What a BOMBSHELL! Ms Rodham was fired by Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, who supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the House Judiciary Committee, when she worked on the Watergate investigation. Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman FIRED Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career. Why? “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
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This is solid evidence of a sick woman who lies as easy as she breathes air. If ever there was a story detailing how this witch operates, this is it. It can't be refuted because of the solid facts described by Jerry Zeifman Ms Rodham's former boss. I defy
anyone to explain this story of Ms Rodham and how she hides government documents and hides the truth for her own benefit. She has a pattern of doing this while she was first lady also. A chronic liar and dangerous LIBERAL.
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March 31, 2008
Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.
The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.
Why?
“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.
Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.
The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.
“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.
The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?
“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.
The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.
Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.
But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.
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Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Oh Dirty Maggie May Has Gone Astray
WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton spends considerable time on the campaign trail bemoaning unscrupulous lenders who have left millions of Americans scrambling to keep their homes but all the while her campaign manager, Margaret “Maggie” Williams, has sat on the board of one of the nation’s once-largest and now-bankrupt sub-prime mortgage lenders.
“They were basically trying to extract whatever blood they could get away with and then sell their loans on the secondary market,” said Irv Ackelsberg, a Philadelphia attorney who assists homeowners in complaints against lenders and brokers.
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Here is another example of hillary "sniper fire" type of lie. Her campaign manager SAT on a board and helped to manage an unscrupulous lender that took advantage of the people she is trying to take advantage of also. Lies, lies and more lies. What a dog!
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WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton spends considerable time on the campaign trail bemoaning unscrupulous lenders who have left millions of Americans scrambling to keep their homes but all the while her campaign manager, Margaret “Maggie” Williams, has sat on the board of one of the nation’s once-largest and now-bankrupt sub-prime mortgage lenders.
Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told FOXNews.com late Sunday that Williams, a longtime Clinton ally, didn’t join Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign as a volunteer until after Delta Financial Corporation — for which Williams is a director — went bankrupt in December 2007.
That’s more than seven years after Williams joined New York-based Delta Financial in 2000. She became a director one month after a federal settlement was reached with the lender over discriminatory lending practices. More recently, Delta has been accused by consumer advocates of pursuing predatory practices throughout the housing boom and bust.
As of September 2007, Williams owned 12,500 shares of Delta’s common stock, and by 2007 had earned at least $175,000 for her board obligations, according to company filings available in the Securities & Exchange Commission online database.
Clinton’s Tough Stand on Housing Crunch
Intently focused on the nation’s housing crisis in recent appearances, Clinton has been clear that sub-prime mortgage lenders, particularly in poor, working class urban neighborhoods shoulder much of the blame for the credit crunch.
“I am reminded every day as I meet with families and listen to their stories that the effective functioning of our financial markets isn’t just about Wall Street. It’s about Main Street,” she said recently.
In a proposal last week, Clinton suggested giving “a $30 billion lifeline to avoid a crisis for Wall Street banks” by providing assistance to at-risk communities and families facing foreclosure. In a speech earlier this week, the New York senator suggested protecting lenders from lawsuits by investors who bought mortgages expecting big profits off high interest rates.
“Many mortgage companies are reluctant to help families restructure their mortgages because they’re afraid of being sued by the investment banks, the private equity firms and others who actually own the mortgage papers,” Clinton said.
“This is the case even though writing down the value of a mortgage is often more profitable than foreclosing,” she said, offering legislation “to provide mortgage companies with protection against the threat of such lawsuits.”
Delta’s Sub-Prime Lending
But as it turns out, Clinton’s top aide is on the board of what had been — until its bankruptcy — the ninth-leading sub-prime lender in the nation, handling almost $800 million worth of sub-prime lending in the third quarter of 2007 alone, according to National Mortgage News.
Delta Financing — and subsidiary Delta Funding — made much of its money by turning around and selling its loans at a profit — either through securitization or straight sale. Financial statements and federal filings indicate that Delta made huge profits between 2004 and 2007 mostly by refinancing loans to homeowners with moderate and middle incomes in urban neighborhoods.
In 2006, it reported a net income of $28.8 million compared to $18 million a year earlier. It also originated a record $4 billion in loans that year, a 5 percent increase over 2005. In 2006, it had increased its line of credit by $500 million to a total of $1.75 billion.
Te average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage is 6.25 percent. Financial sources and the company’s public records show that in the last decade Delta brokered thousands of fixed-rate refinancing loans with rates of anywhere from 11.3 to 13.6 percent.
Reports provided by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), an inter-agency body that proscribes standards for U.S. financial institutions, found that in 2006 the vast majority of Delta’s refinancing loans had rates of around 13.3 percent. The average rate on home mortgages was 14.9 percent.
“They were basically trying to extract whatever blood they could get away with and then sell their loans on the secondary market,” said Irv Ackelsberg, a Philadelphia attorney who assists homeowners in complaints against lenders and brokers.
Industry experts say the company’s demise did not come from its struggle against various lawsuits or foreclosures, but its being a victim of the credit market. The value of its loan-backed securities plummeted at the same time its investors stopped buying new loans. Delta’s creditors soon came calling and the company couldn’t keep up with its own financing agreements.
Delta’s status is in the hands of a federal bankruptcy judge. All operations out of its Woodbury, N.Y., headquarters have ceased.
