VIDEOS Bill Maher Exposes Right-Wing Euphemism For "Rich People" & Bill Maher Demystifies Socialism & Compares the American Model with the E

BILL MAHER on "job creators" and "American Socialism". LISTEN UP AMERICA!!!!

http://youtu.be/EZ5B0BKTkIY

http://youtu.be/W8SsFkSdG_s

PRES OBAMA: FIRE EDWARD DEMARCO AND HELP AMERICAN HOMEOWNERS 16FEB12

TENS of thousands of Americans are still in need of mortgage relief and assistance, and the vast majority only need to have their mortgages refinanced to be able to stay in their homes. edward demarco is one of the principle obstacles to mortgage relief and needs to be removed. Join Rebuild the Dream's campaign calling on Pres Obama to use his authority next week to fire demarco and appoint someone who will represent the best interest of American home owners and not the profit margins of tax-payer bailed out financial institutions, click the link or header...

Meet Edward DeMarco. As director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, his job is to do everything in his power to help Americans avoid foreclosure. But DeMarco seems to think his job is just the opposite. In fact, in our fight to get justice for homeowners across the country, Edward DeMarco might just be enemy number one.
DeMarco is a holdover from the Bush administration. He has a very powerful position: he oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which hold half the mortgages in the country. DeMarco has used his position to repeatedly side with Wall Street, and he's blocked requests by Congress and the Obama administration to help struggling homeowners by reducing principals on loans. Principal reduction -- which means resetting underwater mortgages so they're closer to fair market value -- is an essential solution that millions of families need, but DeMarco is dead set against them.

Now here's the good news: Next week, during Congress's recess, President Obama has the opportunity to make a recess appointment and replace DeMarco immediately. Let's ask the President to do just that.

Tell President Obama to fire Edward DeMarco this week and appoint a new director that won't stand in the way of relief for homeowners.

DeMarco has come under harsh criticism from members of Congress, and for good reason. He is absolutely opposed to principal reductions on loans, a measure that's been touted by economists and U.S. government officials as the best way to help homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages.

But it doesn't end there.

A recent news investigation revealed that, under DeMarco, Freddie Mac invested billions of dollars in Wall Street securities that bet against homeowners' ability to refinance their loans, while at the same time raising fees that made it harder for homeowners to refinance.

Let's be clear: DeMarco isn't just doing a bad job. He is actively working against the interests of American homeowners and the government's efforts to help them. That's an outrage, and it's time for President Obama to fire him.
Sign the petition and demand DeMarco be fired and replaced immediately.
The President made a strong recess appointment when he installed Richard Cordray recently as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, selecting someone we could rely on to serve the interests of people over Wall Street. We need a similar leader at the helm of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Edward DeMarco isn't it.
With enough signatures, we can send a message to President Obama and remove a major obstacle in our mission to get justice for homeowners.

Thank you,
Natalie

Sen. Rick Santorum says he warned 'of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market' 27JAN12

INSTEAD of talking about his support for affordable housing while he was in the senate (a laudable action on his part) rick santorum feels it necessary to lie and deceive and manipulate the public's fears and anger about the recession and those responsible for it, directing voter anger towards "government" agencies and the bogey man of big government while repeating falsehoods about his role in warning of the coming economic disaster. One has to wonder why this Christian presidential candidate has to do this over and over and over???? From PolitiFact, where you can find all the other examples of rick santorums campaign lies.

"In 2006, I went out and authored a letter with 24 other senators asking for major reform of Freddie and Fannie, warning of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market."

Rick Santorum on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 in a Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, Fla.

Sen. Rick Santorum says he warned 'of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market'

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As Republican presidential candidates battled over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a debate in Jacksonville, Fla., Rick Santorum sought the high ground.

"In 2006, I went out and authored a letter with 24 other senators asking for major reform of Freddie and Fannie, warning of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market," the former Pennsylvania senator he said. "I stood out, I stood tall and tried to get a reform, and we couldn't do it."

We wondered, did Santorum sign such a letter, "warning of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market" before its collapse?

The claim

In the Jan. 26, 2012, debate, Fannie and Freddie came up in a question contributed by the public. "How would you phase out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Does the private mortgage industry need additional regulation?"

That degenerated into a mudfest. Newt Gingrich, who once had a consulting contract with Freddie Mac, accused Mitt Romney of holding investments in the government-chartered entities. Romney accused Gingrich of also holding mutual funds that invest in them.

Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul and Rick Santorum a followup question.

"It seems they both acknowledge they both made money from Fannie and Freddie," he said "Should they return that money?"

