Democrat Housing Efforts Fail, Minorities Hardest Hit

Back in 2008, writing on a different blog, I chronicled the push by Democrats going back to 2001 to push a quota of minority owned homes and now they are once again reaping what they sowed.

Prince George’s County, Md., has gained prominence in recent years as the most affluent county in America with a majority African-American population. Average income in the county is almost double the national average for black families, according to the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey.

But the county, adjacent to the District of Columbia, has been laid low by the recession and the mortgage meltdown and now holds a more dubious distinction: a rising foreclosure rate that ranks as the worst in Maryland.

More than half of all housing sales in the county so far this year have been properties in foreclosure, a rate that dwarfs other counties in the state, according to MRIS, which provides listing services for real estate agents. This has caused a domino effect of social, economic and financial problems to ripple throughout Prince George’s communities.

Liberals immediately want to point the finger at sub prime mortgage lenders that were handing out these loans for creating this problem while trying to ignore that they not only set the conditions for these sub prime mortgages, they encouraged them and with a push from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backed these mortgages.

Their misguided desire to set an affirmative action quota system in home ownership led to this. Granted my earlier writings on this is very dry but I hope you take a few minutes to at least browse the series to get a sense of how pervasive the attitude of putting minorities into homes at any cost was and how staunchly it was defended and promoted by Democrat lawmakers and their lackeys at Freddie and Fannie were.

She paid $230,000 for a tiny, 664-square-foot home that she said is “more like a small cottage.” The previous owners had paid $60,000.

Really?

Good Samaritans Fined After Deer Rescue for Not Wearing Life Jackets

Oh, the tangled web bureaucracy weaves.

For those keeping score at home, that's Anal Retentive Natural Resources Police Officer 1, Good Samaritans 0.

Strangers banded together to pull a deer out of the freezing water of the Patapsco River on Thursday night.

“We seen the deer going under,” said Khalil Abusakran. “It couldn’t maintain. It was starting to freeze, and it was really getting bad.”

Abusakran brought a raft, and Jim Hart joined him.“We had oars and shovels to break the ice, for the deer to get out,” Abusakran said.

But in the excited aftermath of the rescue, a natural resources police officer on the scene wrote both men a ticket.

“And he didn’t say anything,” Jim Hart said. “We went in and out of the water numerous times. He didn’t stop us at all.”

They say they were ticketed for not wearing life vests, although both are over the age for mandatory use of flotation devices.

“No, we didn’t have vests on, but we’re not 16 years old,” Abusakran said. “There were personal floating devices on the boat.”

The ticket itself doesn’t check off any specific violation, just a $90 fine.

They’ll fight it in court, as they fought for the deer.

The two men ticketed say they will fight the citations at the court hearing in Annapolis set for Feb. 18.

Barney Fife could not be reached for comment.

h/t Mike's America, who also has the video.

Cross-posted.

Maryland AG to Investigate Shady Group Obama Used to Work for But Knows Nothing About

Oh, yes, and the state Attorney General in Maryland is getting maching orders from the Democrat Governor, Martin O'Malley.

More CYA mode? Who knows? But this comes on the heels of several other states investigating this criminal gang that supposedly will be conducting an "independent" investigation of itself. This investigation will focus on Baltimore, where O'Malley used to be Mayor.

H/T Christopher.

Governor Martin O’Malley announced today that he has granted the Office of the Attorney General the authority to investigate, and if appropriate, prosecute conduct involving the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

Earlier today, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler requested the authority to investigate allegations of the events surrounding ACORN. The Governor granted the authority pursuant to Article V, §3 of the Constitution of Maryland.

The Office of the Attorney General is authorized to use all necessary subpoena powers, to present to an appropriate grand jury any evidence and testimony considered necessary to carry out this authorization and directive, and to act with the full powers, rights and privileges possessed by a State’s Attorney. If criminal conduct is uncovered by this probe, the Office of Attorney General is authorized to bring and to prosecute appropriate charges in any court of this State against any and all persons and entities involved in or associated with the crimes.

Obama, naturally, played dumb Sunday during his interviews on 87 different news programs that he wasn't really up to speed on the nationwide scandal plaguing this group he hardly knows anything about, yet did years of work for.

Oh, that ACORN?

Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.

"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.

Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.

Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.

Mr. Obama's success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.

In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn's leaders prior to their political arm's endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."

But the Obama campaign didn't appear eager to discuss the candidate's ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.

Yeah, but he's not following it closely.

Neither, apparently, is absentee Attorney General Eric Holder. I'd be harsher in my criticism of Holder, but that would be raaaaacist.

The fact the US AG is absent on this is precisely why we need a special prosecutor. You know, to do the job the American people want done but Democrats want to pretend isn't a problem.

Despite his status as a Democrat, it seems O'Malley has a history with this thug group, and it isn't pretty.

*In 1999 angry ACORN demonstrators showed up at the campaign headquarters of Democratic Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who at that time was running for mayor of Baltimore. The group chanted "What's the difference between slum landlords and the Aryan brotherhood?" It was a reference to campaign money they mistakenly thought O'Malley had taken from a notorious slumlord, and their belief that a white supremacist group had backed the Democrat.

*O'Malley dismissed ACORN as "professional protestors" when they targeted him again three years later. The rabble-rousers dumped garbage on the steps of Baltimore's City Hall and then rallied on his front lawn at home. "They unloaded a busload of people shouting pretty ugly things and scared the daylights out of my wife and kids. I thought it was a pretty cruddy thing to do," O'Malley told the Baltimore Sun in 2002.

Oh, but they're just in existence to provide tax advice and help the poor ... and threaten and intimidate people who stand in their way.

Get in people's faces, as a famed community organizer once urged supporters to do.

Court Upholds Maryland Gay Marriage Ban

Odd how this story came out several hours ago and there's virtual silence on it.

Of course, were it ruled the other way, it's be the top story on every network.

Must be OJ, or the taser idiot.

Or (gasp!) media bias.

Court upholds Md. gay marriage ban

BALTIMORE - Plaintiffs vowed to take the fight over gay marriage in Maryland to the Legislature after the state's highest court threw out a suit challenging a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

In a 4-3 decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that the state's 1973 ban on gay marriage does not discriminate on the basis of gender and does not deny any fundamental rights guaranteed by the state constitution. The court also found that the state has a legitimate interest in promoting opposite-sex marriage.

"Our opinion should by no means be read to imply that the General Assembly may not grant and recognize for homosexual persons civil unions or the right to marry a person of the same sex," Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr. wrote for the majority.

Plaintiffs said that the judges missed a historic opportunity to strike down a discriminatory law. Legislators on both sides of the debate predicted action on the issue in the next session. The heavily Democratic legislature has passed several gay-rights laws in recent years but has not voted on legalizing same-sex marriage or civil unions.

"I think history will hold them in contempt," plaintiff Lisa Polyak said of the judges. "To create a legal solution in a vacuum, that doesn't recognize that the constitution is there to support the people, is to create an ignorant and irrelevant solution."

State Sen. Richard Madaleno, who is openly gay, said he plans to introduce a bill to allow same-sex marriage. He also expects a proposal to create civil unions.

"I think we'll have a lengthy discussion next session about what the options are for legal recognition for gay people," Madaleno said.