What follows is reprinted in its entirety, without permission.
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights
--Orson Scott Card, Oct. 5, 2008
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC
An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
--------
You can find Card's original post at The Ornery American
From Wikipedia:
"Card identifies himself as a Democrat because he is pro-gun control/anti-National Rifle Association, highly critical of free-market capitalism, and because he believes that the Republican party in the South continues to tolerate racism. Card encapsulated his views thus:[12]
"Maybe the Democrats will even accept the idea that sometimes the people don't want to create your utopian vision (especially when your track record is disastrous and your "utopias" keep looking like hell)... The Democratic Party ought to be standing as the bulwark of the little guy against big money and rapacious free-market capitalism, here and abroad. After all, the Republicans seem to be dominated by their own group of insane utopians—when they're not making huggy-huggy with all those leftover racists from the segregationist past.""
It sucks that media is no longer a force for good in this nation.
It sucks that most Americans believe the tripe media vomits out each [morning/news cycle] for daily general consumption.
How do you like the taste of vomit in your mouth, folks? That nasty taste and sting of acid?
For God's sake, and your own, will you please stop allowing these pretenders to rape your intellect. Learn. To. Think. For. Yourself!
What's wrong with you people!?
If Mr. Card believes that the most important facts are about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mack, Rep. Dodd & Rep. Frank. Then writing blistering op-eds like this are a great way for him to promote his viewpoint. But to say that what is most important to him should also be most important to everyone else is high hubris.
And EL if you agree with Mr. Card that's fine, but just because he is famous and shares your view does not make his assertions any more important.
I'd give Mr. Card's words more credibility if he was less partisan. Because on this issue he clearly has conservative-republican views. No once did he apportion any blame to conservatives, or those corporate money interests that may have caused the mortgage meltdown. Does he have no blame for companies that knowingly sold mortgages to high-risk individuals?
Democrats.
Who tried to install oversight?
The very fact that you won't even look at Democrat malfeasance speaks volumes.
To quote the article:
"It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
"What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay."
This is historically not factual in the real world, at least so far as I have seen. What I have seen is that community organizations pressured banks to end the illegal and unethical practice of redlining - not giving loans to individuals in poor sections of town.
There is a difference between pressuring banks to give loans to people who are otherwise worthy of loans except for their location and pressuring banks to give loans to unworthy applicants.
Community organizations encouraged the former, not the latter - at least the ones I know of personally.
I hold all of congress responsible for the deregulation of the finance and securities industry that allowed the practices of probity and responsibility to be subsumed by corporate greed.
So far neither Dems or Reps have shown me specific laws that one can point to in order to affix blame to one side or the other. So when I hear someone like Mr. Card who can only see culpability in one half of the congress then I am more likely to dismiss his views as partisan.
MSNBC Teams Up With ACORN, La Raza
"MSNBC has launched a news project with a variety of left-wing special interest groups to boost their Election Day coverage and help viewers experiencing problems at the polls.
"One of the groups involved in MSNBC's "Election Protection" project is the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. ACORN has been involved in rampant voter registration fraud across the nation this election cycle and is actively supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for president.
""Our partnership with Election Protection will play a major role in NBC News' 'Making Your Vote Count’ coverage, said Phil Alongi, Executive Producer of NBC News' Election Coverage in an Oct. 22 press release. "Not only will we be able to direct voters who are experiencing problems with a hotline to call, we will also have our team of reporters and producers follow-up on the information Election Protection is gathering."
"When asked for comment about ACORN's role in the project MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines wrote Townhall in an email "this a question for them, not us.""
That's right. It's not a question for them because they are NOT journalists.
The facts in the article that Eric posted are accurate, whether they fit your particular political bent (pun intended) or not.
It is awfully convenient for you to blame the whole war on President Bush, when the Democrats all voted for it (with very rare exception), blame Clinton's recession on the Bush Administration, ignore the fact that the U.S. has not been attacked since 9/11, etc, etc, and then when confronted with undeniable proof of Democrat incompetence and corruption, say "I blame the WHOLE Congress..."
You hack.
Don't expect me to ever take you seriously again.
You are a puppet.