Santorum said:

"Well, I would just say, in answer to the question, that as I mentioned last debate, in 2006, I went out and authored a letter with 24 other senators asking for major reform of Freddie and Fannie, warning of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market. I stood out, I stood tall and tried to get a reform, and we couldn't do it. The reform we'd need is to gradually decrease the amount of mortgage that can be financed by Freddie -- or underwritten by Freddie and Fannie over time, keep reducing that until we get rid of Fannie and Freddie."

The letter

Santorum's campaign didn't answer our request for the letter, but we tracked it down. (Update: Santorum spokesman Matt Beynon sent us a copy about 20 minutes after this item published. It matched the May 5, 2006, letter we found.)
In fact, we've heard something like this claim before, from GOP presidential candidate John McCain in 2008. He said then that he had warned in 2006 "that the Fannie and Freddie thing was a very serious problem, and we had to work on it."
We rated the claim Mostly False, noting, "We give McCain some credit for weighing in on problems surrounding Fannie Mae, even though he got involved after a comprehensive government report issued a loud alarm to anyone watching. However, his attempts to depict those efforts as some sort of early warning that could have lessened the current credit crisis just don't wash. All McCain was talking about then was the potential fallout of accounting troubles in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He didn't say anything about a freewheeling climate among creditors that had major financial institutions becoming badly leveraged on bad loans."

We might say something similar about Santorum's letter.

He did sign, along with 19 others, correspondence on May 6, 2006, to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. It noted that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — "mammoth financial institutions" — held almost $1.5 trillion of debt.

It warned: "We are concerned that if effective regulatory reform legislation for the housing-finance government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole. Therefore, we offer you our support in bringing the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act (S. 190) to the floor and allowing the Senate to debate the merits of this bill, which was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. ...

"Congress has the opportunity to recommit itself to the housing mission of the GSEs while at the same time making sure the GSEs operate in a manner that does not expose our financial system, or taxpayers, to unnecessary risk."
The letter, in other words, warned of the risk Fannie and Freddie might pose to the financial system if they couldn't cover their obligations.
America's housing crisis in many ways functioned the other way around: By the summer of 2008 the effects of a deflating housing bubble — especially foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies — were affecting Fannie and Freddie, and the agencies didn't have enough money to meet their financial obligations. The U.S. government took them over on Sept. 7, 2008. (We've talked to an expert who said that Fannie and Freddie contributed to that bubble — though he acknowledged there were other players — and another who found it "absurd" they would be blamed for the crisis. "They were followers, not leaders," one said. Similarly, Columbia Journalism Review recently highlighted news organizations who exposed "the big lie of the crisis" — blaming Fannie and Freddie for the housing crisis instead of banks.)

So, did the letter warn of "a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market," as Santorum put it? Not so much. It warned not of the danger of a housing bubble but of the danger of poorly regulated housing finance entities.

Santorum, Fannie & Freddie

Want more evidence that it wasn't a housing bubble Santorum was worried about?

Santorum, who served in the Senate from 1995 to 2007 after a stint in the U.S. House, gets credit for supporting the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act in 2005, the year before senators' letter to their colleagues. The goal of the legislation, according to its official summary, was to set up stronger congressional oversight of Fannie and Freddie and other housing entities by a new Federal Housing Regulatory Agency.

Santorum bucked a strong covert lobbying effort by Freddie Mac to kill the legislation, supporting it in committee — though he was not one of its co-sponsors. (The lobbying effort ultimately kept the bill from reaching the Senate floor.)

But he didn't voice any concern over "a meltdown" or "a bubble" that we saw in news clips, press releases or transcripts of related hearings from 2005 or 2006.

He focused his energy instead on an amendment to strengthen the entities' affordable housing goals. As National Mortgage News reported at the time, "Sen. Santorum supports the concept of an (affordable housing) fund that could pump billions of dollars into the construction and renovation of affordable housing."

In Congress, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., a co-sponsor of the legislation, thanked Santorum in August 2005 "for taking a leadership role in addressing the need for a better focus by Fannie and Freddie on affordable housing."

No word about a housing bubble.

Our ruling
Santorum said he "went out and authored a letter with 24 other senators asking for major reform of Freddie and Fannie, warning of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market."

Indeed, he signed a letter along with a group of colleagues asking for reform of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. But it didn't warn of a meltdown and a bubble in the housing market. And we couldn't find evidence that Santorum voiced that concern in 2005 or 2006 in press releases, transcripts or news clips. Instead, he sponsored a successful amendment of a reform bill to boost the entities' commitment to affordable housing, a very different concern.

