Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Barney Frank

ACORN Defunding Bill Unconstitutional

dine — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:36:31 +0000

Dallas

Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Reform in New York which represented ACORN

Federal Judge Nina Gershon ruled unequivocally that the Congressional defunding restrictions on ACORN and all affiliated organizations were unconstitutional by breaching the U.S. Constitution’s prohibitions on Bills of Attainder and “ex post facto” laws. Reading the decision this morning, I can say that are arguments are straightforward, clear, and well researched

Judge Gershon eviscerates the sham attempts by the government to establish that their actions were not targeting ACORN by quoting from the the naked prejudicial attacks by Senators Kit Bond (R-Missouri) and Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska) and by carefully referencing the government’s admission that Congressman Darryl Issa (R-Ohio) and his own private office staff report on ACORN being a “criminal enterprise” was not commissioned by Congress, but were simply his own wild rantings, which she quotes in a footnote from one of his many press releases. The decision is understated but devastating to the government’s weak hand. Bill Quigley, our old friend from New Orleans who is now on leave from Loyola Law School and serving as legal director of the Center for Constitutional Reform in New York which represented ACORN, was quoted in an AP story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune saying he did not believe the government would appeal. That may be wistful spinning, but it is clear that whether the government appeals or not, the appeal has no chance of success against the ironclad Gershon decision. [Incidentally, Quigley was orginally contacted for help on this matter by longtime Louisiana ACORN director, Beth Butler, who set this defense in motion, but was abruptly and unjustly fired by current management inexplicably in mid-October, but that's another kettle of fish.]

It is interesting to note that the U. S. Supreme Court has only needed to rule five times on cases concerning “bills of attainder” in the last more than 200 years. Legislative punishment in the absence of fair trials are just really not part of the American way. Except it seems in reading Judge Gershon’s decision when it comes to politically reviled organizations like in this case suddenly ACORN and historically the Communists. In several of the cases discussed by Judge Gershon the Supreme Court had overturned attempts by Congress either in the open or behind closed doors to punish people and government employees that it believed to be commies by pushing them from employment and barring them from future employment. Have I mentioned that all of this ACORN-baiting is neo-McCarthyism? Yes, I think I have, and not surprisingly many of the lead cases here flowed from the original McCarthy era.

The decision issue a preliminary injunction in defense of ACORN stripped bare is simple: Congress has a lot of power but cannot single out a specific named organization – ACORN and its family of organizations – and punish them without investigation or trial. Normally that would seem beyond debate.

All of this leads me to the next question: how was this kind of prejudicial railroading of ACORN possible under this Congress in the age of Obama and supposedly with a significant Democratic majority. How can we have any leadership in this panicked herd mentality where so few are willing to stand against obvious injustice? How can so many of ACORN’s friends and allies who have hidden under the covers in recent months feel anything but shame?

I can only still marvel at Congressman Barney Frank’s comments to the Wall Street Journal after the original defunding amendments were passed where in two days of contradictory comments he said he would have voted for the defunding amendments even though he believed that such amendments were unconstitutional bills of attainder. Frank is more candid than most, but when even modestly liberal Congressmen are willing to embrace their own participation in admittedly unconstitutional actions, the admission of political cowardice is resounding.

I encourage people to read Judge Gershon’s decision. The attempts to silence a voice of the poor has to end. The madness must be stopped. There is no place to hide on this issue. No voice should go unheard.

Frank Among the Faithful

jstuart — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:31:48 +0000

Easthampton, MA I didn’t like paying for the privilege but the chance to hear Congressman and House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank pontificate to the faithful at the annual dinner of several small town committees in the Democratic Party heartland of Western Massachusetts was too good to miss. I also wrongly thought that this might be a small affair of 30-50 folks giving me a chance to actually pull the Congressman’s lapels and ask him to account for some of his actions recently where he has flip flopped on the Community Reinvestment Act and on how to deal with ACORN.

I was wrong! This was a tribal meeting of the faithful at the Log Cabin Restaurant where a sellout crowd that was surely 300 and perhaps 500 largely older and virtually all white folks crammed in to hear the gospel. Barney gave them a good show starting with his joke about being there with his partner and not liking the fact that he was often pilloried as a member of a discriminated against group: “partisan Democrats!” They howled. I jotted down a number of his one-liners in my program and then got out of Massachusetts without them, so I’ll save that for another day.

What interested me most as a barometer of the times was how he glossed over some issues and handled questions on others. I was interested in how he was going to advance or defend the President to the faithful here. All of this is particularly important because despite the relish he enjoys from his persona as an outside, Frank is right on the inside of all in dealing with all of the financial issues in the current meltdown.