The Unemployment rate this past month held at 6.1%, which means that, even in the "worst economy in 50 years", (unless you count the Carter Administration), 93.9% of the U.S. population have jobs.
The unemployment rate is rising slightly, but so is the median income (3.6% rise in the past year) which means that the people who are working are making more than they did last year. The U.S. Employment numbers are the envy of the whole world.
Obama's plan to give employers a $3000 tax credit for every new employee is ridiculous. A new employee costs $30,000 to $40,000 per year. NOBODY is going to hire someone to get $3000, and lose $27,000. (NEWS FLASH!! Employers do not hire people in order to provide people with jobs... They hire people because there is a task that needs to be done.)
(And if the new employee does not bring in more money than they cost, they don't get to keep the job. IN EVERY CASE.)
And why do you think that the stock market is so wild these days?
could it possibly be because Obama is promising to punish the creation of wealth at every turn, and severely, if elected, and the polls all sample Obama supporters by a lopsided margin? (It's happening...)
What would it take for you Obamatons to realize that when he promises "change", he means the end of the American way of life?
None other than Joe freakin' Biden told us in no uncertain terms not to vote for Obama just this past weekend.
What else do you guys need?
Every other president since the beginning of the 1900's kept our country safe not just for the last seven years of their term but for the full eight. From start to finish. The fact that we haven't been attacked since 9/11 is very faint praise indeed.
I could reply to the rest of Tug's comments, but they evidence such a lack of knowledge about me or my positions that it seems like a herculean task to educate the man.
If I have misunderstood your positions, then it is your own lack of communication skills that are to blame, not my lack of education about you. (A subject in which I could have absolutely no less interest.)
The smarter you think you are, the dumber you look, my friend.
Facts are facts, Ben.
You hate Republicans, and everything that they stand for. I get that.
That doesn't make you intelligent, or educated, or even enlightened.
it simply makes you wrong.
You forgot about the hostages taken while carter was President. That felt like an attack on America to me...
Oh, and the Embasy Bombings which occured under Clinton, and the U.S.S. Cole, and the WTC Bombing in '93, also under Clinton...
The difference is that Clinton and Carter refused to do anything substantive about these attacks.
Democrats.
They decry "Cowboy Deplomacy" in favor of [female genitalia] Diplomacy, which Obama claims to believe in.
Surrender from a position of strength, if you will.
I've read your comments here for about two years now, Ben, and you don't impress me. You have no interest in any viewpoint but your own, as evidenced by your own screen name. (the unbeliever).
You reject facts, no matter how clear, you ridicule logic, and Faith, and everything good.
You refuse to acknowledge any evidence that the people that you support might be wrong, and respond with a barrage of nonsense whenever you are challenged.
Don't presume that you could ever educate me about anything.
It takes a willful embrace of ignorance to take the positions that you take here, and I have absolutely no interest in your opinions.
People like you are the problem in America, and will never be any part of any solution to any problem here.
You will only ever be a drag and a distraction to any solution that more enlightened people than you fight for and overcome your kind to enact.
You are clearly unable to make a qualified decision on something that important.
Neither one of you.
I'm so glad Eric taught me the art of the hyperlink!
As to the nasty lenders, before the Dem pressures on lenders, things like 20% downstrokes and other proofs of ability to pay were standard in applying for loans and mortgages. When the heat was applied, the lenders sought ways to preserve their revenues that were now burdened by the pressure to lend to high-risk people. Fannie and Freddie provided that out. So they satisified the mandates and bundled the loans to sell to Fannie and Freddie. Perhaps they should have stood firmly and refused to buckle under Dem pressures. Yeah. Like you guys would have. But they didn't. They did what they wouldn't have done had they not been pressured. In other words, it never would'a if not for the Dems.
And redlining? Had the borrowers met the criteria, it would not have mattered where they lived. Either the lenders are greedy bastards or they aren't. You can't have it both ways.
Beirut bombing, 1983, 241 American soldiers died. Reagan's response: much discussion, nothing done, Hezbollah strengthened.
Grenada's safe for democracy, though.
Typical. Just like Geoffrey and some others, you bash the source rather than the info provided. The Heritage Foudation is a respected conservative think tank. That they are conservative does not mean they are wrong. Try again.
you and Dan both are pathetic human beings who should not attempt to participate in politics, neither through commentary, nor the voting process.
