Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
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How deceptive and insinuative of falsehoods can a political ad be without descending into the comical?
If you believe this ad Rossi not only bought foreclosed properties but he actually personally caused the folks who owned them to lose the property.
If you believe this ad the act of buying a car that is wrecked for salvage means that you caused the wreck so you could profit off the salvage.
If you believe this ad Rossis experience in Washington State politics working with Democrats balanced our budget, but that experience isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the base insinuations of theft and corruption the ad levels without any proof whatever.
I mean, really, don’t any of you on the left remember basic logical constructs?
What is the cause of foreclosures? Easy credit. Why was easy credit offered? To continue to support aggregate demand for economic growth. What did this “stimulus” replace? Living Wage Jobs. What happened to living wage jobs? They were outsourced or eliminated through globalization. Which party supported macroeconomic policies to foster this state of affairs? Both. Which politician in this race also supported it? Patty Murray. Who was hurt? All of us in the bottom 50%.
Rossi is merely reaping the benefits of these facts, just as American corporations were reaping the benefits of Murray’s policies since the 1990s. Where were her (symbolic) tennis shoes in the 1990s made? Indoniesia, likely (symbolicly)
Commence name calling, since none of you corporatist Dems have a plausible defense.
I’ve always said that we need investors to buy up foreclosed homes so we can solidify the floor of the real estate market. Until banks can unload their inventory of foreclosed homes, neither the real estate or banking industry will be on a solid footing. Therefore, people who are taking advantage of the current housing bargains are not immoral.
But that doesn’t mean that I want one of them to be in an important position of government, especially if they espouse a policy that the government shouldn’t take steps to help reduce the foreclosure problem. Even if he won’t profit directly from a large inventory of available foreclosed properties while he is in office, Rossi’s got too many friends and colleagues who do. They don’t want the housing market to improve TOO quickly, not while they can still make a few bucks in buying cheap properties.
What Rossi’s friends and collegues really want is someone in office who can tell them when the market is about to turn around – either through inside information on government efforts, or advance warning of government financial numbers which aren’t yet publically available. If Rossi had access to that information, do you think he would keep it to himself, or provide it to a “select few” of his most trusted friends and colleagues?
If it’s posted on HA, it’s bullshit.
Gee, I had NO IDEA that one five-foot nothing Washington State Senator managed to bring down the entire economy of the U.S. – nay, much of the western world – by single-handidly forcing her policies of “cheap credit” through the combined forces of the financial industry, the real estate industry, and the Bush administration, all of whom fought vigerously against her, but all to nought!
She must be Superwoman!
And the wingnuts here are always asking “What has Patty Murray accomplished?” Yet TPN provides the answer – she destroyed the American economy, pretty much single-handedly!
(chortle)
This morning’s Fairview Fishwrap has a hand-wringing front page story about how we may be seeing the “end of the era of home ownership”, at least for a while. For the last decade, it was more like the era of “bank ownership”. The mortgage industry, with the help “flip-this-house” media propaganda, flimflammed millions of people into taking on loans they had no way of paying off, turning them essentially into sharecroppers. Their “crop” was their collective indebtedness, which was packaged up and bought and sold on speculation over whether or not they’d default. This wasn’t “banking” in any traditional sense–it was conversion of Wall Street into the largest casino in history.
If the Democrats (including Murray) got browbeaten by the GOP into taking up the “deregulation” mantra (including the repeal of Glass-Steagall), they’ve no doubt come to regret it, and the misery it’s caused.
Not our friend Mr. Rossi. He’s still bursting with pride over it all.
Re 6
“The mortgage industry, with the help “flip-this-house” media propaganda, flimflammed millions of people into taking on loans they had no way of paying off, turning them essentially into sharecroppers.”
Bullshit!!!!
I read all contracts I sign exhaustively before signing them. So does my attorney. See, when I sign on the dotted line the terms of that contract become my responsibility. The bank didn’t force me to sign a mortgage. I chose to, and in that choice I accepted responsibility for the consequences.
