Right wing talking point du jour: Bill Clinton, ACORN, and brown people caused financial crisis.
Posted by: Donna
A cackling chorus of conservatives are blaming the current fiasco on subprime mortgages going to poor minorities because Bill Clinton and those evil community organizers turned Fannie and Freddie into Democratic patronage mills. Did you catch that?
I mean, I thought that the banking system was on the brink of collapse because investors created these funky things called mortgage backed securities and CDO’s and then used derivatives and credit swaps to artificially inflate the value of those things and the whole thing came crashing down. Turns out I was mistaken: Bill Clinton, ACORN, and brown people twisted the arms of those investors, causing them to do those things against their better judgment. See how clear it is! How can there be a crisis in America and Bill Clinton and brown people not somehow be implicated? /sarcasm
You know, it’s bad enough when louts like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter float this garbage (and they’re both doing it) but a member of the House of Representatives should know better. Or maybe not, when the person we’re talking is Congresscreep Michele Bachman (R-MN). Bachman, if you’re not familiar with her oeuvre, is Sarah Palin in about 10 years.
For Michele, it wasn’t enough for right wing asshattery to be confined to the internet and AM airwaves and Lou Dobbs’ show, it needed to be read into the Congressional record:
Because of CRA, Bachmann said, “[President Bill Clinton] turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democrat [sic] voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potential mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.”
“Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else,” she said.
Only thing is, she’s dead wrong. Here is law professor and avowed conservative Stephen Bainbridge helping to show his counterparts the folly of pursuing the blaming-the-brown-people argument. He’s taking r/w tool Michelle Malkin to task for her idiotic assertion that rampant mortgage fraud by illegal immigrants caused the financial meltdown.
It’s so disheartening to see people like this given a forum, and in Bachman’s case a powerful one. Bachman also hates gay people and doesn’t believe in global warming. I know, big surprise. Unfortunately she has out-fundraised her opponent by 7 to 1. Here’s his website: tinklenberg08.com
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