Nothin’ Shakin’ on Shakedown Street. Used to Be the Heart of Town

In Howard Husock’s 2000 article, “The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities,” he argued that the Community Reinvestment Act funneled billions to left-wing activists, while threatening to destabilize lower-middle-class neighborhoods. Again, this article is eight years old. And spooky in its present-day accuracy.

An excerpt:

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation’s banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being.

The CRA’s premise sounds unassailable: helping the poor buy and keep homes will stabilize and rebuild city neighborhoods. As enforced today, though, the law portends just the opposite, threatening to undermine the efforts of the upwardly mobile poor by saddling them with neighbors more than usually likely to depress property values by not maintaining their homes adequately or by losing them to foreclosure. The CRA’s logic also helps to ensure that inner-city neighborhoods stay poor by discouraging the kinds of investment that might make them better off.

(HT: Tara Servatius)

I Used My Spanish Last Night to Rescue a Rather Chubby Hispanic Boy from a Little Kiddie Swing at the Playground

Last night, while Sam and I were kicking the soccer ball to each other at the playground, Melissa alerted me to a Hispanic lady behind me who was having trouble getting her somewhat chubby boy out of a little kiddie swing. (Well, he really wasn’t that chubby, be was certainly way too big for the little kiddie swing.)

Anyway, after jogging over to the scene, I asked the lady if she needed help. In Spanish.

“Necesitas ayuda?” I asked.

“Sí, Sí,” she replied.

I then pulled the boy out of the swing.

Thank you, Connecticut State Department of Education.

The Most Ridiculous Neighbor Argument Ever

(Here’s another item from my old blog. It was originally written on December 19, 2005. I recently found an envelope filled with other similar notes from my former neighbor, which I am planning to scan and share.)

In case you didn’t know, my neighbor is nuts. She’s in her 80’s, is never happy, and insists on making “rules” for Melissa and I to follow despite the fact that a) she doesn’t own the building or property, b) the landlord has told me—on more than one occasion—to pay her no mind, and c) I’ve never given her any indication that I was interested in following any of them.

Why Christians Aren’t Taken Seriously: Reason #45,271

Government Reaps What Government Sows

Today’s action by the Bush Administration to “help” Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae reminds me of something Thomas Sowell wrote back in July.

It was government intervention in the financial markets, which is now supposed to save the situation, that created the problem in the first place.

Laws and regulations pressured lending institutions to lend to people that they were not lending to, given the economic realities. The Community Reinvestment Act forced them to lend in places where they did not want to send their money, and where neither they nor the politicians wanted to walk.

Now that this whole situation has blown up in everybody’s face, the government intervention that brought on this disaster in is supposed to save the day.

Politics is largely the process of taking credit and putting the blame on others– regardless of what the facts may be. Politicians get away with this to the extent that we gullibly accept their words and look to them as political messiahs.