Why you shouldn't trust the right, and why they use you.

I am no fan of the American left. Trust me when I say that. I'm not down with the nanny state mentality and how it seeks to rob your freedom of choice. I'm not for peacefully cooperating with people who think they can actually open dialogue with the puppet governments of states that sponsor terrorism. I really hate that I'm o.k, you're o.k crap. Or other people acting in my best interest trying to save me from myself by gradually eroding my freedoms and liberties for my supposed "protection".

All that being said, if I hate the left I should love the right, right? Wrong. This is most people's incorrect assumption that you have to support one or the other. We all tend to want to be part of the winning team. But we assume there are only two teams in the game, and ignore the fact that the game is rigged by the two teams so that no one else can play.

Why must I support the right, if I don't support the left? Is one really any better than the other? Our current duopoly controls the whole pie. Once in a while one side or the other gets a bigger slice, but the same two people eat it every time. Is that fair? Are we not entitled to more than two choices? I wouldn't keep going to the same place two eat if they only had two items on the menu, one that gave me heartburn, the other gas.

So back to the right. Why do all republicans think that their party is the only logical choice? As I see it the difference is this: I hate the left because it tries to be my master, and I hate the right because they slowly try to sell me into slavery so they can make a buck.

That's not all there is. I hate the overbearing use of christian dogma as a form of control. What makes the religious right so morally pure that they can actually think it is okay to wage war and destroy an entire country, just because the Commander and Chief told everyone that Jesus said its okay. And they all march blindly along with it, because they have to oppose whatever the left stands for. Again, duopoly in action. Think about that. Your entire system of moral and political principle is entirely based on just doing the exact opposite of whatever your "opponent" does. No common sense, no compromise, no free will. Just oppose.

Of course, its not that simple. The truth of the matter is masked from you. If the current president makes a decision, you are basically told how to feel right from the start. They take what he says, edit out the context, add their own, create some talking points, stir in some easily recognizable pundits and viola. They form an opinion for you. And whatever that opinion is, will surprisingly be directly in opposition with the other side. And you readily agree because the constant barrage of dissent tells you that no matter how many decisions he makes, how well informed, or well intentioned he is, the President is always, 100% of the time wrong. Now common sense will tell you that this is not possible, but it has to be. Otherwise the Republican party can't be right.

Another thing I hate,is the way the right tries to legislate my morality. Aren't we supposed to be a country based on freedom? Nothing is more satisfying to me than turning on the T.V and seeing yet another member of the party that claims to represent moral goodness, and all that is godly and just, caught with a mistress, or addicted to painkillers, or playing footsie under an airport bathroom stall. I love it. The right sets itself upon so high a pillar, that when they tip and fall they shatter.

Don't tell me how to live my life. Don't tell me what is right. That is for me to decide. Republicans are all about suffering, denial and repression. You can't smoke pot in the privacy of your own home, because drugs are bad. But you can drink, and smoke cigarettes. Because the Alcohol and tobacco lobbies pay them a lot of money. Military service among the right is like a badge of honor. But then they disrespect everyone wearing a uniform by hiring contractors and waging war for profit. Profits made by companies most of them own stakes in. Ask an enlisted Marine how proud he/she is to serve our country for $30,000 or less a year in some mid-east meat grinder. The look at the fact that the lunch they were just served was prepared by some third party national making minimum wage, while the company that hired him billed the crap out of the U.S. for it.

Let's talk family values. I'm all for the stable family unit. But don't talk to me about the definition of marriage when you are keeping a South American mistress on the side. Or sleeping with pages, aides, secretaries, campaign workers, or random strangers you met in a dimly lit park.

Take a good look at your party. Look past all the spin, the talking points, and the barrage of commercials paid for by "friends" of someone. Its all an illusion. A lie. A trick to make you feel a little better about supporting them. Because in the end, they don't want you to look around and realize that there is another choice. There is always another choice. If you don't like choice A, that doesn't mean you have to go with B. This is America. Wake up. Make your own. Just because you are not on the winning side, does not mean you still can't be in the fight. Sometimes that's all that matters.