He mentioned CRA several times and correctly argued that low and moderate income non-discriminatory lending was not a factor in the housing meltdown, which was especially interesting given yet another claim in the Wall Street Journal that day by a former government official. In his discussion of his hopes for some financial reforms in the future he didn’t mention having left CRA out of the package even as the Administration had proposed including the measure under financial consumer protection, which still seems best. In dealing with the limited and lame measures to solve the foreclosure crises, he mentioned the failure to amend the bankruptcy standards as a disappointment without any insight or confession for the faithful on how bank lobbyists had managed this unique trick in thwarting all stated Congressional intentions even while collecting a gazillion dollars in bailout monies. There’s a story here and it probably isn’t pretty, but it didn’t fit in a one-liner, so he counted on the fact that no one much was following the trail on that problem. The reforms he was proposing for the future were actually modest and drew only lukewarm applause.

When the question period finally arrived, almost all of the questions, some quite pointed were about the health care issue. One fellow asked why we couldn’t get “Medicare for all,” and Frank saw that’s going to probably take “more years than you or I have left.” Surprisingly, Frank was somewhat flatfooted on most of these questions, essentially saying that he was so busy on finance issues that he wasn’t as knowledgeable on these core concerns.

He was most unsettled when a well coifed woman asked a pointed question that implicitly insinuated that he and other Congressional representatives were getting a special deal on their insurance coverage. First, he tried to interrupt her, but she stubbornly insisted on finishing her question for whatever reason and backed him down. Then he answered that he was on Medicare and the federal government insurance identical to 3 million other federal employees, and though a great plan was not a special entitlement for the 500 odd elected representatives. He took some shots at not believing what was on the internet, and then for some reason repeated the same answer again including the defense, hardly needed among this adoring crowd, of the emergency clinic that was on the grounds and that they all paid an extra $500 or so to support. It was clear he was not used to these questions, didn’t like these questions, and for all his gruff and bluff, was as uncomfortable in the new polarized polity, as the rest of us are. Clearly the Congressmen for all of his bluff and bluster has gotten accustomed to being a character and outsider among the Wall Street and Washington crowd that daily traipses into his office, but is still trying to get a better grip at what is really happening on the grassroots.

He was whisked from the podium to the press conference. As he walked by us it was interesting to see how unlike the typical Boston area pol he seemed to be. He wasn’t working the crowd. He had given me a hello walking into the Log Cabin when we passed each other in the hallway, but watching him pass by here without shaking hands right and left was unusual.

Congressman Frank seemed an outsider here even among the faithful and an insider and defender of Washington, the Federal Reserve, and Wall Street. You figure?

Credit Card Rips

jstuart — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:28:00 +0000

New Orleans There is a lot of talk about reforming credit card fees and rates, but a lot of this seems just that: talk. The House Financial Services Committee chaired by Barney Frank has talked about capping rates, but also seems powerless in the wake of many companies (including my own Union Privilege Card offered by HSBC to the best of my knowledge!) raising the fees now ahead of any bill passage. That’s clearly wrong.

There’s a lot of this hustle-bustle going on. Floyd Norris made a good point about a month ago in a NY Times column about the poor subsidizing the rich when it comes to credit cards. Not surprisingly that angle caught my eye immediately. His point was that even though the stated price for certain items is the same (and required by law to be the same), whether we use cash or a credit card, the poor or working stiff without a credit card is laying down cash, while some of the better off are using a card, which gives the retailer less, and in some cases gives them mileage or credits back. It’s only gas stations were over my lifetime I’ve seen a real discount for use of cash. Norris reports, undoubtedly correctly, that the card companies, retailers and others are crying like stuck pigs and wallowing in the water to muddy it up sufficiently that it’s hard for any of us to tell what might be the best reform and whether or not the poor Joe Consumer will get a break.

A similar problem seems to be cropping up around debit cards. I’m new to the debit card world after having heard folks swear by their benefits for years. A note from the Center for Responsible Lending in North Carolina, which I dearly respect in these matters, recently made the point that the “free” and safer debit card that I for one will admit I used to think protected my young tribals from check overdrafts on sloppy dad-like unbalanced personal accounts. A lot of the fault here lies in too many folks defaulting to accept so-called “overdraft” protections which are automatically allowing even debit cards to access money not in your personal bank account, and then hitting you for $17 or so for the “pleasure.” CRL estimated that the average charges are closer to $34 on such a transaction, making it very high interest for a short term loan.

