Sep 23 2008

Home loans for illegals: a personal aside

Category: diversity,economy,illegal alienharmonicminer @ 10:40 pm

Michelle Malkin :: Townhall.com :: Illegal Immigration and the Mortgage Mess

It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave — Loudoun County, Va., California’s Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix, for starters — also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

Read the whole thing.  It is both stunning and a bit chilling.

Continue reading “Home loans for illegals: a personal aside”

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Sep 23 2008

If only the Lefties on the Hill had to debate Thomas Sowell in open forum

Category: economyharmonicminer @ 1:47 pm

Thomas Sowell :: Townhall.com :: A Political “Solution”

Why then is there such a mess in the financial markets? Much of that mess is due to the very people we are now turning to for solutions– members of Congress.

Past Congresses created the hybrid financial institutions known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private institutions with government backing and political influence. About half of the mortgages in this country are backed by these two institutions.

Such institutions– exempt from laws that apply to other financial institutions and backed by the implicit promise of government support with the taxpayers’ money– are an open invitation to risky behavior. When these risks blew up in their faces, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government, costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.

For years the Wall Street Journal has been warning that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking reckless chances but liberal Democrats especially have pooh-poohed the dangers.

Read it all.

UPDATE:  And then read this.

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Sep 23 2008

California Supreme Court: restrained when it suits its political positions

Category: affirmative action,diversityharmonicminer @ 1:40 pm

An earlier post discussed the issue of Richard Sander’s attempt to get bar association records to evaluate the efficacy of affirmative action in law school admissions. It would seem that the California State Supreme Court, in an uncharacteristic display of judicial restraint, has decided not to consider Sander’s request for an order to release the records.

If UCLA law professor Richard Sander gains access to California Bar exam data for his own study on racial preferences, he’ll have to start somewhere other than the California Supreme Court.

Last week, that court denied Sander’s request for an order compelling the State Bar to cooperate with him. The justices didn’t rule on the merits of the request — which had been filed with the Supreme Court early last month — but rather indicated Sander should refile “in an appropriate court.”

This is, of course, a pure stalling action. They hope that Sander will just give up at some point, run out of money to pursue it, etc. They hope that somehow a resolution can be found for the matter that won’t require them to go on record as opposing public access to such records on the one hand, or appearing to support research that might undermine affirmative action on the other.

Our black robed masters are so courageous, whenever they can rule in favor of the extreme Left, but curiously gutless when it comes to upholding public access to what should be public records.  Of course, this is probably just a case of attorneys protecting attorneys, the jurisprudential version of professional ethics.

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Sep 23 2008

Brrr.. a look back at the winter

Category: environment,global warmingharmonicminer @ 9:00 am

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Smile. Buy a nice warm coat. You may need it.

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