Rep. Richard Baker (House Web site) of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists:
“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
“Baker explains later he didn’t intend flippancy but has long wanted to improve low-income housing.” (Wall Street Journal‘s Washington Wire, Sept. 9, 2005 [paid sub. only], and now at Raw Story)
However, it just might be that Rep. Baker — the Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises — wants to improve low-income housing.
Baker — who founded his own real estate company in the 1970s , according to his official biography — is referenced in today’s WaPo story, “Fannie, Freddie Give Breaks on Payments” [“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac give affected homeowners a reprieve on mortgage payments and lawmakers consider requiring the housing-finance companies to set aside a portion of their profit to help rebuild low-income housing in flood-ravaged areas.”]
Meanwhile, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) and Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.) are in talks with House colleagues about amending a bill regulating the [housing finance companies] so that areas affected by the hurricane, including those that are absorbing displaced victims, would be first to receive money from a fund for low-cost housing, committee spokeswoman Peggy Peterson said. [..]
The proposal that Baker and Oxley want to change would require that Fannie and Freddie put aside 5 percent of their after-tax profit to fund the construction or rehabilitation of housing for low-income renters and home buyers. The set-aside is part a larger bill that would tighten regulation of Fannie and Freddie following their multibillion-dollar accounting scandals.
The bill’s progress to the House floor stalled this summer after a group of conservative lawmakers raised concerns about the proposed set-aside. Some worried that the two companies would use the fund to give money to political allies. Others cringed at the idea of the federal government seizing profit from private businesses.
Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee rejected the proposed fund. …The hurricane “reinforces the reason to have such a fund,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “Some people said, ‘Well, it’s going to be abused.’ Well, let’s see how it works in Louisiana.”
Baker is a “good ol’ boy.” He tried to help Morgan Stanley rein in Eliot Spitzer:
A few months later, Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) introduced a bill –“ originally circulated on the Hill by Morgan
Stanley — to rein in state regulators and prevent them from forcing structural changes in the securities industry. The measure, which would have paralyzed Spitzer’s probe, was tacitly endorsed by SEC Chairman William Donaldson before being dropped from consideration after some unsought media coverage. (White House For Sale)
Baker is also somewhat tied to the Abramoff scandal. Paul Sawyer, staff director for Rep. Baker, is listed among “the names of a fair number of those 100-plus Hill staffers, congressional members, journalists, and think-tank denizens who visited Saipan during the Abramoff junket period.” (Tapped, Prospect mag., May 2005)
Here’s the link to OpenSecret.org’s summary of Baker’s finances.
This is a cursory study of a U.S. representative whose history I do not know. I was infuriated by his remarks quoted in the Wall Street Journal, so did a bit of digging. More may come out in the following days, and I’ll welcome participatory research into his role in the Mac financing family, and more.
Related to the rebuilding: “WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order on Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.”
One would hope that President Bush and legislators would demand similar concessions of the housing, banking and financing industries.
Fortunately, God came along and did the dirty work for them of ridding the Gulf Coast of those inconvenient poor folks.
New Orleans will rise from the ashes and look more like Palm Beach when all is said and done. The low-income residents will never be able to live there again.
A FAVOR — whoever see this first — my e-mail is down. Please send this message to John at rawstory@gmail.com:
SUBJECT HEADER: Susanhu’s Booman story link
Text: Susan’s e-mail is down. Please add a link to the Baker story,
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/9/9/101754/8123
THANK YOU! And let me know? Thanks.
done.
TY! I called Earthlink, and they had a message up saying that a lot of their customers are having trouble, and that they’re working on it.
This is extremely rare for Earthlink, which has 24/7 support + telephone support.
It’s great to have such reliable, responsive service. Isn’t it.
And my e-mail is working again. It was great service.
I can’t recall the last time one of Earthlink’s e-mail servers had a problem. Maybe a year and a half ago?
Just like then, I called. I got an immediate message that they were working on the problem. And the problem was fixed immediately.
