Holder’s Bank of America Heist Funds Left’s Community-Organizer Shock Troops
By Andrew C. McCarthy | NRO
August 28, 2014
Government coercion of the financial sector to make irresponsible loans was the primary driver of the 2007-08 financial meltdown. Yet, as we’ve previously observed here, “Washington has searched every place but within for a scapegoat” – with the Obama Justice Department pursuing politically motivated investigations, prosecutions, and civil lawsuits against banks and credit rating agencies in order to concoct a history that blames predatory lending rather than statist policy.
Now we learn that Eric Holder, the Tom Hagen of this racketeering enterprise of an administration, is using the vig that DOJ muscle is extorting from the banks to pour tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of the radical Left’s top rabble-rousers – in addition to diverting what should be public funds to pay off delinquent debts in cities that Democrats have destroyed.
This from Investors Business Daily:
Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder’s record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America.
Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation’s largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.
Besides requiring billions in debt forgiveness payments to delinquent borrowers in Cleveland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago and other Democrat strongholds — and up to $500 million to cover personal taxes owed on those checks — the deal requires BofA to make billions in new loans, while also building affordable low-income rental housing in those areas.
If there are leftover funds in four years, the settlement stipulates the money will go to Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA), which provides legal aid for the poor and supports left-wing causes, and NeighborWorks of America, which provides affordable housing and funds a national network of left-wing community organizers operating in the mold of Acorn.
The editorial goes on to explain that NeighborWorks, in fact, provided $25 million in 2008-09 to the housing division of the notorious, Obama-allied ACORN – the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, which ostensibly disbanded after a 2009 scandal dried up its government funding. In 2011, NeighborWorks doled out $35 million to similar groups, including the “Affordable Housing Alliance,” which pressures banks to make the kind of high-risk loans that caused the financial crisis and has ties to Obama officials.
Read More at National Review
This is a must read. The tentacles of Holder, Obama, and special interest politics are so tangled no one could separate them. Holder must be extremely proud of this, and the DNC and Obama in him. What a windfall. What’s the saying, “everybody’s a winner”? Everyone but the people. We lost big time.
Now we know what he has been working on. It must be the Dep. of Injustice’s finest hour. Sad day in America. And we thought his fast and furious, running interference for IRS and every other scandal were bad. This takes the royal cake. Holder makes Bernie Madoff look like a choir boy.
