves human life, the other is its ultimate destruction. But in so many other ways, I find several similarities.
Particularly in the 1850s, slavery was an issue so hot it was already threatening to divide the country into open warfare. These arguments to defend slavery mirror those used today to defend abortion:
• You have no right to impose your moral beliefs on me. If you think slavery is wrong, don’t own any slaves, but don’t tell me what to do.
• Slavery rights are simply a matter of freedom of choice. I have the right to choose slavery, and you have the right not to.
• Are you willing to take care of thousands of freed slaves who have no job skills, education or means of making a living?
• Do you want to destroy the South and an entire way of life? Do you want to see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families thrown off their property because they can’t make it without the help of slaves?
• Slaves aren’t really people; they’re just property. (Unfortunately, the Supreme Court fanned the flames to this belief with the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declaring that no black — free or slave — could claim United States citizenship. The decision also stated that Congress could not prohibit slavery in United States territories.)
• It’s my property, and I have a right to do with my own property what I see fit.
Just as we have today concerning abortion, there were many violent outbursts and conflicts between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Because the country was divided almost equally, there seemed to be no chance for compromise; either one believed that slavery should be allowed to exist, or one believed it was morally reprehensible and should not exist in any state of the Union.
Abortion is another “all or none” decision. Those who feel abortion to be morally wrong cannot, in good conscience, say it is all right for someone to take the life of an unborn child growing in another’s body. Nor could an anti-slavery person say it was all right for someone else to own slaves as long as he or she personally did not.
While the lines of conflict are not so clearly drawn as they were during the Civil War, we have a modern day “civil war” brewing as federal and state legislatures hash out this issue and other life issues, such as embryonic stem-cell research, cloning, etc.
Slavery, abortion and other life questions are moral issues with moral consequences, not mere matters of private convenience. I think we all need to quietly sort out on our own, away from the screeching crowds, how we feel about such explosive issues. More importantly, we need to ask our God what He would have us do. We have to sift through so much diatribe to ask ourselves the same question that many devout Christian people 170 years ago asked themselves about slavery: “What is morally correct? And how would God want us to respond?”
Friday, February 4, 2011
A postscript on Krauthammer
(This letter was published in the Feb. 3, 2011, issue of The News-Sentinel.)
By Donna Volmerding
I love reading columnist Charles Krauthammer and watching his commentary on television. He wrote an excellent column on the “flimflammery” of Obamacare in the January 24th News-Sentinel.
When I read the original article published in another paper, however, it ended with a brilliant statement that was edited out in the News-Sentinel column. It is imperative that your reading audience be made aware of this essential analysis.
Krauthammer wrote: “ ... amending an insanely complicated, contradictory, incoherent and arbitrary 2,000-page bill that will generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations is a complete non-starter. Everything begins with repeal.”
“Everything begins with repeal.” To that I add a resounding “Amen"!
By Donna Volmerding
I love reading columnist Charles Krauthammer and watching his commentary on television. He wrote an excellent column on the “flimflammery” of Obamacare in the January 24th News-Sentinel.
When I read the original article published in another paper, however, it ended with a brilliant statement that was edited out in the News-Sentinel column. It is imperative that your reading audience be made aware of this essential analysis.
Krauthammer wrote: “ ... amending an insanely complicated, contradictory, incoherent and arbitrary 2,000-page bill that will generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations is a complete non-starter. Everything begins with repeal.”
“Everything begins with repeal.” To that I add a resounding “Amen"!
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