I noticed a similar problem in a weird letter from my current bank, Capital One, where I made the switch because of the way they stepped up to support New Orleans hurricane recovery. I have a savings type account and a checking type account. The checkbooks are identical. I got them at the same time. There’s no notation on the checks that one is one thing and the other is something different. I came back from being on the road a month to have a couple of letters saying that I had written more than 5 or 6 checks from the account, and they were letting me know that each future check would involve a fee of about $10 per check. Getouttahere! Still nothing in the letter saying which account, but my account number was at the top of their letter. So, I call with a head of steam asking them WTF?!? They ask me to read the account number, and it turns out to be that when one checkbook ran out I had picked up a new checkbook, and it had been the one for the savings, rather than the checking. Are you still with me? So, I was fuming, but in fairness I quickly grabbed the “right” checks and they had not charged me yet, so there was no harm, no foul (at least I think that until I get the statement!). What is painful though is that all of this is way too caveat emptor – “buyer beware” for even me, and tens of millions of others.

We need Congress to stop wheeling and dealing here and really give us some protection against all of these hidden and predatory shell games that are now the rage in modern banking!

Barney and Our Total Confusion

jstuart — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:58:19 +0000

Austin Ok, I stand down. I can’t figure out where Barney Frank wants to be counted from day to day.

Seems Fox News touched base with Congressman Frank, and he told them, “no” he would have been part of the dogpile votes against ACORN. The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund chortled about that and was glad to give the Frank flip flop some ink.

At the same time he continued to say that he and Representative John Conyers (D-MI) believe the ACORN defunding bill was a “bill of attainder” and unconstitutional. Yet, Barney would have voted for it? I’m getting lost here!

The Congressional Research outfit that they asked to investigate has now indicated that their preliminary review DOES find that the ACORN slapdown was illegal.

I would have thought Frank would have let well enough alone, but at this point he is confusing me on this matter just as he has on some consumer protection issues around his financial services committee. I had an associate for years who talked about some people being “blurters,” who would just “blurt out” the first thing that comes to their mind regardless. Frank may just be a blurter with no filter on non-stop opinions.

I noticed that Citi, Chase, and now Wells Fargo have said that they will dial down the overdraft fees which were past predatory voluntarily. They can also decide to flipflop and change their mind, just like Frank is doing. How about some real rules and real protections here, Congressman?

For clarity on all of this perhaps I should only watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Several people tweeted me on a piece she did last night that was “just the facts” on the media circus involving ACORN, and watching this morning, I loved that it “made her mad” and that by sticking to the facts and truth she could get it right.

Opinions are too popgun and confusing. The facts are things we can come to understand.

Here’s the video from Rachel Maddow, last night:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Count Barney Frank

jstuart — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:59:26 +0000

New Orleans I don’t really need Google Alerts to keep up these days, especially when my hometown paper, The Times-Picayune, devotes one full page to six stories about ACORN. Throw in the Washington Post, USA Today, McClatchy wire, AP, New York Times, and the Journal, and I think this is in fact what is known as a media storm. One of that “little know community organizing group called ACORN” any more, that’s for sure. One piece yesterday finally brought a big, fat grin to my face and that article was in the Wall Street Journal where Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass) was giving what could only be called a head butt to the wags on the editorial page about why he was not in the number voting on the ACORN herding bill last week.

Frank is a tough customer. When I was working with ACORN, he was always driving our DC folks crazy because he was impossible to organize, always knew best, and in many cases we felt was too quick and cozy to the deal with the financial companies. We talked to his people all of the time with hope and a prayer. I’ve even questioned recently why Frank had the Financial Service Committee drop supervision and oversight of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) from their version of the bill to create a new financial consumer protection agency when the Obama Administration has proposed otherwise. But, that’s all business, and this is personal, so props to Frank for standing straight and tall!

The editorialist at the Journal had tried to make a point of Frank not being on the House floor to vote when the dog pile began on the anti-ACORN McCarthyite terror attacks. Frank fired off a letter, which basically told them they were a bunch of hypocrites because he was scheduled to be at the White House of a Medal of Honor ceremony for a solider from his district killed in wars he helped vote to authorize. He of course also mentioned that the Journal editorial page being a Murdoch-Fox News print version of the same vitriol had not bothered to contact him or his office.

In yesterday’s editorial my favor piece was simply stated:

“Mr. Frank, whose spokesman tells us he would have voted against the measure (that is, in favor of funding Acorn), has a point. Any implication that he is trying to dodge the matter is mistaken.”

In the land of pigmies and sheep this is still one elected representative who unabashedly stands up straight. Knowing how many times he has also spit in our eyes as well, I have to admire courage and integrity when it speaks as a plain statement in its own right.

Count Congressman Barney Frank on any vote that matters.