Nonetheless, Tuggy, I love you! And, apparently much to your chagrin, I'll be out there participating in my community and city and state and nation, working for a better world as best I can.
Sorry, you'll have to get over it.
Pelosi and Obama's reference to deregulation of the financial markets is political shorthand that is misleading. OMG, did I just say that?
The meltdown occurred began because high-risk Hedge Fund business, both by major investment banks like Bear Stearns and very large private hedge fund only businesses were making HUGE profits on bundled securities. Hedge Funds take millions of dollars of investment from high net-worth individuals and investment from institutional plans, like pension and 401Ks, and with these millions in hand leverage larger credit amounts from other banks on the back of their clients' monies and buy even more bundled securities and sell them at an even greater profit -- all in order to increase their profit on bundled securities which remain after they pay back the credit they got. The profits are returned to their clients and themselves so everyone has made money on their money.
The problem was the bundled securities that were bought included sub prime mortgages. When these mortgages were defaulted on, the bundled securities dropped like a stone, the hedge funds began bleeding money because they could not sell them off fast - thereby raising alarms to clients that they were invested in bad funds which would prompt clients to demand their money back (like a run on the bank) so hedge fund managers began to lie to mislead their clients about the value of the funds.
The could not mislead, however, their creditor institutions who knew just as well that sub prime mortgages were toast, so they stopped approving massive credit lines to investment funds -- credit lines that have to be approved every day at midnight.
The funds collapsed, clients lost huge amounts of investments, investment banks did not have enough liquidity to cover the loses and so down went Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers.
Now, get this: All this greed for massive profit built on sub prime mortgages... NOT REGULATED.
Funds with 100 or fewer investors and sold via private placement (not advertised to general public) fall within the Securities Act of 1933 and Investment Company Act of 1940 and were NOT REGULATED BY THE SEC.
From 1949 to late 90s this was not a big deal and they were not built on sub prime mortgages. Only in this decade, 2002 on, was there a massive proportionate increase in Hedge Funds and were their investments in sub prime mortgages.
A few Republican and Democratic legislators saw great trouble in this and called for hearings for regulation. Republican chairs did not heed this call and President Bush refused to see a problem.
By the time Democrats took control, they had less than a year before two Bear Stearns hedge funds (High Grade and High Grade Enhanced Leverage) failed and revealed all the fault lines built on sub prime mortgages.
Banks greed in mortgage credit, investors greed in securities profit. One not regulated nearly enough. The other, not regulated at all.
This is what the Heritage Foundation does not want to advertise.
Only in the last seven years or so could everything have been put together and only then by bright people in the know.
Bush could not have. He didn't know and he is not bright. The Republican chairmen did not really know until it was too late. The Democratic leadership did not move in an aggressive fashion but they did not full know either.
Some did. Chuck Schumer. Chuck Hagel, Henry Waxman (I don't know where Barney Frank was at the time).
Those best positioned to know were those making the largest profits. And they still are.
My problem is that McCain's plans don't recognize any of this, although I am certain that he himself does.
Obama's plan does see this, but makes political hay out of pointing fingers at Bush.
For both it is not a set of issues easy to communicate and get votes from.
No, Feodor, this began under Carter, got worse under Clinton, and melted down on the watch of a Democrat controlled House and Senate.
And John McCain, for one, foresaw it, the Bush Administration has pushed for action to arrest the fall of these institutions every year, but the legislation that could have lessened the damaged was blocked each time by Democrats, who were on the payroll of Feddie and Frannie et al.
Barama Obiden were bought and paid for, as were Barny Frank, Chris Dodd, Pelosi and Reid.
And getting back to the point of Eric's post, had these people been Republicans, they would be on their way to prison right now, rather than in charge of the bailout programs.
Space Aliens could have landed in the parking lot of the New York Times headquarters, and they would have been on page four, with the first three pages devoted to the Republican "Fanniegate" scandal.
You know it's true.
You are one of the most entertaining people on the whole blogosphere.
And I know that you and I will cancel each other out at the polls in a couple of weeks, but that's okay too.
