Fact, not Prejudice

I must take issue with a couple of Louis Horvath’s many distorted claims in the recent letter to the editor. Space limitations, not facts, prevent my addressing them all. The failure of Fannie Mae can be directly attributed to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, forced on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the Carter administration and further liberalized by the Clinton administration. The law was intended to increase lending to low-income borrowers. Though that intent may seem noble, the result was to approve loans to far too many people who could not afford them. Democrats manipulated the lending market for their social engineering policies, and now those low-income families have lost everything, investors face huge losses, and the taxpayers are being asked to pay for it all. Sen. McCain proposed tightening Fannie Mae’s regulations years ago (he sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005), only to be stymied by Senators Dodd, Schumer, and Barack Obama. Interestingly, those three Democrats received vast amounts of bundled contributions from Fannie Mae interests! And of course it didn’t help that Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines manipulated the books during his six-year tenure. It should be noted that 1) Raines was forced to resign due to the accounting irregularities; 2) he made close to $100 million dollars from Fannie Mae during that time; and 3) according to the Washington Post, Raines was subsequently an economic adviser to the Obama campaign. That Sen. Obama would seek Raines’ advice reflects poorly on Obama’s ability to judge character. It doesn’t matter that Raines was President Clinton’s Director of OMB, Obama had to know that his character and ethics were tainted by his actions at Fannie Mae. Apparently, that didn’t matter to Sen. Obama. Then there is Gov. Warner, who promised not to raise taxes and, once elected, promptly raised them. What’s worse, in order to push through his massive tax hike, he withheld from the General Assembly financial data showing that his administration’s economic assumptions were wrong and that the tax revenue stream was actually much higher than expected. This data was only released after the General Assembly had grudgingly passed his tax hikes. Talk about dishonesty! Warner lied to the voters and deceived the General Assembly in order to force though the largest tax hike in Virginia history. Judging from his denials, it is clear Warner’s poor ethics haven’t “changed” for the better. Judy Feder was a major architect of “Hillary Care” which would have nationalized health care, a major component of our economy. More “social engineering” that would hurt our economy, damage our health care, and cost taxpayers even more. That’s “change” we can do without. The choice is clear this year. Vote for the trustworthy, honorable candidates that have been honest and straight-forward with the voters, that have always been proud of their country, and that have served our state and our country with distinction. McCain, Gilmore, and Wolf have the experience and the ethics we desperately need in Washington. Patricia Phillips Sterling