Your call: Does this guy look like an Angry Renter?

Excellent story today in the Wall Street Journal elaborating on a tidbit that was on the blog a while back: The anti-bailout website AngryRenter.com is run by Washington insiders who own million-dollar houses.

As L.A. Land reported a while back, the website is the brainchild of Freedom Works, a think tank run by Dick Armey (pictured), a conservative Republican from Texas who once served in House leadership.

The Journal: "Angry they may be, but the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington."

The Journal reports Armey is pulling down a comfortable $500,000 salary at Freedom Works, and that he lives on 78-acre spread in Texas valued at $1.7 million.

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Hat tips: hp100, via e-mail, paynoattentiontothatmanbehindthecurtain, via comments.
Photo Credit: Associated Press

Comments

[sfvrealestate]

I'm not surprised, and I'm sure nobody else is either. Will these people NEVER go away?

[TakeFive]

Eh, kind of a non-story. Look at all the front groups with misleading names that sponser ballot initiatives.

Dick Armey is a mere tadpole. George Soros owns the pond.

[E]

I guess Forbes is a "tadpole" too?

More power to Dick Armey.

If I lived in a conservative non-bubble state I certainly wouldn't want to bail out materialistic south-westerners.

[IToldu2CashOut]

There is a legit angryrenter.com website out there though. It's called the L.A. Land blog. Unless I'm on Dick Armeys payroll and I don't know it, it seems pretty grass roots to me.

[shockg]

Kinda reminds me of the speculators here who pound their fist everyday about affordability for the everyday man/first-time buyer when they are anything but. Many bought and sold properties for years and are looking for their next cheap buy.

[Look, Ma, I'm published]

Fantastic illustration of how an entire country's policies are perverted by a small group of individuals.

The festering wound of the beltway needs to be sanitized.

But first things first, I have to catch up on my Tivo.

[fred]

What the f@#k happened to this country?

[Tex]

I don't think who is running the Angry Renter website diminishes its significance -- unless of course there is proof that the 40,000+ signatures on the petition are fake. Otherwise, Armey & Co. are simply providing a forum for legitimate discussion by regular about the very REAL anti-bailout sentiment that is being ignored by the government. Just because the LA Times Land Blog is hosted by the Tribune Corp. doesn't mean that the people who post here are corporate stooges. Who cares who is sponsoring the forum, as long as the forum is open to discussion and input from everyone.

[jelj]

Yeah, let's see... I'm an employed homeowner in a blue state, so my taxes pay for all the relief efforts and socail services in the red states that are less affluent... Bailout y/n asside (there are valid reasons both to do it and not to do it....), I am so sick of conservative red-staters trying to be "one" with the average folks. Hypocrisy at its finest...

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

Unless we are looking at some double agent kind of scheme, I am just glad he is not hiding behind some Probailout.com or ILuvBailout.com.

[Al Ramirez]

Everything has a long tale... Dick was a good Congressman and was part of the good guys back when he started even sleeping his office to save money during his 1st term. As far as the salary, $500K isn't a lot of money when you think about it compared to the phoney baloney jobs liberals take as well like Michelle Obama;'s job as "Community Outreach VP" where she was pulling in a 6 figure pay.

Armey, was an Economics professor before going to congress and this site pushes the kind of economic restraint needed to keep us all from paying for the mistakes made by REI liars and speculators.

Another final thing $1.7 million doesn't buy much in California but that 1.7M probably isn't going to go up a lot either so let's quit trying to eat the rich and let's just try to get this corection done as quickly as possible within the next 3 to 4 years.

[Uncle Billy Climbs Mont Pelerin]

Peter, can you have someone do a little research and find out how to start a think tank, or a think tank incubator? Maybe we can start one dedicated to residential real estate and its sane use/regulation thereof. We can go to google for funding and pay ourselves a half mil each. Put an academic on staff for appearances.

If we do an incubator, we can make money pyramid style -- taking an override on the salary of each newly minted director we send out with their own think tank.

[Laura in MD]

Who care who started the site, how much money they make, or whether they rent or own? It is a distraction.

What is of importance is the principle behind the petition -- PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Homeowners who paid off their mortgages, borrowers who are paying their mortgages on time, and renters should NOT have to pay for the losses of greedy, irresponsible people who took out loans they did not read or understand to buy properties they knew couldn't afford or the greedy, irresponsible banks that recklessly lent to them.

The banks made exorbitant profits during the boom. This legislation will not only allow them to keep those profits, but avoid the losses that they knew would result from their reckless business practices by transferring them to the taxpayers. They were counting on the government (taxpayers) bailing them out when the party ended. If we do, they will just do it again. Let the bad actors go out of business. Have the FDIC cover the losses of the depositors who will lose their money because of the banks reckless lending.

The borrowers benefited too. They got to live above their means in houses they otherwise could not afford and many walked away with cash from 125% financing or from home equity lines of credit. They got something for nothing. They lived the good life for a while. Now they will have to rent. They've really lost nothing. The only ones who will lose if this legislation is passed are responsible taxpayers.

The market needs to correct. Prices must come back into a reasonable relationship with incomes. Prices cannot and should not be propped up.

So, frankly, I don't care who started the site. I'm just glad they gave me and other responsible people a forum on which to come together and express our disgust with the bailout. We've tried grass roots petitions and letter writing campaigns and got no attention. Thank you Dick Armey and Steve Forbes for bringing some attention to the real victims of this lending/borrowing debacle!

With the freedom to make our own decisions comes the personal responsibility for any consequences that may result. We win some; we lose some. These people willingly accepted the profits on the way up. They should now have to take their losses. The government should stay out of it.

[A Scanner Darkly]

I am not suprised that Armey is behind fake sites. Ezmoney.con .

[P J Evans]

Armey talked big against 'government welfare' when he was in congress - except that a lot of people in his district got paid by the government via Social Security, Medicare, and subsidies.
At least he's consistent in his hypocrisy.
He's still wrong - he's never bothered to find out what the real world is like since he got kicked out of the House.

[Cal]

Smiling, nicely groomed, well capitalized, pointing and laughing at people with debt.

Looks like a renter to me.

[jb]

My annual check to the Democratic Party is being sent to Jim Bunning in Kentucky. Its only $250 but its a start - politicians, do you hear us?

[Lou]

Who cares? I don't care that Michael Moore spends all day railing against multi-national corporations and then gets paid by multi-national coporations to publish his books and distribute his films.

[Benjamin Lingle]

AngryRenter.com appears to be a website that is against any type of mortgage "bailout," however, the site is not run or was even set up by "angry renters," rather, it is the product of conservative advocates Steve Forbes and Dick Armey: two homeowners.

The site is a front for a political agenda that seeps from their other conservative website, FreedomWorks.com. AngryRenter.com's role as a politically conservative arm is to reach into the minds of renters and sell the impression that homeowners in underwater mortgages, whose situation is affecting homeowners in quality, prime mortgages (via depreciating housing markets, rising HOA fees, etc.), should not be bailed out by the government (i.e. taxpayer money) -- that the marketplace should "naturally" correct itself. The hubristic website does not consider the negative ramifications (overall economic hardship) of assuming the market doesn't correct itself anytime soon. (There's a rational argument to be made for or against a mortgage remedy; AngryRenter.com chooses to take the route of demagoging instead.) Its ultimate goal is to get people (renters) who visit the website to sign a petition to send to congress, in order to try and occlude a housing remedy. The Wall Street Journal uncovered this clandestine operation earlier today.

Overall, I think most renters are concerned with other economically precarious situations: soaring gas prices, inflation, cost of groceries, a declining dollar, and paying their own rent! Just like in '96, Steve Forbes is still unable to connect with or understand the problems that working-class individuals face.

losangeles.injuryboard.com

[CathyG]

I. Care. Deeply.

I feel totally violated. I signed that petition and if I had had the slightest idea that it was associated with flloor-of-a-New-Delhi-taxi-cab scum like Dick Armey, I'd have had nothing to do with it.

These people wouldn't know honest if it bit them in the butt.

[mbob]

probably gets his prescriptions written by the same quacker who supplies R. Limbaugh

[FINLwhiz]

Talk about hypocritic! No more needs to be said.

[tealeaf]

I'm not surprised, and I'm sure nobody else is either. Will these people NEVER go away?

Posted by: sfvrealestate | May 16, 2008 at 11:08 AM

SFV: By "these people", I assume you are including the other folks that pose as proletariat, like Michael Moore or George Soros?

Point is, if the site/org does indeed stand up for the little guy, does it matter who's behind it? Or does it have to support your way of thinking?

[The Bitter Renter]

There are plenty of honest blogs out there.

www.patrick.net
www.doctorhousingbubble.com
www.thehousingbubbleblog.com
http://piggington.com/

And mine, although it's pretty new and doesn't have a substantial amount of interesting content yet.

[PeonInChief]

I'm not surprised by this at all. (I didn't sign the petition, as I think the bailout/no bailout argument is as dumb as various arguments for and against subsidies. The questions should always be: to whom does the subsidy go? for what purpose? to whose benefit?) Because people don't think in these terms, it appears that we're going to get a bailout that bails out the wrong people in the wrong way. And low-income tenants will get to pay for it, as the money set aside for low-income rental housing will be used to pay for it.