To us, the most important takeaway from a recess appointment of Cordray is that the President could use this same maneuver to put a housing advocate in charge of FHFA.
Mayer estimates that some $3.7 trillion of mortgages would be refinanced. That’s right, this would be the Mother of All Mortgage Refinancing Plans. It would help roughly 30 million borrowers save $75 billion to $80 billion a year. As Mayer puts it: “This plan would function like a long-lasting tax cut for these 25 or 30 million American families.”
Bottom line: Talk about a political and economic game changer in this presidential election year. Obama could offer a trillion-dollar stimulus — as measured over a decade –that would directly and immediately impact tens of millions of Americans suffering from the housing depression. Cash in their pockets. Imagine the electoral impact on key states, such as Florida, suffering from both high unemployment and devastated housing markets.
And the beauty part for Obama? He wouldn’t need approval from Congress to do it. http://nation.foxnews.com/housing-foreclosures/2012/01/05/january-surprise-obama-preparing-trillion-dollar-mass-refinancing-mortgages-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life Site News reports: January 4, 2012 (PublicDiscourse.com) - The anger and disgust that most of us experienced when we learned of the allegations of sexual abuse of boys in the sports programs at Penn State and Syracuse University suggest that our cultural norms about the sexual abuse of minors are intact. Yet it was only a decade ago that a parallel movement had begun on some college campuses to redefine pedophilia as the more innocuous “intergenerational sexual intimacy.”
The publication of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex promised readers a “radical, refreshing, and long overdue reassessment of how we think and act about children’s and teens’ sexuality.” The book was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2003 (with a foreword by Joycelyn Elders, who had been the U.S. Surgeon General in the Clinton administration), after which the author, Judith Levine, posted an interview on the university’s website decrying the fact that “there are people pushing a conservative religious agenda that would deny minors access to sexual expression,” and adding that “we do have to protect children from real dangers … but that doesn’t mean protecting some fantasy of their sexual innocence.” http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/meet-the-academics-who-are-trying-to-redefine-pedophilia-as-intergeneration
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The Blaze reports: The Times defines a “permanent patient”:
…[someone who has] been languishing for months or even years in…hospitals, despite being well enough to be sent home or to nursing centers for less-expensive care, because they are illegal immigrants or lack sufficient insurance or appropriate housing.Patients fit to be discharged from hospitals but having no place to go typically remain more than five years, says LaRay Brown, a senior vice president for New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation.
She says that there were about 300 patients in such a predicament throughout the New York City area alone, most in public hospitals or higher-priced skilled public nursing homes, though a few were in private hospitals, according to the Times. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/hospitals-stuck-with-illegal-immigrant-uninsured-permanent-patients-at-massive-cost/
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Thomas More Law Center reports: ANN ARBOR, MI – Continuing its support of states that enact tough illegal immigration laws, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a brief supporting Alabama’s recently enacted law.
The Law Center’s brief was filed on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of United States v. Alabama, a case brought against the state of Alabama by the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to stop it from enforcing laws against illegal immigrants found in that state. The Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments this March. [read brief here] http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf
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Glenn Beck reports: Obama said that while he would continue to work with Congress where he could, he said “when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them.”“I’m not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people that we were elected to serve,” he added.
“Americans, hear what your president is saying,” Glenn warned. “I’ll work within the system but if they won’t move, then I will dictate.”
“Yeah. He says I will give Republicans every opportunity to agree with me,” Stu said. “And when they do not agree with me, I’ll do what I want.” http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/01/05/hail-to-the-king-obamas-latest-power-grab/
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The Hill reports: Prospects for striking a binding global climate deal by 2015 are probably toast if President Obama loses in November.
That’s among the conclusions in a wide-ranging, new climate and green energy outlook from banking giant HSBC’s research branch.
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The Hill opines: The recess appointments President Obama announced Wednesday are “almost certain” to be challenged in court, according to a top official with the nation’s largest business lobby.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not decided whether it will file a legal challenge to the appointments, according to David Hirschmann, who heads the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness. But he said he’s confident that Obama’s precedent-shattering move will land the administration in court.
The recess appointments broke with legal precedent, as they while the Senate is holding regular pro forma sessions. Republicans insist the Senate has not been in recess thanks to the seconds-long sessions held every few days, but White House attorneys determined the procedural move is a gimmick that can be ignored by the president.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blasted the move as an "unprecedented power grab" and said he expects "the courts will find the appointment to be illegitimate."
However, one question a judge could need to answer is whether Cordray will actually be able to assume those powers since he has been recess-appointed. The text of the Dodd-Frank law states that those powers will not take effect until the CFPB director "is confirmed by the Senate."
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/202425-chamber-official-court-fight-over-obamas-appointments-almost-certain
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Hot Air reports: Nancy Pelosi: I’m darned proud of Obama for making these illegal recess appointments http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/05/pelosi-im-darned-proud-of-obama-for-making-these-illegal-recess-appointments/
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CNS News reports: On his radio show last night, Mark Levin said that President Barack Obama has caused a “constitutional crisis” by appointing members to the National Labor Relations Board and a director to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without going through the constitutionally required Senate confirmation process."The President of the United States is trashing the Constitution now day in and day out,” Levin said.
At one point, Levin likened the explanation Obama made yesterday for appointing these federal officials without Senate confrmation to the "forthright statement of a dictator." http://cnsnews.com/blog/patrick-burke/mark-levin-we-have-constitutional-crisis
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Forbes opines: your government has been quietly wrapping up a Christmas gift of its own: adoption of UN resolution 16/18. An initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly Organization of Islamic Conferences), the confederacy of 56 Islamic states, Resolution 16/18 seeks to limit speech that is viewed as “discriminatory” or which involves the “defamation of religion” – specifically that which can be viewed as “incitement to imminent violence.”
Whatever that means.
Initially proposed in response to alleged discrimination against Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 and in an effort to clamp down on anti-Muslim attacks in non-Muslim countries, Resolution 16/18 has been through a number of revisions over the years in order to make it palatable to American representatives concerned about U.S. Constitutional guarantees of free speech. Previous versions of the Resolution, which sought to criminalize blasphemous speech and the “defamation of religion,” were regularly rejected by the American delegation and by the US State Department, which insisted that limitations on speech – even speech deemed to be racist or blasphemous – were at odds with the Constitution. But this latest version, which includes the “incitement to imminent violence” phrase – that is, which criminalizes speech which incites violence against others on the basis of religion, race, or national origin – has succeeded in winning US approval –despite the fact that it (indirectly) places limitations as well on speech considered “blasphemous http://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailesman/2011/12/30/could-you-be-a-criminal-us-supports-un-anti-free-speech-measure/
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American Thinker opines: I have seen and experienced the worst that man can offer, I am not intimidated, and I will say without reservation that Barack Obama and his cronies have the same mindset in their tactical approach, philosophy, and lust for power that was extant in Benito Mussolini and the Fascists in the early days of their regime. If the apologists for those in power in Washington want to vilify me for that comparison, so be it.
To the American people, it is far beyond time to wake up to who this man in the White House is and what his ambitions are. As for the Republicans in the Congress or running for office, the task is upon your shoulders to stop Barack Obama in his tracks before he goes any farther. It is time to do your sworn duty to preserve and protect the country. And for the Democrats who are so blinded by party loyalty that they would sell their country for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver, the long-term difficulties and potential downfall of the greatest nation on earth will be your legacy.
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Whew !! There is a lot to cover !! And, this Obama character is really doing much harm--he is I believe an evil person with very bad for America intentions...Hope and Pray we can get him out of office in November elections !
ReplyDeleteNice photo by the way