We rate his statement Mostly False.

About this statement:

Published: Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 6:46 p.m.
Subjects: Candidate Biography, Economy, Financial Regulation, Housing
Sources:
Rick Santorum, comments during the Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 26, 2012 (transcript via CQ, subscribers only)
Email interview with Matt Beynon, spokesman for Rick Santorum, Jan. 27, 2011
ProPublica, "What Letter Was McCain Referring to?" Oct. 9, 2008 | May 5, 2006, letter

THOMAS, "Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005," accessed Jan. 27, 2012

CQ.com, CQ Member Profiles, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., accessed Jan. 27, 2012 (subscription only)

Internet Archive WaybackMachine, Senate website for Rick Santorum, updated May 9, 2006

PolitiFact GOP Pledge-O-Meter, "End government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Aug. 26, 2011

PolitiFact, "Ringing an alarm, not averting a crisis," Sept. 17, 2008

PolitiFact, "Fannie, Freddie and John, at odds in 2006," Sept. 30, 2008

PolitiFact, "Fannie and Freddie contributed to wider problem," Oct. 13, 2008

John McCain, "McCain Statement on Co-Sponsorship of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005," May 26, 2006

Radio Iowa, "Santorum: I wouldn’t have worked for Freddie Mac," Dec. 12, 2011

New York Times, "Taking on the mortgage giants," Sept. 25, 2008

Associated Press via MSNBC, "Freddie Mac lobbied against regulation bill," Oct. 19, 2008

CQ Transcriptions, "U.S. Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-Al) Holds Hearing on Government Sponsored Enterprises Reform," April 21, 2005, via Nexis

American Banker, "Differences Widening in Congress Over GSE Reform," June 24, 2005, via Nexis

Mortgage Line, "GSE Reform Headway Slow," July 15, 2005, via Nexis

National Mortgage News, "Shelby Readies GSE Oversight Bill," July 25, 2005, via Nexis

Mortgage Banking, "GSE Reform Bill Clears Senate Committee Along Party-Line Vote," September 2005, via Nexis
American Banker, "Legislative Update," Aug. 11, 2005. via Nexis

Political Transcript Wire, "U.S. Senator Wayne Allard (R-Co) Holds Markup Hearing On Federal Housing Enterprise Reform," Aug. 1, 2005, via Nexis

Congressional Quarterly Today, "Affordable Housing Issues Take Center Stage at Markup of Fannie, Freddie Bill," July 27, 2005, via Nexis

MarketWatch, "Senate panel tightens rules on Freddie, Fannie," July 28, 2005, via Nexis

Columbia Journalism Review, "The Big Lie of the Crisis, Called Out By the Press," Nov. 10, 2011
Written by: Becky Bowers
Researched by: Becky Bowers
Edited by: Martha M. Hamilton

Occupy Y'all Street: Occupy Atlanta Fights Foreclosure, Fannie Mae Demands Protesters' Emails 2DEZ11

