Yesterday, after Griff Jenkins botched his day-long attempt to crash an ACORN gathering, commenter Ferg at Daily Kos summarized the high point of Griff’s day:
Fox news guys whines about 1st amendment for 4 minutes while dodging questions about Fox propaganda from Adam, and while standing on a red bath mat in a tuxedo.
What did Griff Jenkins have to show for his work yesterday? Apparently, just this:
The sad reality is: that was the best part of our interaction that Jenkins could highlight to save face. (It was evidently the best part of Jenkin’s entire day that he could highlight…and will highlight again tonight on Glenn Beck.)
But I have to ask: How can it be satisfying to be Griff Jenkins? What on earth motivates someone to stand outside on a bathmat all day waiting for moments like the one above. How do you wake up in the morning and think, “I want to do that again!”
On Thursday, June 4, 2009, Glenn Beck devoted his entire show to attacking ACORN with what seemed to be reruns of past segments. But – lo and behold! – the show also included Beck’s get-together with BFF Bill O’Reilly from May 28 in which they seemed to finally be admitting that their evidence of any ACORN badness is pretty thin. But they didn’t let little details like lack of proof or factual verification stand in the way of a good smear. Beck even threw the Obamas into it, while also admitting it was pure speculation. Rock on!
Glenn Beck threw a sanctimonious hissy fit yesterday when a representative from ACORN had the nerve to suggest he is afraid of black people. Of course, Beck and Fox can demonize ACORNandminorities all day long, but my, how sensitive Beck’s widdle feewings get when the tables are turned. In the clip, Beck angrily brags to his audience (which he always self-importantly addresses as “America”) that he threw out guest Scott Levenson of ACORN for saying, during the commercial break, that Beck is afraid of black people.
Interestingly, Beck seems to have understood that as an accusation that he hates black people. But if it was really as ridiculous an accusation as Beck claimed, wouldn’t he have just dismissed it without getting upset? And if it’s so important that Beck wanted to address it, why not have the guy back and prove him wrong to “America?” Meanwhile, Beck’s record of hostilities to ACORN and people of color is well documented. No amount of self-righteous posturing is going to erase it.
Republicans hammered Barack Obama over his connection to ACORN during last year’s election, but now ACORN is taking a swing at some Democrats – with the help of liberal activists at MoveOn.org.
The role reversal arises out of the groups’ anger at moderate House Democrats who opposed a housing bill that has more generous bankruptcy rules for people facing foreclosure.
Next week this coalition will begin airing TV ads criticizing House Democrats who voted against the measure, which would for the first time give judges the authority to restructure home mortgages – a procedure known as a cramdown.
Hmmm… where did I hear about this before? Oh yeah:
An Ad To Run Against Dems Who Vote Against Cramdown
by: Chris Bowers
Without resolving the chicken-egg question of which came first, the housing crisis or the banking crisis, we can say that the pace of foreclosures is accelerating with the downward economic slide. Every thirteen seconds, an American loses his/her home. In 2008, more than 2.3 million families faced foreclosure. If the government doesn’t intervene in a muscular way, an estimated 6 million owners will lose their homes in the next three years. President Obama has proposed to attack the crisis with a $75 billion initiative, the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan. A commendable effort to directly address the problems faced by homeowners, the bill nevertheless has inherent limitations on who can benefit from it.
As a kind of home remedy, so to speak, The Nation and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have issued a useful list of ten ways to prevent or fight foreclosure.
It was just six years ago that Olive Thompson purchased a home in a quiet working class neighborhood on Long Island with a mortgage from Option One. Her story is similar to hundreds of thousands of Americans who now face the very real possibility that they will be evicted from their homes. Throughout the country the foreclosure rate in 2008 skyrocketed. In the first two months of this year there have been more than 10,000 foreclosures in New York state alone.
Perhaps more striking than the foreclosure epidemic is just how easily it could have been avoided. Thompson discusses her predicament and what she plans to do if she’s issued an eviction notice.
Yesterday, the first activist in a civil disobedience campaign to resist foreclosure was arrested in Baltimore. The campaign, launched by ACORN earlier this month, aims to draw attention to the foreclosure crisis and ultimately allow people to save their homes. The question is whether activists and home defenders can help affect policy and whether cities will begin to adopt moratoriums on home foreclosures.
On Wednesday I wrote a piece on Huffington Post and another here at Open Left talking about the centrality of fixing the foreclosure crisis to any recovery from the economic meltdown. Since the toxic assets at the center of the meltdown are based on mortgages that are entering foreclosure at a rate of one every 13 seconds, we have to address foreclosure as a part of getting America back on its feet.
The Homeowner Affordability and Stabilization Plan (HASP), announced in Phoenix on Wednesday by President Obama, which will help up to an estimated 9 million families, is a good first step – and the first serious effort by the Federal government to confront the challenge. But just because there was an announcement does not lessen the urgency of the problem. We are still in a situation where four families every minute enter the foreclosure process. We believe there must be a moratorium on foreclosures until HASP is fully implemented.
In the extended entry I give a report back on ACORN’s actions on Thursday to create a sense of urgency around this crisis and help some families stay in their homes.
They are people like Denise Parker, highlighted in today’s New York Times. A mother of three who works as a housekeeper at two Midtown Manhattan hotels, she bought a home in Springfield Gardens, Queens, in 2005 with an adjustable interest rate that, after two years, went up every six months. Her payments started at $3,500 and now are $5,050 a month. She fell behind last year and her house is scheduled to be auctioned off on Friday.
President Obama unveiled his $75 billion Homeowner Stability Initiative today, which could be a start to ending the foreclosure crisis that plagued 2.3 million Americans last year. While Obama acknowledged his plan won’t be able to save every home, he claimed it would stop “the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy.”
To that end, Obama’s plan will help those homeowners facing mortgages more costly than the price of their homes, along with borrowers on the verge of foreclosure. That would be key to enabling 4-5 million Americans currently “under water” refinance their mortgages, and another 4 million people avoid foreclosure. The plan also “will provide forward-looking confidence” for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said.
But the question still remains how soon this money will get to the people who need it most, considering 10,000 Americans go into foreclosure every day. As Arianna Huffington recently put it, “‘The banks are too big to fail’ has been the mantra we’ve been hearing since September. But when you consider the millions of American homeowners facing foreclosure, aren’t they also too big to be allowed to fail?”