I fail to see why this basic principle of contract law escapes you folks.
@7 Go ahead, demonize the poor to deflect Artfart’s deserved criticism of the banking industry.
Steve, Steve, Steve,
Trying to find where I demonized the poor….
Yeah, didn’t find it. But a lack of racism doesn’t stop you folks from calling someone a racist, so why should facts bother you here?
Rossi’s experience:
One failed WA State Senate campaign.
One and one-half terms in the WA State Senate.
Two failed statewide campaigns for governor.
Total terms of office sought: Five.
Total wins: Two.
Total non-incumbent wins: One.
Total statewide wins: zero.
Stated that he supports forcing women to bear their rapists’ children.
Goldy, you are running a 100% smear ad. This this a deplorable smear of headlines and allegations with little to no proof.
DO WE HEAR ABOUT POLICY?
DO WE HEAR ABOUT PLANS?
DO WE HEAR ABOUT POSITIVE SOLUTIONS?
NO, NO, NO.
WE HEAR SMEARS, SMEARS AND MORE SMEARS.
Here’s the truth about Dino Rossi’s involvement with foreclosures:
1)
SOURCE
2)
SOURCE
3) THIS IS FROM A HEADLINE OF THE WA DEMS JUST HAD TO RUN:
SOURCE
What a sickening smear. I thought yesterday was barely tolerable, this is just worse. But this is how Democrats work, they don’t play fair and while sane people pour water on a fire, these overgrown teenagers with too many tech toys pour gas on the fire of smears, rumors and innuendo.
For here’s the truth about foreclosures: The only way foreclosures happen are when a mortgagor defaults on a home loan – most of the time when they were too stupid to sign for a home they could not afford. Then you have a vacant piece of property that’s unmaintained, not contributing to the tax rolls and unused. Not fair dinkum.
Perhaps we need a better way to solve the housing crisis. Patty Murray should find it. Call Dino Rossi, he’ll help.
“Trying to find where I demonized the poor….
Yeah, didn’t find it.”
You say nothing critical of the banking industry and in fact call “Bullshit” on Artfart’s comment obout the bank’s obviously screwed up lending practices and then focus solely on those who signed the contracts. If you’re not demonizing them then WTF are you doing?
@11 If you see my friend the HNMT, let him know that I miss his posts and that I hope all is well.
@13, who’s HNMT?
Gosh, it’s hard to believe that we ever had to pass a Truth in Lending Act, given the high ethical standards that we all know lenders live up to. Surely they would never mislead a young, ignorant, uneducated, or non-native speaker as true financial terms underpinning their home mortgage. Surely everyone can afford an attorney to examine important papers. Surely the terms of the mortgage iteself are so and self-evident that no one could possible be confused, incorrectly calculate a true payment amount, or be misled by someone who fills in the blanks after they leave. And of course, no matter how unethical, deceitful, or criminal the intent or acts of the lender might be, it is always the fault of the borrower and never the fault of the lender.
From the Wikipedia article on predatory lending:
Stupid borrowers.
Another article has some add’l handy info:
All perfectly OK, right?
Or during a disastrous 100-year recession when more than ten percent of the American workforce is unemployed and there are five unemployed workers (of those who are still looking) for every single available job. Boy, are they stupid!
@16 07/21/2010 at 4:22 pm
It was the real estate bubble bursting that started this morass.
Gee, Lost thinks that everyone could have avoided the problems by simply reading the contracts, and hiring lawyers to do the same.
It’s usually not a problem with the contracts themselves. The problem was created BEFORE the contracts were drafted.
For example, a young couple has been renting for years, trying hard to save enough for a down-payment. But they find that with housing prices rising, they simply can’t save fast enough – the goal keeps getting further and further distant.
They consult a real estate agent. The real estate agent assures them that yes, they can get a mortgage, even with less than 20% down. They can even pay 5% down, if they follow the real estate agent’s instructions. He/She knows a mortgage broker who can work it all out.