I doubt I’ll have to face that for at least another year and a half. Things happen. But Earthlink is indisputably reliable, responsive, and professional.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. NO will likely become the port, a party city, and little else… maybe they’ll put down some more universities nearby so the rich white party kids wont have so far to drive for Mardi Gras
already floated a trial baloon for this in yesterday’s NY Times. Dressed up in "helping the poor" rhetoric of course. To my surprise, a good number of liberals on other sites seemed inexplicably receptive to it.
Would these, by any chance, be the same liberals who are inexplicably receptive to turning women into baby-factory slaves?
I really hate being precient, sometimes :/
in action.
And you can bet that they’ll be kept in concentration camps in Republican states until the next census, so those states can get more congressmen, then mailed off somewhere else before they get the chance to vote.
C-posted at DailyKos.
Developers tore down the St. Thomas Housing Project in the Garden District, and with federal funds, displaced its 700 residents to God knows where in the city.
I had begun interviewing those residents right before the storm hit, and I will continue once we are allowed back in.
Nagin bought a condo in the Krauss building on Canal St. in New Orleans, bordering the Iberville Housing Project. I called the realtors selling condos there and pretended to be interested in purchasing a condo. I was reassured that they were told Iberville would be torn down.
This is a battle that will continue full force now that low income residents have been displaced, exactly what developers wanted to happen.
call on the House to censure him. Hastert et al would probably never let this happen, but if the Dems demanded it loudly and repeatedly it would illustrate the difference between our party’s values and theirs. They should either make the Republicans defend these comments or cut the sick fascist who made them loose.
(Note: I just posted a similar comment in the DKos thread on this topic; I hope it’s OK to repeat the thought here.)
When I first read the heading of this thread my first thought was, “Too bad we didn’t clean up Washington (as in government, not city or state) first.
and then stuff like this comes along.
Thank you SusanHu, but it is sure hard to see this incredible disregard for human life.
For crying out loud, the bodies aren’t even buried yet, much less found.
Yep, god came along and cleaned those pesky poor people right clean out of the low income housing. (These being the very same people who man the counters at Walmart and McDonald’s and upon whose backs the rich get richer.) I guess the Repugs will just have to import some other group(s) to exploit and take up the slack.
I’m not even going to comment on the ‘public housing’ remarks as it’s no surprise. Just predictably sick and disgusting.
What did send me into yet another goddam rage this morning(how long can your body be a permanent rage standby anyway)was reading on buzz or somewhere else that bush had already signed the executive order saying the federal contractors(those poor fucken babies)didn’t have to pay fair wage..
I guess that’s the beginning of his great ‘marshall type’ plan…or should I say the ‘Screw Everyone’ Plan except for crony contractors/Halliburton etc..3 more years of siphoning off money for supposed rebuilding that is going to be such a goddamn boondoggle it just might make Iraq monies trifling.
This country is already on it’s last legs and 3 more years of bushco should just about kill of the whole idea of America as we know it..jeezzzzzz am I downbeat today or what.
Susan Hu quoting article:Related to the rebuilding: “WASHINGTON, Sept 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush issued an executive order on Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.”
Whats happening is a return to Slavery. Not all the way, part way. It’s called indentured servitude.
Who do you think the contractors are going to hire? They are going to hire black people and other displaced people to rebuild and tear down their ruined homes for the White Contractors who intend to build white housing for New Orleans.
This Hurricane is an opportunity for the descendants of slave owners to reclaim the South for what it has always had the URGE to return to.
Putting Black people to work for White People.
Somebody outa do somethin. Somebody better strat screaming about this. Is America too heavily sedated?
I agree and also I wouldn’t doubt that they may bring in people from other countries who may work for even goddamn fucken less and exploit them..they(contractors)are doing it in Iraq. Not hiring Iraqi’s but bringing people in from other countries at criminally explotive wages-well can’t really call it wages but you know what I mean.
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