Maxine Waters Blames Bush for Ethics Woes

Maxine Waters, following the strategy of Charlie Rangel, held a rambling 90-minute press conference at a time when the House of Representatives is on hiatus. Waters is defending herself on charges of inappropriately intervening with the U.S. Treasury on behalf of her husband and OneUnitedBank in which he owns stock. Waters said she had to do it because the Treasury (in the Bush administration) would not schedule the appointment without her influence.

Maxine Waters

Waters' defense:

"The question at this point should not be why I called Secretary Paulson, but why I had to," she said. "The question at this point should be why a trade association representing over 100 minority banks could not get a meeting at the height of the crisis."

OneUnitedBank received $12 million of the requested $50 million TARP bailout.

Maxine's grandson, Mikael Moore, is her Chief-of-Staff and it seems his emails are a point of contention with the Ethics Committee. 

The report highlights e-mails Moore sent and received from OneUnited executives and suggests Waters should not have allowed him to send them when her family had a specific financial stake in the bank. The congresswoman has said she was aiding a group of minority banks that includes OneUnited.

Waters did not attend the eventual meeting between Treasury and the National Banking Association, but here grandson and Chief-of-Staff did.

The Washington Post wryly says (or maybe not so wryly) this scandal is "not expected to affect her ability to win reelection in her heavily Democratic district." Can we blame her habitual presence in The People's House on George W. Bush?

More on Maxine Waters:
Bulldoze Maxine Waters and her Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee
The Genius of Maxine Waters

Charles Krauthammer Election Myths Ridiculous: Henry Paulson Timothy Geithner Election Crisis

Charles Krauthammer, writing for the Washington Post, takes a look at the November 2008 presidential election and says "...it was all ridiculous from the beginning. The '08 election was a historical anomaly." Then a theory about Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner and the election crisis that gave the election to Barack Obama. See two astounding videos below.

Charles Krauthammer

The entire article Krauthammer here. Snippets:

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance....

In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.

About administration excuses:

White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat?

November '08 was one shot, one time, never to be replicated. Nor was November '09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm -- and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

 My 5 cents (2 cents adjusted for inflation since 1980): Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, figured that a financial meltdown of never-before-seen-proportions, would be a winning strategy for Barack Obama. Flash forward to September 14, 2008 and we awaken to President George W. Bush standing beside Paulson. Paulson told us that our financial world has changed, this very day, and he (Paulson - a Democrat) was in charge. Bush stood by, small and lonely, and let it happen. Paulson and the Federal Reserve had created their manufactured crisis and they handed the election to Barack Obama.

From James E. Campbell, Professor and Chair, University at Buffalo, SUNY: (important disclaimer, Professor Campbell does not mention a Paulson-Geithner-Federal Reserve conspiracy):

The Republicans did carry substantial political baggage into the 2008 election; but despite these considerable disadvantages, the open seat election was shaping up as a very close contest in the weeks before the national conventions and McCain took the lead after the conventions, only to plummet in the polls with the Wall Street meltdown in mid-September. The Wall Street meltdown was an unanticipated financial crisis that shook the electorate. It was the game changer. It derailed the course of the election and was critical in tipping the election to Obama...

...around the time of the conventions, public opinion begins to gel. More voters have made up their minds or given their choice some serious thought by the conventions. While it is true that Obama led in the polls before the conventions, the race was tight. In the two weeks leading up to the conventions, the average Obama two-party support was at 51.7 percent in the Real Clear Politics polls and at 51.0 percent in Gallup's registered voter tracking polls. In the week immediately before the Democrats convened in Denver, Obama's mean support was only 51.1 percent in Real Clear Politics and 50.6 percent in Gallup. An election that could turn on a swing of one or two points, or even less, is on track to be a close election. 

McCain's lead in the polls after the conventions was more than a "brief honeymoon." Polls after the conventions are important because a significant number of voters make up their minds around convention time. In the fifteen elections from 1948 to 2004, only one candidate with an early September poll percentage over 51 percent lost his election

...on its face, one would expect the Wall Street meltdown to make a significant political difference. The events were unanticipated just weeks before at the conventions and were catastrophic in magnitude. It is hard to imagine how they could not be "game changers." The first sign that the subprime mortgage mess amounted to something considerably more than a few isolated bankruptcies was on September 7 when the government seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Eight days later, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and a distressed Merrill Lynch was bought by the Bank of America. The next day, September 16, the government made an $85 billion bailout loan to insurance giant AIG. On September 19, President Bush called the crisis "a pivotal moment for America's economy" and asked Congress to "act now to protect our nation's economic health from serious risk."  ...

