Culture of corruption: Banking hypocrite Maxine Waters
My syndicated column today takes on racial demagogue and crony of color Maxine Waters, whose crooked ways I’ve covered since my first days at the L.A. Daily News. It’s about time the rest of the media put her under the microscope. Wait ’til she starts beating them over the head with the race card. It’s worked for decades. Now, she’ll just have to scream louder. I am looking forward to watching the Democrats try to ignore this most beastly example of the culture of corruption in their fold.
(Reminder: Go back and look at my liveblogging of the TARP debate. Note how aggressive Waters was in taking a lead role pushing congressional black caucus members to swallow the crap sandwich. No disclosure of her own self interest in the matter. She’s just a Champion of The People, speaking Truth to Power. And here’s another reminder of minority racketeers pushing for their bailout cut with Waters’ assistance. Business as usual, rainbow coalition shakedown-style.)
I think we should start referring to Waters as “Bank of OneUnited,” the same way she referred to bank execs by their company name.
***
Maxine Waters: Banking on hypocrisy
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009
At a flail-and-wail House hearing last month, California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters melted down in front of big banking CEOs. “Raise your hand! Raise your hand!” she shrieked as she harangued the executives on their business practices and management of federal bailout money. Sneering at the “captains of the universe” whom she refused to address by name (“You, Bank of America!”), Rep. Waters excoriated the corporate heads for their greed. ” All of my political life,” Waters bragged, “I have been in disagreement with the banking and mostly financial services community because of practices that I have believed to be not in the best interest always of the very people that they claim to serve.”
As you’ll soon see, however, the ethically conflicted Rep. Waters has her own special definition of what’s in “the best interest” of the people she claims to serve. While she crusades against crony pseudo-capitalism, she is one of its most hypocritical beneficiaries and advocates. Cronyism comes in all colors. Waters has once again earned her title as one of the “Most Corrupt” members of Congress from the left-leaning (yes, left-leaning) Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
The bank CEOs sat meekly during Waters’ verbal flogging. But as she frothed at the mouth, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Franks covered up the microphone and chastised her briefly. To no avail. Waters’ motor mouth kept on running. Did the banks raise interest rates on credit card customers after they took Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money, she thundered? Thumping her fists on the table, she then railed about their loan modification policies (“How many require that you have to be behind by two months!?”). Blustering about underwriting fees they paid themselves on government-backed bond sales, she yelled: “You made money off the TARP money!” One of her fellow Democrats finally ended the diatribe: “I’m going to have to calm you down because when the Chairman gets back he’s going to have to penalize me.”
Fast-forward a month later. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the high-and-mighty Waters had a personal and financial stake in Boston-based OneUnited, a minority bank that received $12 million in TARP money under smelly circumstances. The banks’ executives donated $12,500 to her congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into One United. They’ve profited handsomely from their relationship with the bank:
“Congressional financial-disclosure forms show Ms. Waters acquired OneUnited stock worth between $250,000 and $500,000 in March 2004, as did Mr. Williams. Mr. Williams joined the board of OneUnited that year. Each sold shares in September 2004 — including Ms. Waters’s entire stake — but Mr. Williams continued to hold varying amount of the company’s stock. In the lawmaker’s most recent financial-disclosure form, dated May 2008 and covering the prior year, Ms. Waters reported that her husband held between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of the bank’s stock. Mr. Williams also received interest payments from a separate holding at the bank, also worth between $250,000 and $500,000. The 2008 form doesn’t specify what that is. Mr. Williams stepped down from the bank’s board last spring. It couldn’t be learned whether he still owns stock in the bank. Mr. Williams didn’t return calls seeking comment.”
Waters (along with Rep. Frank) participated directly in pressuring the feds for OneUnited’s piece of the bailout pie. She personally contacted the Treasury Department last December requesting $50 million for the company– and failed to disclose her ties to the bank to them. The government ended up coughing up $12 million in TARP funding for OneUnited — despite another government agency rapping the bank in October 2008 for “operating without effective underwriting standards and practices,” “operating without an effective loan documentation program” and “engaging in speculative investment practices.”
Oh, and get this: The favored bank of Maxine Waters was also penalized for alleged excessive executive compensation. The FDIC ordered the bank to “sell all bank-owned automobiles,” require reimbursement for executives’ car purchases (according to the Boston Business Journal, OneUnited CEO Kevin Cohee was cruising around in a 2008 Porsche SUV), and cease payments on a $6 million Santa Monica beachfront home purchased by Cohee, his wife who served as bank president, and others.
Responding to scrutiny of the bank’s special treatment, Cohee is now accusing critics of — yep, you guessed it — racism.
Now, who is sick of Democrat shakedown artists sanctimoniously lecturing others about the culture of corruption? Raise your hand! Raise your hand!
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As a former teacher working in her district, I can tell you that most people there pride themselves on ignorance. You can’t act silly enough to be ridiculed. ANY attention is good, since they almost all want to be famous. I used to ask my classes of about 40 kids who thought they would be in the NBA. Almost every male hand raised. The dropout rate was at 80-90%, depending on how you counted it (they have tricks). And, of those graduating, only 5% or so qualified for a four year institution. Kids would ask me to fail them so they wouldn’t be embarrassed by having an “A” on their report card. Imagine.
