What's The Real Story Behind Eliot Spitzer?

I've always thought there was more to the Spitzer scandal than met the eye, considering his aggressive plan to fight the corruption in the financial industry. Well, it looks like the House Financial Services Committee is planning to hold hearings on the motive behind the Bush Administration's investigation of Eliot Spitzer.

According to Greg Palast, “Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet” right around the time the scandal broke out and three weeks after Spitzer's editorial appeared in the Washington Post.

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
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What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

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What do Joe Biden and Eliot Spitzer Have in Common?

As I have said before, Joe Biden's experience is a positive addition to Obama's candidacy, however, his long history becomes antiquated and is a detriment in the area of technology. Either that, or he's trying to make up for infringing on the copyright of others.

Biden's pro RIAA tech voting record, his effort to expand copyright law, his somewhat hypocritical effort to remedy the situation, and finally, his lack of perspective in this area could be compared to Spitzer's paradoxical behavior in another realm, although not as quite as drama filled and salacious as that of Mr. Spitzer.

Hopefully Obama will convince his running mate to support the principle of network neutrality and to quit backing the RIAA and the MPA as they are more than capable of taking care of business on their own.

Even after this "devastating" news, I'd still back Joe Biden's candidacy 100% if he were running for President. Why? Because, as I've also mentioned numerous times before, Joe Biden has demonstrated above all else, that he is willing to learn from his mistakes and that he's flexible enough to incorporate new information and experience in order to keep up with the rapidly changing complex global environment that is our future.

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This is the Hypocrisy We Should Tune In.

Eliot Spitzer may be hypocritical but his hypocrisy cannot compare to the duplicitous way we impose further punishment on the young men we flaunt our patriotism for...whose lives, in so many cases, will not only never be the same, but whose dreams for the future were obliterated.

One day people will look back at the way we draped ourselves in "red, white and blue", chastising anyone who didn’t chant "We Support our Troops," just like the sheep who chanted "Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good" in George Orwell's Animal Farm, and then take a look at the way those who served this country were treated and they will see the blatant hypocrisy and willful ignorance of a nation distracted by an over abundance of everything.

According to The Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, the soldiers, we glibly "honor" with dollar store "patriotism", have to wait, at the very least six months, or should something go wrong during these unnecessary procedures and red tape, up to two years to qualify for Veterans’ benefits. This dereliction of duty occurs because as soon as the soldier is discharged from the military, he immediately loses all of his benefits, no matter how severe his injuries. It makes no difference whether the soldiers are severely wounded or not, they must be processed through the archaic paper based system, still in existence thanks to tax cuts for those who need an entire staff to track their wealth, in an effort to prove themselves worthy of receiving any compensation for the wounds sustained abroad.

The burden is placed entirely on the veteran, who has already trudged through places and experienced things most of us only see in our nightmares, to prove he deserves benefits. The presumption is that whatever the veteran is claiming is wrong with him is not therefore he must gather all the documentation, doctor’s notices, all of the hospital forms and all the things from all the different places to prove he is indeed injured and in need of care, even though prior to his discharge from the military, his condition was already confirmed.

We should presume the veteran is entitled to his benefits and it is up to the government to prove why not. Our tax system is set up in such a way that the burden is on the government to prove that what we're presenting as true, is false, by auditing a small subset of taxpayers, in hopes that that will be enough to prevent people from cheating the system.

Many of us are ignorant of the way soldiers are treated once they return home, however that is no excuse, because it is our duty as citizens to make sure those we send into battle are at the very least taken care of without delay or made to endure further trauma.

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There is Venal Public Disgrace and Then There is Mortal Public Disgrace

As the Catholic Church categorizes sins as venal or mortal, we must decide which public disgrace deserves our time and effort and which ones do not.

NPR's gallery highlights nine separate men who have publicly "disgraced" themselves in front of a nation and the women who "chose" to stand by them. Did these women really choose or were they strongly encouraged? Did all of these men "disgrace" themselves or were some set up to take a fall?






Whatever the case may be, we have to ask ourselves:

Did the disgraceful person's behavior interfere with what we elected them to do?

If “victims" did result from the disgraceful person's actions, did those who were harmed, "consent" or were they innocent bystanders?

Hilary Clinton was the clear "victim" in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, however she is an adult who consented to be in a relationship with a man whose charisma oozes from every pore, and flirtatious behavior is legend. Hilary is only a victim as far as any of us are victimized when we choose to engage in intimate relationships. In other words, the Clinton "scandal" was none of our business. On the other hand, the people who spent untold amounts of money and time to expose our President of the United States as a womanizer, something all of us already knew on some level, yet elected him anyway, intentionally put our country at risk.

As for Larry Craig, there is no doubt he was set up to take a fall by a police force that had nothing better to do, than to spy on adult men, urinate. Once again, his wife, although sad, is at most a gullible person or overly trusting, but not a victim in the true sense of the word. However, Larry Craig's case presents another problem, hypocrisy. As horrible as hypocrisy is, it's not enough to convict someone, in and of itself...if that were the case, we should all be sentenced to unemployment.

President Nixon's conduct clearly violated his public duties, the oath he took, the public trust and disrupted the function of government, a perfect example of "mortal" public disgrace. However, the answer is not always obvious, as in the case of Edward Kennedy and possibly Eliot Spitzer, as there has not been enough time to get all the facts; nevertheless, we must not group all ignominious behavior as if it is all the same. As sad as it must have been for Hilary and Larry Craig's wife, their husband's lack of self-control, cannot be compared to the conduct of someone, whose lack of ethics or disregard for human life, results the suffering of many, it’s almost impossible to quantify.

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Spitzer has Support on Gay Marriage

Eliot Spitzer's plan to introduce a gay marriage bill in New York state is favored by almost two-thirds of the 1,022 respondents to a recent Crain's online poll.

About 63% of voters said they support a gay marriage law. If New York adopted the new legislation, it would become only the second state behind Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriage.

"If two people love each other, who are we to say it [whether it can or can't be] with the same sex," said Alexandra Akira. "It's very simple."

Supporters also say same-sex couples should be afforded the same rights as heterosexual couples.

"Why should gay and lesbian couples pay taxes if they are not treated equally?" said Paul. Slee. "Right now the unavailability of gay marriage to gay couples is a matter of gross inequality, injustice and taxation without representation."

About 19% of those polled said they support civil unions as an alternative while 18% said that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman.

"Marriage has always been defined as being between a man and a woman," said Joe Wright. "A union between men or women simply should be called something else."

Mr. Spitzer has said the bill would have a very tough time actually gaining legislative approval. Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno has expressed strong opposition to legalizing gay marriage.

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