And Rasumussen reported that more Americans oppose the $1.2 trillion (including intest) bill than support it.   Here are some blurbs:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% favor the legislation, 43% are opposed, and 20% are not sure.

Two weeks ago, 45% supported the plan. Last week, 42% supported it.

Opposition has grown from 34% two weeks ago to 39% last week and 43% today.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Democrats still support the plan. That figure is down from 74% a week ago. Just 13% of Republicans and 27% of those not affiliated with either major party agree.

Seventy-two percent (72%) of Republicans oppose the plan along with 50% of unaffiliated voters and 16% of Democrats.

Meanwhile Congressional Republicans doubt whether the bill will save or create the 3 to 4 million jobs Obama and the Dems claim.

The bill is full of pork and nonsense and needs to be scrapped.

George Soros, MoveOn.org, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) project, the Woods Fund, Bill Ayers, ACORN (its housing division as well as voter registration group), Project Vote, Barack Obama, Fannie and Freddie, Johnson, Raines, and various senators and congressmen including Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, and others.

All of this information is on record and verifiable. 

Even if you look at each connection in the most positive light possible, the thing as a whole is an eye opener.  If you’ve never understood or believed in the the possibility of a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy – or, if you prefer a nicer couching of things:  the possibility that activists on the Left have tremendous Power and wield it in ways that are often overlooked – now may be the time to reconsider.

If you want to Do Something, pass this on!

A former Countrywide Financial loan officer, Robert Feinberg, has come forward saying Dodd knowingly saved thousands on his 2003 re-fi’s as “part of a special program the California mortgage company had for the influential.” 

He says he’s in possession of internal company docs proving Dodd knew full well he was getting very preferential treatment as a “Friend of Angelo” Mozilo, Countrywide’s then-CEO. 

From the WSJ piece:

“People are referred into that department as ‘very important people.’ You’re told that your loan is priced from Angelo. As the ‘Friends of Angelo department,’ [the department] has to give them a sense of importance and explain the reduction of fees and the rate as a result of being a ‘Friend of Angelo,’” [Feinberg] says. According to a report by Dan Golden in Condé Nast Portfolio in August, other VIPs included Senator Kent Conrad. Mr. Golden reported that “Countrywide also offered special discounts to congressional staffers involved in housing issues.”

As to Mr. Dodd, Mr. Feinberg says he spoke to the Senator once or twice and mostly to his wife and that like other FOAs Mr. Dodd got “a float down,” which means that even after he had a preferred rate, when the prevailing rate dropped just before the closing, his rate was reduced again. Regular borrowers would pay extra for a last-minute adjustment, but not FOAs. “They were aware of it because they were notified and when they went to the closing they would see it,” Mr. Feinberg says, adding that he “always let people in the program know that they were getting a very good deal because they were ‘Friends of Angelo.’”

And:

One indicator of [Dodd's] influence is the $165,400 in campaign contributions — more than to any other politician — that Fan and Fred have given him since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. These contributions are legal.

But favors like those Mr. Dodd is alleged to have received may not be.

Mr. Feinberg says he went public with his story because when he heard Senator Dodd on TV talking about predatory lending, he felt it was “hypocritical” and he says, “I just thought, ‘This is wrong.’”

I do wish names would be Named, no matter the party affiliation:  who started and voted for all of the federal legislation, who harassed the lenders to conform, which lenders not only conformed but went above and beyond the call, and who made big bucks.

It won’t happen, of course, because they are all in bed together to some degree.

As Anne of Idaho quipped, “Someone needs to go to Washington and Wall Street and close down the whorehouses.”

Clark County is holding back federal funds from the Urban League because a recent review of the non-profit’s books found double billing, problems with receipts, and lack of evidence that the group was actually helping people (a stipulation of the $67,000 grant that was supposed to help people who couldn’t pay rent and/or utilities).

The county found that the Urban League paid only part of what clients owed on their bills and then asked those folks to pay back 60 percent – and billed the county for the same cases.

If the money is cut off, it will be the third time in the past four months that a local government entity has taken back federal dollars from the Urban League (see the Sun piece for more details).

A county rep said the problems with the program are serious, adding there are “concerns about whether the organization can manage the money.”

Ya’ think?

The Las Vegas Sun reports that Willa Chaney, a candidate for the State Board of Education, owes the Nevada Education Department more than half a million bucks for funds she misused while running a program to provide aid to needy students.

