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And plenty of
it
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The Audacity Of Chutzpah |
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In Hebrew, "chutzpah" is used indignantly, to describe someone
who has over-stepped the boundaries of accepted behavior with no
shame. There's an old anecdote that is used to
illustrate chutzpah -- it's about a man who murdered his father
and mother, and then throws himself on the mercy of the court on
the grounds that he’s an orphan -- that's chutzpah.
Well,
Obama displayed chutzpah, and in spades, Sunday night during his
"60 Minutes" interview by Steve Kroft when he said, "I did not
run for office to help a bunch of fat cat bankers," blaming them
for the financial crisis, saying "You guys caused the
problem" -- video
here.
Obama was simply applying Alinsky's rule # 12, "Pick the
target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." This tactic
attempts to cut off the support network (the public) and isolate
the target (bankers) from sympathy. Obama was going after
people and not the institutions -- people hurt faster than
institutions.
But behind that attack was chutzpah,
because Obama knows that he, Barack Hussein Obama, is singularly
responsible for much of the financial crisis.
In a 1995 case (profile) known as
Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, Obama and his fellow attorneys
charged that
Citibank was making too few loans to black applicants and
won the case. As one commentator
noted in May 2008, legal
"successes" such
as this were responsible for the
sub-prime mortgage crisis
of 2007 AND 2008. That is, banks were
not loaning to
minorities whose
credit was poor. When the law forced them to lend money anyway, the
inevitable collapse occurred."
Obama played a large part in the lawsuit that started the
government on a course of forcing lenders to give more loans to
those who had poor credit. Lending companies were forced to
come up with imaginative ways of fulfilling the quota that was
required. Sub-prime lending was born as a result.
Obama's pal and his campaign's finance chair,
Penny Pritzker, was
an early promoter of what
would become known as "predatory lending" -- and now,
according to Obama, its the bankers' fault -- that's chutzpah.
The
mortgage crises was forecast by many who were able to look beyond
the quotas. This
August, 2008, New York Times
article (.pdf) clearly forecast the mortgage meltdown:
In
a move that could help increase home ownership rates among
minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation --
protected by Barney Frank and
Chris Dodd -- is
easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from
banks and other lenders, ... under increasing pressure from the
Clinton Administration.
"Fannie Mae has expanded home
ownership for millions of families in the 19902 by reducing down
payment requirements," said Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman
and chief executive officer. "Yet there remain too many borrowers
whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has
required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher
mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market."
Demographic
information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study
indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went
to black borrowers, compared to 5 percent of loans in the
conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into
this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more
risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic
times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into
trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue
similar to that of the savings and loan industry of the 1980s.
"From the perspective of many people, including me, this is
another thrift industry growing up around us," said Peter Wallison,
a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they
fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out, the way
it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry."
And at the same time as Obama berates bankers, he
wants them to make more bad loans -- that's chutzpah.
This "Audacity of Chutzpah" is classic Obama. He creates
a disaster, like his professors, Cloward and Piven
taught him, and then blames somebody, or something else for the
fallout. He's been doing it his entire political career.
Since he's occupied the Oval Office, he's been blaming George
Bush for his own failures, caused by his own lack of judgment.
That's not the behavior of a man.
Obama is not a leader. He doesn't have a clue about
leadership or governing, so he falls back on the only thing he
knows -- Alinsky's community organizing techniques -- bringing
folks to the "realization" that they are miserable;
blaming their misery on the greedy bankers; demanding the
bankers cave to their demands; and to make such an almighty
stink that the dastardly bankers will see imminent
"self-interest" in granting whatever it is that will cause the
harassment to cease.
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©
Copyright Beckwith 2009
All right reserved
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