After reading this title I know many are sitting in their chairs wondering what exactly I am talking about. The great left conspiracy theory? WTF BBQ? :( What I mean is that over the last decade or so there has been a conspiracy to move our country further to the left, i.e. liberalism/socialism, than ever before. How? By subtly subverting our government and our economy. The left championed "Clintoncare" back in the mid-90's as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Even with similar numbers in Congress as we see today it failed to pass muster and was left by the way side as "Slick Willy"discovered that America was more conservative than he ever knew. While this was going on the Clinton Administration subtly subverted the country by passing new Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing standards, which basically stated that there was a disparagement in home ownership across both racial and economic boundaries. In other words too many rich white peoplewere home owners and too many blacks and Hispanics were not.

How is this bad? That's an easy question to answer: Poor people do not own homes at the same rates as rich people for three reasons; they lack higher education, they lack financial savvy, or they lack gainful employment. Huh? If they lack education they are less likely to find a job that pays more than the minimum wage. If they ;lack financial savvy they are less likely to be able to manage what money they do have and investments in such a way as to lead to home ownership. If they lack gainful employment then they do not have the spare cash necessary to begin the home buying process, such as making down payments. The key word there is gainful employment. Many Americans are employed, and many of them make over the poverty level in a given year, but many are not gainfully employed, which means that at any given time their available capital for investment (whether that be stocks or real estate) is limited by which bills are currently due or past due. Basically they make just enough money to not receive welfare but not enough to spend $5000 on the down payment of a new home.

So, here comes HUD saying that more of these poor people need to be homeowners. And then groups like ACORNgot involved and started pressing banks to make these risky home loans as well. Then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jump in and start telling these banks that they would basically buy these risky loans as mortgage backed securities which they then sold to other financial companies. Certain members of Congress saw that these lending practices could lead to trouble and saw that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a lot of other financial institutions could be in a lot of trouble and pushed for reform, especially with Freddie and Fannie because of their GSE (government sponsored entity) status. Certain key Democrats denounced the allegations as "unfounded"; and "unnecessary"; and a couple came very close to calling the allegations against Freddie and Fannie racist. Maxine Waters even stated that both were doing very well and that there was nothing to worry about, especially at Fannie Mae, headed by Franklin Raines.

Then we have the housing bubble collapse. Everyone, Republicans included, rushed to "save the economy" by passing the TARP bailout Everyone was rushing around trying to look like they were the one's who were doing it all to save it all. If McCain has stuck by his "not going to campaign til this is fixed" gun he might be in the White House today instead of Barack. But he didn't and look what it has gotten us: back door socialism... The government has fired the CEO of General Motors, they are forcing Chrysler to merge with Fiat, and they are imposing massive taxes on AIG bonus recipients. And they want more. They want to control compensation across the board in the financial sector.

Let me spell it out for some of you who are not as quick on the uptake as the rest of us are.
     1) Clinton era HUD standards caused banks to start making risky home loans to "poor minorities" in an effort to have :"equality."
     2) Uncontrolled sub-prime lending, backed by Fannie, Freddie and ACORN led to the "housing bubble"
     3) The government now has or is gaining control over two major sectors of our economy: the financial sector and the automotive                    sector.
     4) Socialism.

Can you follow that sequence from beginning to end or is that to convoluted for you? There's more in part two, coming at you later this week. I'll leave you now with a quote.

"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."-Norman Thomas, former six time Socialist Party of America Presidential Candidate