FROM HuffPost, this puts a face on the recession and the mortgage crisis....and the ruthless greed and deception of the banking-financial cabal. Click the link to watch the video
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This is the second in a series of stories and short films on under-publicized Occupy sites. The first is here. Stay tuned in the coming days for more from our road trip through the South.
SNELLVILLE, Ga. -- The day after Fannie Mae evicted a police officer and his family from their suburban Atlanta home, the government-owned mortgage giant demanded the family turn over all its correspondence with members of Occupy Atlanta, according to court documents.
In early November, Christopher Rorey, an officer with the DeKalb County Police Department, had invited the activists affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement to his quiet neighborhood in Gwinnett County, about 25 miles outside of Atlanta. The Rorey family had spent 13 months fending off foreclosure. They were on their second lawyer and second civil suit. After losing a last ditch court hearing, attended by Occupy protesters, an eviction was imminent. The Roreys were down to last options.
A large storage bin now occupied their driveway. Slowly, next-door neighbors had started to help fill it. Belongings ringed the darkened living room in neat stacks. In the front room, more was piled on the couch; the big-screen TV had been moved out of the way. The finished basement had been stripped clean except for a lone black leather office chair. In the kitchen, the cabinets had been emptied, and the stove had been put in the bin on the driveway.
The demonstrators set up large orange-and-blue tents on the Rorey front lawn, unrolled bedding in their basement, and hung signs from their porch that read: "THIS HOME IS OCCUPIED" in rainbow colors.
The organizers said they liked the fact that Christopher, 43, was a cop. And they liked the Roreys' story.
"I never suspected that we would be in this situation," Tawanna Rorey, Christopher's wife, told The Huffington Post. "Here we are the little people once again, getting squashed on."
The small encampment was quiet. The donated food was plentiful. The only hint of danger came from the activists smoking on the lawn. Later, the Occupiers' kids drew on the sidewalk with chalk. The real drama over the house had taken place in courtrooms, in consultant offices and on phone calls with the mortgage authorities.
In the spring of 2010, the Roreys decided they wanted a loan modification. They had managed to pay their mortgage each month. They just wanted a little more breathing room. When they made the request to their mortgage servicer, then-called Everhome, the Roreys say they were told that unless they could prove financial hardship, they couldn't get the modification.
A foreclosure consultant they hired told them to stop paying their mortgage. Counterintuitive as it may sound, it's common advice in the industry.
The Roreys took the advice that summer. In September, Everhome entered into foreclosure proceedings on the Roreys. On Oct. 5, they were foreclosed on.
Their foreclosure consultant has since been arrested for allegedly breaking into foreclosed homes and renting them out.
"Fannie Mae is committed to helping homeowners avoid foreclosure whenever possible," Amy Bonitatibus, senior director for Fannie Mae corporate communications, stated in an email to HuffPost. "We have a Mortgage Help Center in Atlanta where homeowners can meet with a trusted housing counselor to discuss their mortgage situation and options to avoid foreclosure. Unfortunately, the homeowner did not seek assistance from our Help Center."
The Roreys' attorney Asim A. Alam says it was unknown that Fannie Mae was the lender until well after the foreclosure. Everhome never mentioned Fannie Mae's involvement. Shortly before the foreclosure proceedings started, the Roreys expected that the consultant would file a modification request. They are unsure if he ever did, Alam says.
Everhome did not return a request for comment.
"I am very happy [this case] is receiving this much publicity," Alam tells HuffPost. "It is a representative case. Most of my clients are not poor, lazy people who get in over their heads. They are getting screwed over by the bank. They were given inaccurate information by their lender. What happened to the Roreys can happen to anyone in the community."
Fannie Mae hasn't been too pleased with the publicity over the Rorey case. In their filing, the company's lawyers don't just request all email correspondence between Christopher and Tawanna Rorey and Occupy Atlanta. The lawyers also demand any and all emails between Alam and the activists.
"What angle are they coming from?" Tawanna Rorey wonders. "What are they really after? I know it's not for our good ... This just shows you how deep, how deep and dirty and low down big business is. They stop at nothing."
Fannie Mae also wants copies of all stories and interviews concerning the Roreys. The lawyers write:

"Produce all articles Plaintiff and/or her attorney have copied which were in any print newspaper and/or online relating to the Foreclosure Sale. Produce copies of all recorded interviews given by Plaintiff, Christopher Rorey, Plaintiff's attorney, Asim Alam, and/or anyone purporting to speak on Plaintiff's behalf, relating to the Foreclosure Sale."

