Let's See Glenn Beck And John Boehner Blame Strategic Mortgage Defaults On ACORN Or Freddy Mac

This morning Ben Evans at A.P. reported that conservative Republican Congressman Bob Inglis has started coming clean on how his party's "leaders are acquiescing to a poisonous 'demagoguery'." He didn't specifically name John Boehner, Darrell Issa, Mike Pence, Eric Cantor or Steve King but his remarks sure smelled like he was talking about them. A.P. suggested he had Sarah Palin and right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck in mind as "the culprits."

He cited a claim made famous by Palin that the Democratic health care bill would create "death panels" to decide whether elderly or sick people should get care.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Of course the widely disseminated, right wing propaganda about death panels that were so widely accepted by low-information, fear-driven and easily angered citizens-- especially those predisposed towards paranoia and racist-- and yes, we just described the teabaggers-- wasn't the only meme Fox, Hate Talk Radio and the GOP got out there to their noisy shock troops as they pushed divisiveness to a societal breaking point. Another was how Barney Frank and ACORN and Obama and the Democrats caused the housing crisis by enticing poor people (read: people of color) into buying homes-- as if Ronald Reagan and George Bush weren't trumpeting the same theme and as if the predator banksters/GOP donors were just innocent bystanders in the whole socialistic mess!

Today's NY Times breaks the news that any honest realtor could have told you long ago: the biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich, making strategic business decisions to walk away from investments gone bad: "[n]o need for tears, but the well-off are losing their master suites and saying goodbye to their wine cellars... More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent [and] by contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent... 'The rich are different: they are more ruthless,' said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist."

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

...Lenders are fearful that many of the 11 million or so homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will walk away from them, especially if the real estate market begins to weaken again. The so-called strategic defaults have become a matter of intense debate in recent months.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two quasi-governmental mortgage finance companies that own most of the mortgages in America with a value of less than $500,000, are alternately pleading with distressed homeowners not to be bad citizens and brandishing a stick at them.

In a recent column on Freddie Mac’s Web site, the company’s executive vice president, Don Bisenius, acknowledged that walking away “might well be a good decision for certain borrowers” but argues that those who do it are trashing their communities.

The CoreLogic data suggest that the rich do not seem to have concerns about the civic good uppermost in their mind, especially when it comes to investment and second homes. Nor do they appear to be particularly worried about being sued by their lender or frozen out of future loans by Fannie Mae, possible consequences of default.

The delinquency rate on investment homes where the original mortgage was more than $1 million is now 23 percent. For cheaper investment homes, it is about 10 percent.

With second homes, the delinquency rate for both types of owners was rising in concert until the stock market crashed in September 2008. That sent the percentage of troubled million-dollar loans spiraling up much faster than the smaller loans.

“Those with high net worth have other resources to lean on if they get in trouble,” said Mr. Khater, the analyst. “If they’re going delinquent faster than anyone else, that tells me they are doing so willingly.”

Laughably, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Darrell Issa, Sean Hannity and other Republican clowns have tried to lay the blame for the housing problem on both working families and on progressives and no one more than on Barney Frank. It's become as much a truism among right-wing dim bulbs that Barney caused the housing bubble as it is that Obama is a fascist socialist Muslim born in Kenya or Indonesia. We caught up with Barney a few minutes ago at an airport on the way back to Boston. He had read the Times piece. "We've had," he began, "the worst economic situation since the Great Depression and it was caused by the right wing's commitment to deregulation non-regulation. And as to their blaming us, the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress from 1995 'til 2006. I deny responsibility personally for the decisions of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey. And I can prove that Tom DeLay does not take advise from me... because if he did, I would have told him not to go one that dance show."

Tomorrow the newest Blue America endorsed candidate, Fred Johnson (D-MI) will be joining us for a live chat at Crooks and Liars. This morning he told me that the Times report is "typical of the mindset. When it was working class folks who were underwater on their mortgages it was all about 'duty' and 'keeping your word' and everyone was supposed to just suck it up and keep paying their mortgages for the good of society. Now it hits the wealthy and suddenly a house is just a bad investment that they can simply walk away from. How about they start pulling on their own bootstraps for a change, instead of preaching to the rest of us? Of course, many of these folks got where they are through the very types of financial gimmickry that put the economy in the mess it's in now, so I guess it just shows that you reap what you sow."

Doug Tudor, the Blue America-endorsed candidate for the open seat in Hillsborough and Polk counties in Florida told us he had a similar perspective and took it right into the realm of everyday political decisions citizens have to make. “These people," he told me this morning, "have absolutely no shame, and they also have absolutely no love of country. This is just another example of the rich, and their Conservative career-politician apologists, taking advantage of the system at the overall expense of the American people, while further dragging our economy down with their wanton greed. The working-class people of FL-12 need to know their Representative in Congress will vote on their behalf to stop the rich from gaming a system to the detriment of middle-class America. Along with more robust financial reform legislation, we must also enact Campaign Finance Reform with teeth, so career politicians like Lori Edwards and Dennis Ross can’t use corporate lobbyist money to buy their way into the People’s House.”

Just about one year ago BlueNC, in its coverage of the mortgage meltdown, noted how local Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, who, except for her lack of influence, could well have been presumed to have been another divisive Republican fear and smear monger Inglis was referring to, couldn't wait to blame the victims for the collapse of Wall Street's mortgage gambling schemes. "As I sat and listened to the debate on H.R. 1106 on Thursday," wrote Betsy Muse, "I could not believe my ears. North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx blamed the mortgage crisis on the welfare mentality of dishonest borrowers who never intended to pay the money back. I have never been so ashamed of something that I personally did not say or do. It was disheartening to hear such bigotry come from a North Carolina representative to congress. Fortunately, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida set Foxx straight." This is what the Republican Party is all about and why it is so crucial-- no matter how imperfect the Democrats are-- to keep them from regaining power: