Maxine Waters' mortgage bailout bill, 'bad idea' whose time shouldn't come
Rep. Maxine Waters, who frequently seems to have something critical to say about other people, comes under not a little heat now from our blogging colleague over at L.A. Land.
Seems she's jumped on the foreclosure bailout bandwagon, proposing and successfully prompting the House of Representatives to pass a bill spending some $15 billion of taxpayers' money to run out and buy foreclosed houses. Rep. Barney Frank has another mortgage rescue bill. But he's not from California, so who cares about him?
As blogger Peter Viles puts it about Waters' measure: "Giving local governments money to buy houses is a sweet deal for lenders -- they get a willing buyer with cash who is also a clueless negotiator. And do you really trust your government to go shopping for bank-owned properties without playing favorites?"
His whole commentary is available right now right here at L.A. Land.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Way to go Andrew, blogging on substantive issues that matter to voters and consumers.
The foreclosure issue is a real sticking point between the candidates. Many ideas bad, poor and vague exist to help consumers fight rising interest rates on bad loans.
The reptivite flag pin posts have to stop. That's been the biggest complaint for media in this election cycle. Real things are happening and a major media market employee spends many words and I don't how many hours on the frivolous.
Do find answers for the general public sometime while this campaign is happening , instead of questioning, is that tacky political thing a concern.
The reason why people have misunderstandings, media keeps telling them confusing and sometimes wrong things.
The flag pin stories should have never got to the point of challenging a politican' s patriotism!
(Who said it was substantive? Are you worried about the senator's substance? It's a hilarious slip. And judging by the traffic to these items the last 2 days, an awful lot of people don't mind reading a little humor in their politics. Thanks for joining them.)
Posted by: Marks | May 10, 2008 at 04:06 PM