The NV Education Dept. sued Willia Chaney’s company and in August a District Court judge ordered Chaney to pay back the money.  The Sun reports:

“From 1993 to 1999 Chaney operated a federally funded program to provide meals to poor children during summer vacations and other school breaks. The state shut down the Smart Start Summer Food Service Program in 1999 after the inspector general identified $1.01 million in questionable expenses.”

Apparently investigators found that Smart Start was serving far fewer children than it claimed in its reports of meals delivered to 13 apartment buildings in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.  Also among the investigator’s audit findings (quoted from the Sun):

• More than $250,000 in salaries was paid to 15 Smart Start employees, “even though they apparently did little or no work” and no time cards were maintained. Chaney’s husband, James, served as the program’s director and her son and daughter were on the payroll.

• Federal money was used to purchase five vehicles. The titles were in the Chaneys’ names rather than in the name of the Smart Start program.

• The program’s costs included $2,000 a month paid to Chaney’s day-care center, Smart Start Daycare, for use of its kitchen and parking spaces. Investigators determined the food program’s facility had ample parking, and the child-care center was paying $1 a year to lease its entire location.

Chaney is running for the District 3 seat on the State Board of Education, which sets policy for the Nevada Education Department and the state’s school districts.  She denies any wrongdoing.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has a “plan” which will “shift” $700 billion in obligations from private companies to the American taxpayer.  Apparently he sees this as the only Way and has 9,000 wizards on stand-by to make it so.  (The same Wall Street wizards that got us into this mess, no doubt?)

And evidently most members of Congress are spellbound and preparing to waft more money New York’s way.

One can only imagine what Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (the largest beneficiary of political funds from Fannie & Freddie) will dream up as he joins hands and sings Tra La La La La with Reid and Pelosi.  I’m not sure how it ends, but I’m pretty sure the working title is Nightmare on Wall Street and that we are barely ten minutes in.

Setting the typically wrong-headed Paulson aside for a moment, how is it that Bush and Congress care so little about protecting the American taxpayer?

And why all the insistence on a quick solution?  This mess was not created in a week, yet Paulson and our illustrious Congressional geniuses think they can solve it by this Thursday?  Does it not occur to anyone that we need to take a deep breath, wade in, and calmly and pragmatically work our way through our many economic and financial problems in a careful and measured manner?

As Newt blogged today (thank God for Mr. Gingrich), between the crisis of liquidity on Wall Street, the crisis of bad energy policy that transfers $700 billion a year to foreign nations, the crisis of Sarbanes-Oxley that cripples entrepreneurs/start ups and drives banks and businesses from New York to London, and the crisis of a high corporate tax rate…we are in some very deep Doo Doo.

Newt proposes a ”non-bureaucratic solution that would stop the liquidity crisis almost overnight and do it using private capital rather than taxpayer money.”  He suggests four reforms that would do the trick without the bureaucracy and additional tax burden.  I suggest you read his blog post as it is well worth the time, but in summation they are:

#1  Stop the mark-to-market rule which is forcing companies into unnecessary bankruptcy. If short selling can be suspended on 799 stocks, the mark-to-market rule can be suspended for six months and then replaced with a more accurate three year rolling average mark-to-market. 

#2  Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. It failed with Freddy, Fannie, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG. It is crippling our entrepreneurial economy. One San Jose firm told Newt they would bring more than 20 companies public in the next year if the law was repealed. It’s Sarbanes-Oxley’s $3 million per startup annual accounting fee that is keeping these companies private.

#3  Go to a zero capital gains tax like China and Singapore.  Private capital will flood into Wall Street (at no cost to Joe Taxpayer) and lead to an increase in federal revenue through a larger, more prosperous economy.

#4  Pass an “all of the above” energy plan designed to bring home $500 billion of the $700 billion a year we are sending overseas. With that much energy income, our economy would boom.

E!! endorses these proposals (a fact I’m sure Newt is happy to hear) and strongly advises against implementation of the Paulson plan which by all reasoned accounts is going to be a total Mess.

In closing, I’ll be waiting to see what McCain says and does about all this.  If he doesn’t reject the Paulson/Bush/Congressional plan and closely align himself with much of what Newt said here, I may not be able to vote for him after all.

(Note:  To those who have heard me joke that I am going to “get drunk and vote for McCain,” consider this my semi-official back-peddle…pending the outcome of this mess and McCain’s stand on things.  Let’s see how Maverick-y the self-proclaimed maverick is when it really counts.)