What she doesn’t tell them, in detail, is that the mortgage broker has just finished a series of luncheons – with the meal provided by the mortgage broker, for real estate agents for the purpose of marketing their products. They tought the availability of up to zero-down loans, in some cases even financing the closing costs. This will be a great opportunity for their clients, they assure the agents. But then there’s the kicker – they will show their appreciation to the agent by kicking back a substantial part of the “origination fee” to the agents as part of a “finders fee”. This can amount to thousands of dollars per loan.
So now the agent has a strong incentive to not only find the clients a house, but also to direct them to this particular broker. The agent assures the buyers, who are inexperienced in real estate, that this broker is the best person possible, based on his/her experience, to find them a good loan which would allow them to buy the house.
Of course, the agent is also encouraging them to buy as much house as they could possibly finance, even if it means zero-down loans, adjustable mortage rates, etc. After all, has anybody ever heard of real estate prices going down? Not in the lifetime of this young couple! The agent assures them that all they have to do is wait a year or two, and they will then have plenty of equity (from appreciation) so they can re-finance upon any terms they desire.
So they sign an earnest money contract on the house, and go through the loan application process. It’s a lot of paperwork, and it’s time-consuming, but they are assured that “everything looks great”. They give notice to their landlord that they will vacate by the closing date on the earnest money agreement.
Then they start to get worried, a couple of weeks before closing. Is the financing settled? They broker puts them off, until about 24 ours before the earnest money agreement expires. As the couple comes in for closing, he explains to them that there were a couple of questionable items on their credit report, and that there credit scores just weren’t high enough, and they will have to go with a mortgage which is “just a little differenet” than they discussed previously.
The new mortgage may have the same initial “starter rate”, but after two years there is either a balloon clause or a big jump in the interest rate. But this is not a problem, they are assured, because with rising loan values they can re-finance before that occurs – except they have to do so “exactly” two years later, as there is a pre-payment penalty clause. And the loan fees take a huge jump as well, doubling or trippling from the original estimate.
The broker assures them that he worked very hard to get them this loan, he was up long hours into the night trying to find them a better deal, but without a record of existing home ownership, this is the very best they can do.
So what do they do????? The U-haul is already attached to the trailer hitch of their truck, and the friends and relatives are waiting at the old apartment in order to help them move. Their apartment is already rented to someone else, they can’t stay. And the earnest money agreement expires within 24 hours, and the wife has already started planning the colors she’s going to use in the baby’s room. The real estate agent advises them that there is already another back-up offer on the property, and those people already have financing in place and can close quickly, so an extension of time from the seller is out of the question. There is simply no time for the buyers to start shopping for another mortgage.
So they sign the contract. There are no secrets in the contract, it says exactly what the broker told them it said. A lawyer would tell them the same thing.
But what the buyers are NOT being told is that they could have easily qualified for a conventional mortgage at much better terms, one that didn’t have dangerous interest jumps in the interest rate, a reasonable down-payment, or a balloon payment clause. The broker, and probably the real estate agent, know this, but the buyer’s don’t. They relied upon the broker and the agent to represent their best interest, but when the cows come home to roost the broker will pull out his “disclosure agreement” (one of the documents signed at closing) where the buyers acknowledge that he is only an agent of the mortgage company, and the real estate agent pulls out another “disclosure agreement” where the buyers acknowledge that she is only the agent of the seller.
In the end, the homeowners move into the home and are happy for a while, until the market collapses and they cannot refinance before the APR jumps or the balloon payment is due. They try to sell, but the property is “under water” now, and the mortgage company won’t release it’s interest to allow it to be sold for anything less than the full amount owed. They try to apply under the various relief programs which both Bush and Obama tried to set up, but the mortgage company is uncooperative (we’ve never received your application – please re-send it for the sixteenth time), until one of them becomes unemployed in the recession, at which point they are told they don’t qualify for the government re-finance programs.
