Biden Attacks GOP Promises To Wall Street-- So Romney Surrogates Say He's A Racist

The headline at ThinkProgress yesterday was Romney: 'No One Is Talking About Deregulating Wall Street'. But they are... and the Republicans have tried to turn Vice President Biden's warning that they are into some typical Republican racist screed, for which they trotted out former-DLC-lackey-turned-GOP-lackey, Artur Davis. We warned you about Davis when he was a "loyal" Obama supporter and a ConservaDem voting for the GOP so he could run statewide in Alabama. He's the same disgusting hack now as he was then. Anyway, Romney, who appears to live in his own fact-free universe, claimed Republicans aren't trying to set Wall Street free again to be it's old predatory self. That's a lie.

But Romney, on many occasions, has called for the repeal of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the first significant reform of the nation’s financial system since the Great Depression. In it’s place, all Romney’s economic plan calls for is a “streamlined regulatory framework.” The only specific aspects that Romney says he would implement are already in Dodd-Frank, which Romney admits in his plan.

Meanwhile, the House Republican budget written by Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), dismantles key parts of the Dodd-Frank law. The GOP budget would render the government once again incapable of dismantling a failing financial firm, forcing it to resort to the same bailouts employed in 2008. Until Romney provides an alternative, his plan is nothing but deregulation of the sort that led to the 2008 financial crisis in the first place.

Right now my neighbors are suing Morgan Stanley which has systematically stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from them over the course of several decades. Have you ever had an audit done of your brokerage account? If it's with one of the big Wall Street bankster firms and more than a year old-- anything before Dodd-Frank-- there's an excellent chance sticky fingers have found their way into your investments as well. My friends' retirement account was so improperly handled that they're likely to get puntaive damages as well as all the money that was stolen. The kind of transparency that Dodd-Frank forced on these thugs-and-criminals-in-fancy-pants is why they've spent over a billion dollars lobbying and bribing Members of Congress to get rid of the laws regulating them.

I had to laugh yesterday when I read this letter to the editor in the Santa Clarita Signal by a staunch conservative Republican, Stephen Petzold of Saugus. It regards Rep. Buck McKeon's bribery scandal-- which Boehner and the Ethics Committee are studiously ignoring-- with Countrywide, the tip of the corruption iceberg in McKeonville.

I have reviewed Congressman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Santa Clarita’s Countrywide loan documents with a great deal of surprise and disappointment.

Following the release of the Issa report, The Signal printed a letter from me titled “Be Fair To Buck.”

Unfortunately, I have now come to the conclusion that Buck McKeon has not been fully transparent or truthful with The Signal or his constituents.

The documents released to the public were limited to the final HUD-I closing statement and Truth in Lending Statement (only page 1 of 2).

I will be kind, and call it a translucent disclosure. The closing statement does reflect the payment of legitimate third-party fees to the title and escrow company, along with fees paid for the appraisal and credit report and prepaid items.

What does not appear are “junk fees,” aka “garbage fees,” charged by the lender. Rather than vindicating McKeon, the documents tend to confirm the charge that Countrywide’s VIP processing staff complied with the inter-office memo of a Countrywide employee reflecting the directions of Angelo Mozilo, “Take off one point, no garbage fees, approve the loan.”

McKeon knows this, but he spins the document to the uninformed as “Hey, look here, I paid closing costs.” This is misleading at best.

What I find even more troubling is that The Signal reviewed these same documents with McKeon and a local mortgage broker, Christopher Mendenhall, in January.

In an article on Jan. 28, written by Executive Editor Jason Schaff, there is a quote from the loan broker,“Mendenhall said the Countrywide documents did have the usual amount of ‘junk fees’ attached to the loan.”

This is manifestly false and your reporter and the readers of The Signal were misled. Christopher Mendenhall is an experienced loan professional and knows the difference between a “junk fee” and other closing costs.

The Signal should print a correction prominently in an upcoming issue of the paper. My letter to the editor relied upon the truthfulness of this statement.

The January article led the reader to believe that there was no basis for serious concern in the Issa investigation. It was printed at a critical time when Buck and his wife, Patricia, were involved in primary election battles for Congress and state Assembly.

Now the public release of the documents puts a prominent stain on the hard news reporting credibility of The Signal. We should both lament this unfortunate fact, and your readers deserve clarification.

Every voter should be concerned by the continued spin and parsing of words by Congressman McKeon regarding the Countrywide investigation.

His story is like a fable spun to promote the singular interest of the author, with no morals at the conclusion for the reader.

My concern goes to McKeon’s credibility on so many other issues upon which he has significant input and decision making authority.

What can we really believe from you, McKeon? This is my question as we approach the election in November.

These are painful observations for this conservative and faithful Republican voter to write. However, the recent document release requires me to face unpleasant facts and share them with your concerned readers.

Last month I called out for everyone to “Be Fair to Buck.” I can no longer be an apologist for him.