While everyone understood that the economy was weak, not even financial experts anticipated the crisis and its ramifications for the economy. In mid-August, half way through the third quarter of the year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a survey of 47 prominent economic forecasters. These forecasters predicted a real GDP third quarter growth rate of 1.2 percent. This would indicate a sluggish economy, but not one in recession....

The meltdown was a crisis in its own right that exacted a severe cost to the economy, much as it had taken its toll on the stock market (and would take on the political fortunes of the in-party)....


...did Americans understand this? Did Americans regard the meltdown as a crisis, as the derailed election thesis claims?...The polling evidence is that the public was staggered by the crisis.


Allowing for some normal dissipation of the convention bump, McCain's poll standing early in the meltdown crisis (September 14) was about 51 percent in both Gallup and in the Real Clear Politics poll average. Less than three weeks later (October 2), after the crisis was in full meltdown, McCain's poll standing had dropped to 46 percent in Gallup and 47 percent in the Real Clear Politics poll average, about where the final vote percentage wound up.  

...could there be an explanation for McCain's late September poll plunge other than the Wall Street meltdown? Could the McCain fall and Obama rise in the polls be the result of some other factor? Two possibilities have been suggested-the debates and Sarah Palin's post-convention difficulties. The debates are not plausible as an alternative explanation because of timing. McCain's drop in the polls began well before the first debate on September 26....


Was the McCain plummet in the polls a negative reaction to his selection of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate or a negative reaction to the Wall Street meltdown? The evidence again supports the impact of the meltdown.... 

 In the first video below, you'll see and hear Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner's credibility questioned by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), as well as the credibility as the Federal Reserve.

In the second video below you'll hear and see a discussion about the Federal Reserve Bank and all of the other "big" banks in America (erase the image of Eliot Spitzer and high-paid call girls from your visual - but pay attention to what Spitzer says, including "a ponzi scheme and an inside job...").

Well, it is all history now but we know this (1) those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, and (2) those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. I will continue to look forward to Charles Krauthammer's election myths anytime he is not talking about the elegance of an Obama speech delivery. Thanks to the Daily Bail for the first video and the second video.

Henry Paulson and Rep. Cliff Stearns - Paulson Squirms (video)

Federal Reserve, Henry Paulson, timothy Geithner (video)

Bernake Paulson Lies: Barofsky Exposes Bernake Paulson TARP

Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky tells us what most of us already know: TARP money went to losers. According to IG Barofsky, institutions receiving money in the first round of redistribution of taxpayer's wealth, were not sound institutions and should not have qualified for the funds.

Henry Paulson

 Ben Bernake

"These are healthy institutions, and they have taken this step for the good of the economy," Paulson had declared at the time.

Barofsky said that the fact that Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. soon required billions in additional assistance highlighted the inaccuracy of that claim and raised questions about the whole effort. In addition, Merrill Lynch, which was also in the original nine, was in the process of being acquired by Bank of America because of its weakening financial position.

"Statements that are less than careful or forthright -- like those made in this case -- may ultimately undermine the public's understanding and support," the report said. "This loss of public support could damage the government's credibility and have long-term unintended consequences that actually hamper the government's ability to respond to crises."

Note that this report gives Paulson and Bernake no out. The statements were "less than careful." Secretary Paulson's announcement on television, with George Bush standing by his side in September 2008, is one of those moments I will always remember. In my kitchen, looking out over the kitchen bar to the TV, my husband and I listened and couldn't believe what we were hearing.

Anyone believing this whole thing was not contrived, is not paying attention. Usher in Barack Obama.

The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation also joined in the deception. Nevermind that the FDIC was soon claiming that they were underfunded and couldn't cover the claims coming their way.

Barofsky's report says "the government did not have the time needed to get the toxic asset program up and running," and that is why Paulson changed horses mid-stream, didn't buy up toxic assets as first planned - and just "injected capital" (gave money to the banks to enable them to lend out so that you and I could purchase a home or start a business, which didn't happen).

 Henry Paulson and Ben Bernake led the drive to bailout AIG. Paulson engineered the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddit Mac. Remember that Paulson had complete control - the last and only say about these funds. King Henry Paulson was granted unprecedented authority by Congress - historic in it's stark negating of Congress' own powers. It was Paulson who told bankers they would take the government money, whether they needed it or wanted it.

Goldman Sachs, of which Paulson is a previous CEO, benefitted from at least $12 billion of the bailed-out AIG funds.

IG Barofsky has exposed this insider-scam (that left Bush an outsider) that, in my opinion, put Barack Obama in the White House, and put the future of our grandchildren and great-great grandchildren in the trash heap of un-American history. Ben Bernake continues today as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve - an Obama nomination.