February, 2002: "I want America to be an ownership society..." ---George W. Bush

seafan

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Sun Oct-10-10 06:34 PM
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February, 2002: "I want America to be an ownership society..." ---George W. Bush

February 2, 2005:

.....

Bush’s detractors say the president is taking the noble idea of an “ownership society” and using it to sugarcoat a scheme that would unwisely saddle ordinary Americans with even greater risks and costs for Social Security, health care, retirement benefits and other programs.

“Hokum, that’s a good word for it,” says former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “They have a knack for putting labels on their policies that stand for exactly the opposite of what the policies aim to achieve.”

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Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, predicts Bush will be well remembered for nurturing ownership “long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.”

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The criminals still walk free. But I digress.

February, 2002: "I want America to be an ownership society..." ---George W. Bush

President Hosts Conference on Minority Homeownership, October 15, 2002, at George Washington University

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, all. Thanks, for coming. Well, thanks for the warm welcome. Thank you for being here today. I appreciate your attendance to this very important conference. You see, we want everybody in America to own their own home. That's what we want. This is -- an ownership society is a compassionate society.

More and more people own their homes in America today. Two-thirds of all Americans own their homes, yet we have a problem here in America because few than half of the Hispanics and half the African Americans own the home. That's a homeownership gap. It's a -- it's a gap that we've got to work together to close for the good of our country, for the sake of a more hopeful future. We've got to work to knock down the barriers that have created a homeownership gap.

I set an ambitious goal. It's one that I believe we can achieve. It's a clear goal, that by the end of this decade we'll increase the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families. (Applause.)

Some may think that's a stretch. I don't think it is. I think it is realistic. I know we're going to have to work together to achieve it. But when we do our communities will be stronger and so will our economy. Achieving the goal is going to require some good policies out of Washington. And it's going to require a strong commitment from those of you involved in the housing industry.

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To open up the doors of homeownership there are some barriers, and I want to talk about four that need to be overcome. First, down payments. A lot of folks can't make a down payment. They may be qualified. They may desire to buy a home, but they don't have the money to make a down payment. I think if you were to talk to a lot of families that are desirous to have a home, they would tell you that the down payment is the hurdle that they can't cross. And one way to address that is to have the federal government participate.

And so we've called upon Congress to set up what's called the American Dream Down Payment Fund, which will provide financial grants to local governments to help first-time home buyers who qualify to make the down payment on their home.

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Secondly, affordable housing is a problem in many neighborhoods, particularly inner-city neighborhoods. You may -- we may have qualified home buyers, but if there's no home to buy, this initiative isn't going anywhere. And so one of the things that we're going to -- that I'm doing is proposing a single-family affordable housing credit to encourage the construction of single-family homes in neighborhoods where affordable housing is scarce. (Applause.)

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Another obstacle to minority homeownership is the lack of information. You know, getting into your own home can be complicated. It can be a difficult process. I had that very same problem. (Laughter and applause.)

Every home buyer has responsibilities and rights that need to be understood clearly. And yet, when you look at some of the contracts, there's a lot of small print. And you can imagine somebody newly arrived from Peru looking at all that print, and saying, I'm not sure I can possibly understand that. Why do I want to buy a home? There's an educational process that needs to go on, not only to explain the contract, explain obligation, but also to explain financing options, to help people understand the complexities of a homeownership market, and also at the same time to protect people from unscrupulous lenders, people who would take advantage of a good-hearted soul who is trying to realize their dream.

Homeownership education is critical. And so today, I'm pleased to announce that through Mel's office, we're going to distribute $35 million in 2003 to more than 100 national, state and local organizations that promote homeownership through buyer education. (Applause.)

.....

And, of course, one of the larger obstacles to minority homeownership is financing, is the ability to have their dream financed. Right now, we have a program that all of you are familiar with, maybe our fellow Americans are, and that's what they call a Section 8 housing program, that provides billions of dollars in vouchers to help low-income Americans with their rent. It encourages leasing. We think it's important that we use those vouchers, that federal money to help low-income Americans go from being somebody who leases to somebody who owns; that we use the Section 8 program to not only help with down payment, but to help with continuing monthly mortgage payments after they're into their new home. It is a -- it is a way to help us meet this dream of 5.5 million additional families owning their home.

I'm also going to encourage the lending industry to develop a mortgage market so that this script, these vouchers, can regularly be used as a source of payment to provide more capital to lenders, who can then help more families move from rental housing into houses of their own.

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Last June, I issued a challenge to everyone involved in the housing industry to help increase the number of minority families to be home owners. And what I'm talking about, I'm talking about your bankers and your brokers and developers, as well as members of faith-based community and community programs. And the response to the home owners challenge has been very strong and very gratifying. Twenty-two public and private partners have signed up to help meet our national goal. Partners in the mortgage finance industry are encouraging homeownership by purchasing more loans made by banks to African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities.

Representatives of the real estate and homebuilding industries, through their nationwide networks or affiliates, are committed to broadening homeownership. They made the commitment to help meet the national goal we set.

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There's all kinds of ways that we can work together to meet the goal. Corporate America has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place. Corporate America has responded.

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The other thing Kirbyjon told me, which I really appreciate, is you don't have to have a lousy home for first-time home buyers. If you put your mind to it, the first-time home buyer, the low-income home buyer can have just as nice a house as anybody else. And I know Kirbyjon. He is what I call a social entrepreneur who is using his platform as a Methodist preacher to improve the neighborhood and the community in which he lives.