The things you (most likely) value they find ‘whack’ and ‘acting white’. Imagine a value system where minor disputes over disrespect, maybe stepping on someone’s shoe, can be handled with a dance-off or a gun, and you will start to understand the level of idiocy in our inner cities.
Ok so the idiots in her district elected her. How does she get elected to a committee? She shouldn’t be allowed to speak in public!! I don’t know how those executives keep a straight face!
dimocrats use a quota system. a “cross section of america” means color of skin is more important then any other factor. obviously content of character cannot be applied to mad max.
My niece thinks along the same lines.
Tuesday, would this qualify as letting them know:
Being of an artistic bent, my niece’s creating (as various congress-critters & other administrative lice come to her attention…) a series of lucite sculptures — what I’d call an “obelisk”, about 1.5ft tall & she’s said the other dim. follow the “golden ratio” — each one contains a gift from her Great Dane Cyclone & is further personalized by tokens representing that Congress-critters’ or Tick’s departure from the Constitutional-True.
They’re beautifully done. I remember when she was creating McCain’s. In addition to Cyclone’s donation, it contained among other things, a campaign picture of Johnny McStabbinOurBack, a pile of pesos w/a sign on a post saying “bribe” next to a wire fence artistically broken while a couple of people crossed through the gap. It also had a tiny mockup of the Constitutional Amendments with part of the 1st noticably redacted (using glow-in-the-dark/daylight blood-colored ink of her own formulation). I’ll let you guess what was redacted…
She then sends them to the subject. No one’s written to thank her for their sculpture…
She’s created & serialized these sculptures for quite a few of our “leaders” incl. Bwarney Fwank, Jacoline Murtha (who has the distiction of being the only ex-marine existant), Teddy K, Sheets Bird, Gramnasty, and Arlen the Friendly Ghost (of Liberalism). She’s also creating one for Giethner[sp?], Rangel, Fast Eddie Rendell, Arney the Wallet-terminator, Obie, Reid and Queen Nancy.
She decided that since these people only listen to Leftys, perhaps if she uses the same methods, they might out of confusion listen to her pov.
Yes, I expect to hear one day that the “Party Bus” has been to see her.
Maybe I should suggest to her Ms Maxi-Pad as a subject of one…
Fox News has a special about the financial mess on – right now
Easy – the same way Barney “Chin Dimples” Frank and Chris Dodd do. Seniority and race (in some cases).
Well said, Mr. Felix. Well said indeed!
And I have never heard anyone explain to me how this “inversion of values” is the fault of a white person.
Black society has been moving backwards ever since it adopted race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as their spokespersons. In addition, mainstream society has little patience for that garbage known as “hip-hop” — sometimes mistakenly called “music.” To compare that trash with the likes of The Commodores, Earth, Wind and Fire, The Temptations, The Four Tops, etc. is a grand illustration of just how far Black culture has fallen.
Martin Luther King must be spinning in his grave.
I totally agree. And it is understandable why many people do NOT have sympathy for the blacks in poverty. So many have chosen the culture of poverty and have embraced it. They listen to hip-hop, and seem to aspire to the lowest form of lifestyle possible. They pull their pants down around their hips and talk so strange and fast no one can understand them…know what I’m sayin’? They continue to treat their women like “ho’s”, get them pregnant and leave them to raise their children alone. The women aren’t much better because they allow it to continue. These people don’t WANT to change. They think they are cool, when they are actually first class losers. If you criticize them, you are racist. Personally, I give up.
Term limits would have been a blessing but that is not reality here. The accumulation of power & influence from too many years feeding at the public trough is a part of the problem here.
Catering to special interests is a contributing factor. How divisive or disturbing would a Caucasian Congressional Caucus be? Any less divisive than the Congressional Black Caucus is today? The Race based Caucus notion should be dismissed immediately for what it is.
Members of Congress that use their office for the exertion of undue influence or abuse the power of their office should have been subject to ethics charges but Caucus Membership may have prevented that in this case.
There is no equal treatment under the law but there is great influence here that steered tax dollars into some pockets for no other reason than a race based special influence. As far as logic dictates, Banks have the same legal recourse as I do. Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and FDIC to cover the account holders. This is a travesty pure and simple. It is about Criminal activity, not race. Until the New Racism is confronted and corrected we can look forward to more of these shenanigans and more waste, fraud and abuse.
On March 15th, 2009 at 4:32 am, old trooper said:
Exactly.
On a similar note, there is very real discrimination going on with the awarding of governement contracts. The discrimination is against white men.
Anyone who is familiar with how government contracts are awarded knows that companies owned by women or non-caucasian males are routinely given preferrential treatment over companies owned by caucasian males.
Yes, there is racism.
Yes, there is sexism.
But the victims are no longer blacks, latinos, and women. The victims are caucasian men.
Oh, you can work a government contract if you are a caucasian man, but more often than not you are forced to do it as a subcontractor for another company that is owned by a racially-approved and/or gender-approved “minority”. The primary contractor makes money off the subcontractor for no other reason than providing access to the government contract…access that the subcontractor would not be given directly.
Minus any physical abuse, it is the modern day equivalent of a plantation, with the roles of the plantation owners and the plantation workers reversed.
This woman is a complete buffoon, besides being a racist. Hey Maxine, let’s talk “race”.
Remove her arse from Washington!
Um, Maxine? The glasses don’t make you appear any more intelligent. Especially when they’re coupled with your orating mouth.