Act Now to Really Enforce The CRA

jstuart — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:59:37 +0000

Dauphine Island The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) passed in 1977 occupies a lot of space in my book, Citizen Wealth, because it is both arguably the single largest legislative victory achieved by community organizations over the last generation and because it has helped millions purchase homes, one of the most dramatic creators of citizen wealth for lower income and working families, especially in minority communities. The Obama Administration has proposed a super-cop, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), to ensure that CRA and other consumer protections are fully followed and enforced across the gamut of financial institutions.

Yippee, yi-ky-yay! Thank god!

As Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, Executive Director, New Jersey Citizen Action recently wrote in the Star-Ledger:

“The CFPA proposed by the president would have broad institutional oversight of enforcement responsibilities for the wide range of financial consumer protection laws already in place, including CRA, and bolsters the chances of passage of the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009…This law would strengthen CRA as it is applied to banks and expand CRA’s reach to non-bank financial institutions. There is a critical need to have independent mortgage companies and other non-bank lenders subject to the same rules as banks. Quite simply, if you are doing the same business, you should be subject to the same rules.”

Amen!! This is a big fight worth our time and energy even in these days and times when we are pushed between pillar and post fighting other big-ticket issues.

In New Orleans in the post-Katrina we learned a lot about house gutting. We ran crews of workers and volunteers into homes to pull out all of the guts of the house down to the studs so that it could be rebuild. From the outside it looked like a house. From the inside it looked like a house skeleton.

The banks and other financial fast dealers are already acting like house gutters around CRA and the new CFPA. House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank (D-Mass) actually introduced the bill about a month ago without moving CRA under the new regime instead leaving it at the mercy of the current procedures. This won’t work. We have endured decades of dilution and watched one tooth after another being pulled from the CRA protections to the point CRA was often simply gumming banks while 70% of home mortgages before the crises were being loaned outside of CRA regulations.

There are some peoples’ heroes on that Committee like Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Al Green, our friend from Houston. These committees are huge so there are a lot of friends and some folks who boycotting the census, so a little of everything.

We need to reach out for them now while it is on our minds and demand that they stand up to the big money lobbyists and put CRA in the Consumer Financial Protection Agency where it belongs and can finally do its job again. When this financial catastrophe eases up, our people are going to need houses and be hard pressed to buy them without a CRA with real teeth and muscle.

Reach out to these folks now and put CRA under the CFPA where it can do some good:

Majority Members

Barney Frank, Chairman, Massachusetts
Paul E. Kanjorski, Pennsylvania
Maxine Waters, California
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
Luis Gutierrez, Illinois
Nydia Velázquez, New York
Mel Watt, North Carolina
Gary Ackerman, New York
Brad Sherman, California
Gregory W. Meeks, New York
Dennis Moore, Kansas
Michael Capuano, Massachusetts
Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
William Clay, Jr., Missouri
Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Joe Baca, California
Stephen Lynch, Massachusetts
Brad Miller, North Carolina
David Scott, Georgia
Al Green, Texas
Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri
Melissa Bean, Illinois
Gwen Moore, Wisconsin
Paul Hodes, New Hampshire
Keith Ellison, Minnesota
Ron Klein, Florida
Charlie Wilson, Ohio
Ed Perlmutter, Colorado
Joe Donnelly, Indiana
Bill Foster, Illinois
André Carson, Indiana
Jackie Speier, California
Travis Childers, Mississippi
Walt Minnick, Idaho
John Adler, New Jersey
Mary Jo Kilroy, Ohio
Steve Driehaus, Ohio
Suzanne Kosmas, Florida
Alan Grayson, Florida
Jim Himes, Connecticut
Gary Peters, Michigan
Dan Maffei, New York

Minority Members

Spencer Bachus, Ranking Member, Alabama
Michael N. Castle, Delaware
Peter T. King, New York
Ed Royce, California
Frank Lucas, Oklahoma
Ron Paul, Texas
Steve LaTourette, Ohio
Donald A. Manzullo, Illinois
Walter B. Jones, North Carolina
Judy Biggert, Illinois
Gary Miller, California
Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia
Jeb Hensarling, Texas
Scott Garrett, New Jersey
J. Gresham Barrett, South Carolina
Jim Gerlach, Pennsylvania
Randy Neugebauer, Texas
Tom Price, Georgia
Patrick McHenry, North Carolina
John Campbell, California
Adam Putnam, Florida
Michele Bachmann, Minnesota
Kenny Marchant, Texas
Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan
Kevin McCarthy, California
Bill Posey, Florida
Lynn Jenkins, Kansas
Christopher Lee, New York
Erik Paulsen, Minnesota
Leonard Lance, New Jersey