This is the same lady I mentioned in the other Acorn housing thread. On a Fox news interview, I couldn't believe when I heard this...
"Here's what I believe. In this industry...there is no one that takes out a mortgage...that you can blame the victim and say 'they created it".
So according to them, everyone that's in a mortgage they can't afford it's not their fault. It's all the banks fault.
I will give her some credit on a few exchanges though...
Stuart Varney: ACORN is well known for looking at banks and saying “give us a loan,”….they don’t give you a loan so you scream racism you then invade their offices and demonstrate outside the private homes of bank executives, you embarrass the banks and you force them to give you loans on favorable terms, now…those loans cannot be repaid, you will not leave those homes and your claiming a right to stay in them and have a right to my money to make sure you stay in them, again…I come back to it Bertha, they may be be foreclosing every 13 seconds but you have absolutely no right to that house.
Bertha Lewis: Well banks don’t have a right to discriminate.
Stuart Varney: Again, your taking a parallel track you see….Where is the right?
Stuart brought up the whole racism thing, and then when she responds he accuses her of taking a parallel track. Not if you brought it up yourself.
Also this one...(bolding mine)
Stuart Varney: Where is the right? Where is the right to my money? You are demanding money from me.
Bertha Lewis: We’re not demanding money from you.
Stuart Varney: Yes you are.
Bertha Lewis: We’re demanding that the banks renegotiate these loans
Stuart Varney: It is taxpayer money in this plan, which you propose to bail out your people to stay in the homes they cannot afford. You are demanding my money and your saying you have a right to my money. It is no excuse to go on a parallel track and say “well the banks have no right to 700 billion dollars,” that’s not the point madam. You are demanding my money directly to your people. And that’s wrong.
Ok, just where do you think we got the 700 Billion dollars to bail out the banks?! That was taxpayer money too. So that actually is the point.
I'm not saying she's right. She's not. But the blame isn't all on the homeowners or all on the banks. Lots of blame for both. She'd get a lot farther in the public's eyes by using a different tact than that housing is a right.
"Here's what I believe. In this industry...there is no one that takes out a mortgage...that you can blame the victim and say 'they created it".
So according to them, everyone that's in a mortgage they can't afford it's not their fault. It's all the banks fault.
I will give her some credit on a few exchanges though...
Stuart Varney: ACORN is well known for looking at banks and saying “give us a loan,”….they don’t give you a loan so you scream racism you then invade their offices and demonstrate outside the private homes of bank executives, you embarrass the banks and you force them to give you loans on favorable terms, now…those loans cannot be repaid, you will not leave those homes and your claiming a right to stay in them and have a right to my money to make sure you stay in them, again…I come back to it Bertha, they may be be foreclosing every 13 seconds but you have absolutely no right to that house.
Bertha Lewis: Well banks don’t have a right to discriminate.
Stuart Varney: Again, your taking a parallel track you see….Where is the right?
Stuart brought up the whole racism thing, and then when she responds he accuses her of taking a parallel track. Not if you brought it up yourself.
Also this one...(bolding mine)
Stuart Varney: Where is the right? Where is the right to my money? You are demanding money from me.
Bertha Lewis: We’re not demanding money from you.
Stuart Varney: Yes you are.
Bertha Lewis: We’re demanding that the banks renegotiate these loans
Stuart Varney: It is taxpayer money in this plan, which you propose to bail out your people to stay in the homes they cannot afford. You are demanding my money and your saying you have a right to my money. It is no excuse to go on a parallel track and say “well the banks have no right to 700 billion dollars,” that’s not the point madam. You are demanding my money directly to your people. And that’s wrong.
Ok, just where do you think we got the 700 Billion dollars to bail out the banks?! That was taxpayer money too. So that actually is the point.
I'm not saying she's right. She's not. But the blame isn't all on the homeowners or all on the banks. Lots of blame for both. She'd get a lot farther in the public's eyes by using a different tact than that housing is a right.
her being the face of ACORN is as fun to watch as DOC, sweetlouise, gtc, and Punter being the face of this forum's lefty movement
completely pathetic. seriously, how can they put her on TV when she has no idea how to debate and prove her point?
btw folks YOU DO NOT GET EVICTED IF YOU PAY YOUR BILLS unlike what this troll attempted to say
lol, tell me where in the constitution it says you have a right to own a home? ... well, we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. uh, ok, nice answer.
completely pathetic. seriously, how can they put her on TV when she has no idea how to debate and prove her point?
btw folks YOU DO NOT GET EVICTED IF YOU PAY YOUR BILLS unlike what this troll attempted to say
lol, tell me where in the constitution it says you have a right to own a home? ... well, we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. uh, ok, nice answer.
Um, it may be "cogent" but it has very little to do with the discussion
at hand.
No one is debating the idea that mankind should provide shelter for
their common man.
The debate is about the rights that people in this country have when they
have a contractual obligation to pay their mortgage in order to live
in the house that they "own" and for some reason or another do
not make those payments to the lender.
Let's not get distracted by bullshit. I am a landlord. If my tenant
stops paying to me his rent checks, I am out those monthly
monies that I use to pay the mortgage on the rental house.
When people stop paying their mortgage, other people are being
screwed out of that money.
There are admittedly more than a few social cliques within our fine nation which frown upon the notions of working to assure that all people - regardless of social stature - are assured decent shelter, a reliable source of food and more reasonable access to basic medical and health care needs.
I simply chose to drop out of such cliques when I hit my mid 30s.
I was in graduate school in my mid 30's (and in my early 30's and in my late 30's!) but by then I'd already seen through the facade. What bothers me now, though, isn't the dangerous rhetoric of the right, which seeks to instrumentalize all human activity, but that they're getting the middle and working classes to vote for the GOP and thus vote against their own self interest. But Perhaps the worm has turned. At least for a while it has, anyway.
no system is ever going to be perfect there are always going to be homeless people, poor people, hungry people regardless....with all the safety nets we have today tiz still sees people begging for change or sleeping on benches in his area.....
the choice is which is best
allow people to keep most of their money to spend on goods and invest in businesses to help create and keep jobs as well as donate to charities of their choice to help those in need
or take a huge chunk of people's wages and create this US vs. THEM mentality in the populace in that you are taking from me a hard working citizen to give to somebody who is sitting on their ass doing nothing and at the same time creating this humongous government beuracracy that is much less efficient in spending our money vs. say a charity of somebody's choice
the first option sounds much much better to me but what do i know
There will always be homeless people, poor people, and hungry people for as long as we decide that it's ok for there to be homeless people, poor people, and hungry people. We sure as hell have the money to make sure no one in this country has to go without shelter, food, and the basic necessities of 21st century life. We've chosen, though, to prioritize the spending of our enormous wealth-wealth so vast it couldn't even be dreamed of a mere 100 years ago--on other things. Homelessness, hunger, and poverty are political issues which we can solve politically. But we choose not to and a great part of the reason why we chose not to is because of the delusion that persists in this country that all one needs to do is work hard to get ahead. See, that shifts the blame for every failure onto the individual, a simply ludicrous proposition that assumes the individual exists in a vacuum outside of the rest of the social fabric. Do we have choices? Of course! Are they confined and defined by historical and social context? Obviously. To say otherwise makes no logical sense whatsoever. But a delusion that we're all equally free to go about accumulating and that there is an equality of opportunity has to persist or the very foundation of late modern capitalism will fail.