Fun with Aunt Fannie and Uncle Freddie

It’s hard to find a starting place sometimes, especially when you tackle something big. Remember the “whitewater” scandal when it first broke? Nobody could make sense of it for a long time, and to this day we still don’t have any answers. When I decided to write about the mortgage crisis and the bailouts, it seemed that the more I looked, the more the different directions it started to run off in. Now depending on which news channel you watch or what newspaper or blog you read, you will have a different culprit in your mind than your neighbor. I think to date no one has really gotten it right. We have blamed banks, speculators, the SEC, shady mortgage brokers, congress, ACORN, Bush, Paulson, etc, etc.

But we may have all been misled. There is one, make that two entities that we think of as victims of this crisis. That would be the Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, also known as Freddie Mac. While we seem to be just now coming to the realization that we will have to bail them out, maybe we should have started there to begin with.

American’s all showed outrage at AIG’s government funded executive compensation, but no one batted an eyelash when they announced the bonuses of the Fannie/ Freddie execs, and that was even after the government had to step in and take them over, a few years after the large accounting scandal that struck both. They must be in bed the right people.

This is an institution with a shady past of political patronage that dates back to its inception. An entity that serves two masters: congress and the shareholders. The good folks in our congress have been using Fannie and Freddie for years. If you are a legislator with a poor, urban demographic then you lean on your people at Fannie to buy and back risky mortgages in order to give back to your constituents. Or you help someone refinance their second home for more than its worth and after they pocket the cash you get a nice campaign contribution. If you think that doesn’t go on, then you are both naive and stupid. Start checking financial records.
But how could these two quasi-government institutions have wreaked so much financial havoc? Wasn’t that someone else’s fault? Maybe not if you look back into the past. Our current mortgage crisis was caused by bundled Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). If a bank or financial institution bundles its mortgages into securities it would fall under government rules. There would be scrutiny, and if it was too risky they would have problems selling them and they would later earn a natural, capitalistic death.

The Feds have claimed that these MBS’s fall outside of regulations. That should not be case, unless they were bundled by Fannie/ Freddie. You see they are both government –sponsored enterprises. And as such, they gain the following perks: capital requirements for securities are less than half that required for private mortgage backed securities, GSE securities are eligible for unlimited investment by government insured thrifts, and Housing GSE securities fall outside the realm of having to register with the SEC.

Over the past several decades these two enterprises have been federally subsidized, and while doing so have backed the purchase of enough housing to dwarf the two largest thrifts combined mortgage portfolios. Not only that, but they used the MBS as capital to purchase and bundle more securities, and became a self-perpetuating machine. Along the way they used a sliding scale to determine the credit worthiness of the people they backed mortgages for, and bought mortgages from. Alt-A, Interest only, Negative Amortization, they backed every kind of shady deal there was, to the tune of around 1 trillion dollars. All of these loans were bundled up and sold, and the proceeds used to back and buy up more. You can see where this is going can’t you?
Funding for these two monsters skipped around the normal congressional appropriations process. Instead good friends like Chuck Schumer, added earmarks to existing bills giving more money to these failing enterprises. That alone is testimony to the power of their lobbying efforts. Remember, government funded lobbying of government. Your money at work, thanks Chuck. In 2005, Congress attempted to pass legislation forbidding GSE’s from holding portfolios of mortgages or MBS, BUT Democratic opposition shot that one down. There you can see which side they spent more money lobbying to.

Somewhere in this twisted process, we all take the hit. Now we will have to bailout the institution that we funded all along, that took taxpayer dollars, gave it to risky buyers, bundled them up and made a killing off them. The government knew about this as far back as 2003, when the accounting scandal hit after Enron. But Barney Frank publicly stated that since Fannie had fired a few people everything was okay. How much money did they give him?

So you can pick at any one of these dangling threads and see where it takes you. How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? I traveled halfway around the internet and burned through several toner cartridges just to print out relevant material. Maybe you will to and maybe learn who is to blame for this terrible mess. I blame everyone mentioned in this post, and a few to be named later…