(artwork by Little De; click on picture to enlarge!)
UPDATE!
Democracy NOW! Amy & Jesse Jackson: The Sub-CRIME Mortgage Scandal!
AMY GOODMAN: The nation’s housing crisis has been called the biggest immediate threat facing the US economy today. Amidst growing unease, President Bush announced a plan last week to freeze interest rates for some homeowners facing foreclosure. But critics say the plan’s strict guidelines will leave out the most vulnerable. The Center For Responsible Lending says Bush’s plan will only help about 7% of subprime borrowers, or about 145,000 families.
A subprime loan offers borrowers a mortgage, but at a disproportionately high rate they often can’t afford. The subprime market has fueled a record one million foreclosures this year, with an estimated two million expected in 2008.
A growing coalition of housing and civil rights advocates are calling for federal intervention to protect homeowners from foreclosures. Today, those calls are coming to the hub of the lenders and investors behind them. Demonstrators will gather in the heart of Wall Street for a march dubbed “Save Our Homes—Fight Home Foreclosures, Defend Our Economic Rights.”
The Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition have helped organize today’s march. Rev. Jackson joins me now in the firehouse studio, just blocks from where he’ll lead the rally at noon today. Welcome.
AMY GOODMAN: That is President Bush speaking on Thursday. “Reckless,” Rev. Jackson?
REV. JESSE JACKSON: He offers an umbrella when we need a tent, number one. We put together a resolution—a Reconstruction Finance Corporation to bail America out of the Great Depression, similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, the S&Ls in the 1990s. This thing is so big it’s beyond, in some sense, blame. If the house is on fire, you can’t focus on the five books or the—you need ladders and windows. You also must have some kind of reconstructing corporation where the most egregious filers like Countrywide would invest in such a fund. In the meantime, you’re looking at record levels of evictions and foreclosures. And when you cannot pay taxes, it undermines schools and public transportation and healthcare. And that’s why the government has a role to play. Bush recognizes a role to play. He covers maybe 7% and leaves 93% out in the rain. We need a much more massive approach than this by our federal government, a kind of mortgage Marshall Plan.
CLICK HERE---> DN! transcript or DN! video
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· HuffPost's "The Bush Years" Posters: A Powerful Political Stocking Stuffer (see below)
1) GOP Villains of the Bush Years
GEORGE W. BUSH
DICK CHENEY
KARL ROVE
ALBERTO GONZALES
SCOOTER LIBBY
JACK ABRAMOFF
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
RUMSFELD
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
HARRIET MIERS
PAUL BREMER
GEORGE TENET
JOHN ASHCROFT
MIKE BROWN
JOHN BOLTON
2) The Slogans of the Bush Years
GATHERING THREAT
AXIS OF EVIL
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
FIGHT'EM THERE NOT HERE
BRING'EM ON
STAY THE COURSE
LAST THROES
HECK OF A JOB BROWNIE
GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR
I AM THE DECIDER
STUFF HAPPENS
3) The Worst Events of the Bush Years
ABU GHRAIB
HALLIBURTON
PREEMPTIVE WAR
WALTER REED
BLACKWATER
EXECUTIVE POWER
BODY ARMOR
KATRINA
GUANTANAMO
YELLOWCAKE
WATERBOARDING