If Fannie Mae has its way, their lawyers will soon be coming after HuffPost.
We pulled up to the Rorey home in the late morning of the occupation's second day. All was quiet except for the hum of local TV trucks, drawn by the novel drama of the police-occupy alliance. An activist shuffled the tents around on the lawn. A veggie platter, a large bag of wasabi peas and a nearly-empty box of granola bars sat untouched on the front porch.
It was a Tuesday. Over the weekend, Occupy Atlanta demonstrators had tried to retake their old spot downtown at Woodruff Park. Authorities arrested 19 protesters. Occupy Atlanta organizer Tim Franzen says he doesn't miss the helicopters and riot police.
After the protesters' first all-nighter on the Roreys lawn, Franzen could only complain about the reporter that woke him up. "There's like a news crew walking around looking to interview somebody," he explains to HuffPost later that day. "They came in and started shining a light in the yard."
Franzen, 34, is tall and lanky. With his red winter cap and plaid shirt buttoned to the neck, he could be dismissed as another hipster. But not quite: Franzen spent his teenage years in out and out of city jails, hooked on gin and cocaine. Burglaries fueled the rebellion. His last stint, at 19, was a year in a Georgia prison.
By the time he got out, Franzen had worked toward putting his life back together. He started a chain of halfway houses emphasizing detox and life skills that he hadn't learned early enough. The Iraq War got him thinking beyond Atlanta's most-marginalized. But he is still driven by his experiences in the criminal justice system and the guys that he saw pass through it on their way to much worse.
"We all have the narrative that drives us to do this occupation work," Franzen explains. "And for me that narrative, the lens I see this whole movement through is confronting this crisis of priority ... They're victims of this system, of this crisis of priority."
At 12:24 p.m., the first cop car drives by.
Tawanna Rorey, 38, needs to be coaxed out of her house. A silver-haired TV reporter is waiting on the lawn for a promised on-camera interview. There is another reporter waiting on the sidewalk. The day before she had done several interviews. CNN even did a story. But she is still camera shy.
Franzen seems to get Tawanna and her shyness. When she finally comes out, she stays close to the activist like he is a life raft. She tells her story not with the decibel level of a demonstrator, nor does she lard her story with slogans cribbed from Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein. She tells the reporter that she is a stay-at-home mother.
Nothing about her performance is ready-made for YouTube. Only her nervous smile hints at her hardship. After she finishes telling her story one more time, the reporter comes in close. He hushes her with "you-did-greats."
At first, Tawanna Rorey will only allow us in the basement of the house. The basement is not hers anymore; it's occuppied. Activists sit on the carpet in the dark and tap away at laptops and smartphones. A case of bottled water dominates the sapce. That night, a huge vat of donated baked ziti will be set up on a table here. The room will be packed with strangers talking paradigm shifts.
Tawanna has to be coaxed into letting us onto the first floor and in the kitchen. It's hard to tell what is private and what should be public. Their stuff is scattered all over the place. It's hard to keep order in an occupation.
Before buying the house, the Roreys saved for a couple of years. She worked as an office manager. He had his police officer job. The Roreys had bought the house new in 2003 for $179,000. It was their first. They loved the backyard, and the basement. There was room to grow. They have two sons, ages five and 11, and a daughter in college.
Tawanna Rorey said she thought the best way to explain their house guests was through the story of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.
"Occupy Atlanta are trying to stand up, bring light and a voice to all of us who have very small voices," she says. "That's how I explained it to them. That really sounded courageous to them."
The Roreys try to keep things normal. Tawanna and Christopher negotiate who is going to take their elder son to football practice.
Franzen has rarely, if ever, known the Roreys diligent normalcy. But he is still in his element here, sitting in a green plastic lawn chair out front, guarding the house from the police that have yet to show up. This is where he sees the next fight.
"We don't want to spend all of our energy fighting police over a hunk of dirt," Franzen explains. "That's not what a lot of us signed up for. We want to take on the banks, we want to take on economic disparity. And sure, the fight in the park does connect to that. We don't want to give it up. We should have the right to assemble there. But we also want to be doing some serious base building, building community support. I don't know. I just get the feeling that fighting in the park is not really doing that and not really reaching Americans who are hurting the most."
Occupy Atlanta had moved into the fourth floor of a homeless shelter to protect it from redevelopment. That has been successful; the shelter is expected to remain open through the winter. The Rorey home was their first push into the suburbs. Franzen didn't see it as a permanent move; he wanted to help form a suburban off-shoot, Occupy Gwinnett, that could take over the Rorey fight and go on to address foreclosures and other county issues.
Of the move to the Roreys, Franzen is up-front.
"The narrative was strong and the injustice was clear," he says. "And it made tactical sense."


* * * * * That night, the occupation's second, would prove to be its tactical high point. Occupy Gwinnett began on the Rorey front lawn; the new group not only formed but ran its first general assembly. By the end of the night, it sounded like any community meeting, with its talk of transportation issues and government red tape. Except after this meeting, some members were sleeping on-site, and there was a press conference.
"Occupy Gwinnett is here," Franzen declared as the Occupiers squinted into the TV crews' bright lights.
The next day, the sheriff had threatened to issue arrest warrants for both Christopher and Tawanna as accomplices if Occupy Atlanta continued its protest on the property. They relented.
"I am not going to address accusations made by Occupy Atlanta," Sheriff Butch Conway offered in a statement to Huffington Post. "Evictions are never pleasant for anyone, but I have a job to do and I'm doing my job."
The following day the Roreys would be evicted. The press was there to take pictures of their belongings on the front lawn.
The family is now staying with relatives. Only the Roreys' civil suit continues.
"When we went to Snellville, it was an experiment," Franzen says now. "We learned a lot from the experiment. We were not prepared for how strong the system is. And how big the pushback was going to be."
Occupy Atlanta has started demonstrating at the local Fannie Mae office. Tawanna Rorey spoke at the first demonstration.
Rorey believes she's doing the right thing by joining forces with Occupy Atlanta.
She says, "I don't regret it at all."
The music heard on the video is by Elizabeth Cotten.