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So I want to thank you all for coming. I want to thank you for your determination to help close the minority homeownership gap.

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Home ownership. No matter the risk.

George W. Bush pushed this. Hard.

As he said in his speech above:

"Corporate America has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place. Corporate America has responded."

Fast-forward eight years of "corporate compassion" in the mortgage market:

In today's news:

Foreclosure Halt as Lenders Face Allegations of Fraud, October 10, 2010

Major U.S. Banks Investigated For Foreclosure Fraud, October 8, 2010

And, at ground zero, in Florida:

Ex-employee says foreclosure firm forged signatures

Yet we are told repeatedly that all of this is the fault of "greedy homeowners who bought more house than they could afford".

We must never forget:

George W. Bush pushed this. Hard.

Daniel Gross in Slate, February 6, 2006:

Stocks, the trendy investment of the 1990s, have been replaced by housing. Unlike stocks, homes can be purchased by strapped individuals with borrowed money. Nobody will lend you $500,000 to buy stocks with no money down. But assuming you have a pulse and are willing to pay some interest, there are probably 40 lenders waiting to write you a check for a mortgage on the same terms. But even here, the pace of growth in ownership has slowed from the pace of the 1990s. According to the Census (see Table 4), while the home-ownership rate rose from 64.4 percent in 1992 to 67.5 percent in 2000, it has bumped up only 1.5 percentage points in the last five years, to 69 percent in 2005.

Is it possible that we've reached the upper limits of the ownership society? That the percentage of the population that is financially and temperamentally suited to holding mutual funds and stocks is capped at about 50 percent of households? That's hard to believe, especially when low-cost, democratic outfits like Vanguard and TIAA-CREF allow people to start investing with tiny sums. No. It's not that we can't afford to own anymore. It's that we have been presented with two competing economic models by the president. The ownership society requires thrift and patience. The consumer society, by contrast, requires that we spend like drunken sailors to keep the GDP boosted. Bush says he wants us to be frugal owners, but he really needs us to be profligate consumers.

Remember Bush telling us to "Go shopping!" after September 11, 2001?

Yet we are told repeatedly that this mortgage catastrophe is the fault of "greedy homeowners who bought more house than they could afford".

But now, in the fall of 2010, the bright, unforgiving light of The Truth is turning onto the Banksters.

These lending institutions weren't concerned about being paid back. All they wanted was the fees for signing on as many people as possible to the purchase of a home. Then, the lenders washed their hands of the responsibility for these predatory practices by slicing and dicing these risky mortgages as they passed them higher up the financial chain to be sold as top-rated instruments to investors.

The heist was now complete.

Alan Grayson has been right all along. This is a coverup of a coverup.

The first wave of crime was by the predatory mortgage lenders, of signing up as many living, breathing people for a home mortgage as they possibly could, with no regard for the extremely high risk of default.
(Again, the lenders didn't care about being paid back; they only wanted the fees for the transactions.)

The second wave of crime is now in the foreclosure arena, as the clear title of property can no longer be established or claimed by the financial institutions who are foreclosing on people's homes. The foreclosure mills have engaged in improper documentation, outright forgery of documents, signatures, and nonexistent title transfers in order to fabricate "ownership" of the properties now being foreclosed at breakneck speed. State laws were blatantly violated with regard to maintaining proper chain of title.

In essence, the financial institutions have no standing to foreclose, because they cannot show clear chain of title on the properties.

This is far, FAR worse than "sloppy paperwork".

This is institutionalized fraud.

And about that HR 3808, called the "Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act", that Obama has 'pocket-vetoed' for now.

We are hearing that this is the third time this bill, HR 3808, has been addressed in the House. According to this CSPAN video of House proceedings from April 27, 2010, the first time was in 2007. This video confirms that April 27, 2010 is the third occasion.

This tells me that SOMEONE KNEW years ago about the looming mortgage meltdown on the horizon. And they wanted to cover their a$$e$ with legislation.

In this video from April 27, Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) introduces HR 3808 again and encourages her colleagues to vote for it. She states that an identical bill to this one passed the House in 2007.

Then, the sponsor of the bill, Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama) speaks:

(Paraphrased)

Aderholt notes that today (April 27, 2010) is the third time HR 3808 has been addressed in the House. He states that the issue of legislation to authorize the recognition of notary public documentation across state lines was first brought to his attention by his friend Mike Turner (from Birmingham, Ala.) in 1997, and that they worked together on it. Aderholt claims that this legislation is necessary "to expedite interstate commerce". He goes on to describe how in March, 2006, the House Judiciary Committee worked on the notary "problem", and that the Subcommittee on courts/intellectual property held hearings about it. He concluded by calling for "the suspension of rules" to pass HR 3808.

No public debate. No recorded vote. It passed.

The Senate passed it at the end of September, 2010, in the same manner, and fast-tracked it over to Obama.

No public debate. No recorded vote. It passed.

Not a good sign.

In view of what is going down in Florida right now, this law must be vetoed/retracted. It would legalize retroactively the crimes involving fraudulent notary activity that has occurred here in Florida. If this law is signed by Obama, it will deal a crushing blow to people's property rights, as the law will make it easier to foreclose. The deck is stacked.

It will show us once again, that crime pays. And our government is controlled by Big Banks.

Soon they will put on the riot gear.