But the mortgage broker and the real estate agent pocket thousands of dollars in fees for their part in making sure the buyers take out their sub-prime loan. So does the mortgage company which wrote the loan, which had sold off the mortgage before the ink was even dry. So also do the financial firms which take the loan, bundle it with others to the point where the value of the package is impossible to discern, then sell shares of the bundle on the market as real-estate backed derivitaves, making a huge profit in the process.
How could this have been avoided? The young couple COULD have applied for additional financing on their own, if they were willing to pay the application and appraisal fees up front, which would probably amount to a thousand bucks or so all together. But they didnt’ do that, because they were assured it wasn’t necessary, and they thought it more important for their available cash to go toward a down-payment or closing costs.
But more importantly, the federal government, during the era of the George W. Bush’s “hands off wall street” approach to regulations, should have monitored and the markets and the growing number of these loans, and put the brakes on them by re-instituting some sound lending requirements. They didn’t do this because they didn’t want to stop the party – everyone was making money and nobody wanted to be the party-pooper. But then the house burned down.
Sorry for the long post – but it was necessary.
Dumb ad. Rossi works in real estate. The money in real estate is currently in foreclosures, so Rossi’s working with foreclosures. Those homes are going to be foreclosed on with or without Rossi. End of story.
@18 Great post. But it’s lost on the Money Conservatives, They don’t care unless it might cost them money.
@14 Sorry. My mistake.
Rossi’s only managerial experience was supervising one part-time janitor when he was a college student. Rossi isn’t qualified to run anything.
@18, 23
Yup & yup. My post @20 shouldn’t be seen as anything other than pointing just pointing out that the ad was dumb.
07/21/2010 at 5:50 pm
Great post. No blame to Dino, though. He didn’t work at that level of real estate.
The Republicans couldn’t find anyone better in the entire state of Washington than Rossi? How hard did they look? This is a pathetic candidate for public office, particularly a US Senator.
@1 “How deceptive and insinuative of falsehoods can a political ad be without descending into the comical?”
If you want to know, check out any GOP ad of the last 60 years. See, e.g., their sex predator flyers with a fake photo of a sex predator …
Who cares about Rossi. He’s another guy who supposedly hates government but spends his life trying to get into it. How many times has he run to get a government job? This one will fail too.
Wow, was just reading through the “issues” page on his website. Besides total fluff and more of the same “let cut taxes and balance the budget” magical Reaganomics that never worked…he has this gem:
“Cut Government Employment and reduce overly generous pay and benefits.”
Overly generous? ROTFLMAO. This guy has NO idea what reality is…oh he’s Republican which means reality is the opposite of his magical beliefs. I’ve worked DIRECTLY for the US Government, and as an independent contractor and private sector employee. My salary doubled when I LEFT the government to work as a contractor. Trust me, in my field (tech) you get paid MUCH MUCH MUCH more in the private sector. The problem is the government can’t attract or keep really qualified people because it pays so LITTLE…not too MUCH. ROTFLMAO. Just anti-reality thinking from a anti-reality idiot. Cut taxes but don’t cut any actual programs, just vague comments about “waste”…and then complain government workers get paid TOO much. PRICELESS! This guy is totally clueless and has no grasp on reality.
Voting for Rossi is buying into a dream world.
We’ve all had those kind of dreams when buying our first house – those rosy kind of dreams of endless future possibilities.
Rossi sells himself that way. I’ll never forget his TV ad campaigns for Governor from 2004. They were retail home-buying commercials (think
Windemere or Century 21) more or less.
Thanks heavens most people saw through it – but too many didn’t and too many bought it and continue to buy it.
In Rossi’s case, it’s the ultimate bait and switch deception.
@23. Roger Rabbit vomits:
‘Rossi’s only managerial experience was supervising one part-time janitor….’
Spoken by HA’s own O.C.D. retired courthouse janitor, but who better to know of this tidbit of information. Ironic.
Little Miss Ditzy Darcy Burnout had shit for experience, then lied, inflated, and embellished her resume and education, and later got caught and exposed for it. Of course, when the candidate fits the Libtard agenda, honesty and candor suddenly seems to not matter. I’m so shocked.