I'm still betting that there are more of me than there are of you, so we'll see.
1983, US barracks in Beirut bombed four days after US invaded Grenada.
Miscalculation? Eye off the ball.
Response? None.
Result? Hezbollah strengthened.
President? RR
Tested? And failed.
Deregulation? Reagan policy for eight years.
A Republican could make a plausible argument that when GHW Bush raised taxes (sinking his reelection bid), he set the table for economic success under Clinton.
Your always partial hold on history corrupts your hold on answers.
Your grasp of history is shakier. Tug's is far more solid. The link I tried to post spoke of deregulation of the industry now on the rocks, not deregulation in general. There's a big difference, especially since the discussion revolves around the current financial crises.
Regarding your hedge fund analysis, what you fail to acknowledge is that without the efforts of Carter, Clinton, Freddie and Fannie and the Dems like Frank and others, the sub-prime failures wouldn't have been a factor in how the hedge fund managers acted. They were re-acting to that which shouldn't have been a problem. This is the point: Had the Dems not pushed their silly ideas, forcing banks and lenders to act in a manner they normally wouldn't, none of this would be taking place.
You don't "force banks and lenders to act in a manner they normally wouldn't."
They don't do anything they don't want to do except collapse.
Thus the problem with no regulation, Marshall, not deregulation. Leveraged investing is always been outside regulation and long been very greedy. The collapse of the credit market due to sub prime mortgages alone would have been small potatoes by comparison.
Your attacks on Chicago are of no concern to me. The wind blows indeed, but so do you. At least it's not hot air with which we deal. Not true of yourself.
To believe that the lenders weren't under pressure to lower their lending standards in order to provide loans to more people is to ignore reality. Are you saying that banks WANT to collapse? Your goofiness shows.
More goofiness is in misreading the link I posted that defends Bush against charges of deregulation. It's nice, however, that you agree with him in his desire to prevent what a lack of regulation has brought to us.
Leveraged investing is not greedy in and of itself. A loan to buy investment property is leverage. Leverage is what makes futures trading profitable.
But it was indeed the sub-prime situation that brought about this debacle. Without these loans to people with low chance of repayment, there is little risk in the type of leveraged investing you diminish.
But the former Fed Chairman has a clue. In testimony before House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he said:
“'Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.'"
As far back as 1994, Mr. Greenspan staunchly and successfully opposed tougher regulation on derivatives.
But on Thursday, he agreed that the multitrillion-dollar market for credit default swaps, instruments originally created to insure bond investors against the risk of default, needed to be restrained."
And then, Marshall, in a damning blow to your case:
Many Republican lawmakers on the oversight committee tried to blame the mortgage meltdown on the unchecked growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies that were placed in a government conservatorship last month. Republicans have argued that Democratic lawmakers blocked measures to reform the companies.
But Mr. Greenspan, who was first appointed by President Ronald Reagan, placed far more blame on the Wall Street companies that bundled subprime mortgages into pools and sold them as mortgage-backed securities. Global demand for the securities was so high, he said, that Wall Street companies pressured lenders to lower their standards and produce more “paper.”
SO, the pressure on lender was not (God, Marshall, how off base can you really get if you try) 30 YEARS AGO!
It was in this decade.
Who should we believe, an 18 year Fed Chairman admitting to some mistakes?
Or a tattoo artist?
As to demonizing the middle class, I've done no such thing. I've only demonized those who have falsified loan applications or have sought to obtain loans on which they couldn't conceivably make good.
Who's the tattoo artist to which you refer? Don't much care for tattoos myself, but those artists are far more tolerable than bullshit artists like yourself.
So, you're saying we actually should believe you over Mr. Greenspan?
I've done as much for bullshit artists.
What I'm saying is not a matter of who to believe, since Greenspan isn't speaking to the same point as was I.
Yeah, Greenspan's all flaky and off point.
("Mr. Greenspan placed far more blame on the Wall Street companies that bundled subprime mortgages into pools and sold them as mortgage-backed securities." Which started when? 2002.)
I was speaking to when it all began and who provoked it all. Greenspan was speaking to a time more recent. Please pay attention.
Mortgage failures are tough on the economy.
But the tsunami was the former.