The Williams Difference
Williams joined Delta’s board less less than a month after one federal official said Delta’s practices were “turning the American dream of homeownership into a nightmare.”
At the time, Delta had a 5 percent foreclosure rate nationwide — double the industry standard — and was in the midst of settling several state and federal lawsuits that alleged predatory and discriminatory lending practices.
Williams, now 53, was between jobs with the Clintons when she got the overture to join the board at Delta. She had worked as the former first lady’s chief of staff from 1993 to 1997, and had just become president of Fenton Communications, one of the largest public relations shops in the country in 2000. It made her the highest-ranking African-American woman in a top 50 public relations firm in the country. Williams joined Bill Clinton’s Harlem office in 2001. She later became a partner in management consulting firm Griffin Williams.
According to a June 2000 article in Directors and Boards magazine, Williams spent the six months prior to her decision to join the board asking a lot of questions and making a flurry of calls to Hugh Miller, president and CEO of Delta Financial Corp.
It was the period of time when Delta was embroiled in the state and federal lawsuits. According to the magazine, Williams said she was convinced that the company was enabling individuals who would otherwise not qualify for mortgages to get loans.
“There are people who miss payments and have bad credit for all kinds of reasons,” she told the magazine. “It is a very middle-American kind of problem, although I believe it does affect poor people disproportionately.”
Miller told the magazine he was most attracted to Williams’ skill at anticipating “issues and problems before they come up and then develop(ing) a battle plan. It’s something that we’ve previously been remiss in doing.”
Delta company officials would not elaborate on Williams’ role other than to say that “like other board members, Ms. Williams served in an advisory and oversight role and did not have a role in the day-to-day operations and management of the company.” A 2002 annual report, the only one found with this figure, shows Williams attended at least 70 percent of the company’s board meetings.
Wolfson said Clinton “had no involvement in (Williams’) joining the board, and Hillary’s strong set of initiatives to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure — which are the most aggressive and comprehensive in the race — speak for themselves.”
Predatory Practices
Delta, which declared bankruptcy in December 2007, settled lawsuits with both federal and state regulators in 2000, before Williams’ era, but has maintained dubious lending practices, allege consumer advocates in New York and Philadelphia.
“They were one of the worst and most abusive sub-prime lenders in New York City,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP).
Zinner helped bring a 1999 lawsuit against Delta Funding through the New York State Banking Department and then-state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office. The case was settled with an agreement that included $12 million in payouts to borrowers. It has been caught up in court ever since over the price tag.
A separate class action suit against Delta by some 67,000 New York borrowers in 1998 is also ongoing, according to attorneys for Lopez v. Delta Funding Corp. In that case, the company agreed to settle on claims that Delta violated federal and state statutes governing fair lending practices. The plaintiffs are appealing for additional restitution.
In March 2000, the federal government charged Delta with violating consumer protection and fair lending laws by approving and funding loans regardless of the borrowers’ ability to pay, paying unearned fees and kickbacks to brokers and disproportionately charging African-American females higher rates and fees than “similarly situated” white males.
The immediate settlement of the suit filed jointly by the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Housing and Urban Development did not result in restitution to anyone but an agreement by the company to adhere to stricter, fairer lending standards and to submit to greater governmental oversight.
Delta never admitted any wrongdoing in the New York or federal cases, and not everyone believes the company was as nefarious as the headlines made it out to be. Jonathan Pinard, a lending expert and president of the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association, said Delta “stayed in the agreement” set out in the federal settlement and kept its nose clean. Later, when the sub-prime lending market went sour, Delta was “painted with a broad brush” as one of the bad guys, he said.
But since Williams joined the board, Ackelsburg has assisted clients embroiled in predatory lending schemes that involve Delta.
“(Delta) didn’t have as big a market share as they did in New York,” Ackelsberg said. “But the most unscrupulous brokers tended to work with Delta.”
He pointed to a near million-dollar settlement presided over by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission in 2002, in which an African-American brokerage firm linked to Delta was found guilty of predatory lending and discriminatory practices in predominantly black Philadelphia neighborhoods.
In six of the cases named in the Taylor, Poindexter v. McGlawn & McGlawn and Reginald McGlawn lawsuit, the loans were signed with Delta Funding. At least four of the 10 loans had originated in 2000 or afterward.
Each of the individuals who received Delta loans through McGlawn & McGlawn also filed complaints with the PHRC against Delta Funding, according to commission sources. Those cases were all settled, but terms of the agreements are confidential. Delta officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment by FOXNews.com.
“I would say Delta Funding, in the ’90s in particular, sort of epitomized predatory lending,” said Zinner, who worked for the Foreclosure Prevention Project at South Brooklyn Legal Services at the time of the New York suit. After the 2000 settlement, Zinner said his group “didn’t get the high volume of calls (about Delta loans) … but we definitely got quite a few complaints.”
“They were basically trying to extract whatever blood they could get away with and then sell their loans on the secondary market,” said Irv Ackelsberg, a Philadelphia attorney who assists homeowners in complaints against lenders and brokers.
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Here is another example of hillary "sniper fire" type of lie. Her campaign manager SAT on a board and helped to manage an unscrupulous lender that took advantage of the people she is trying to take advantage of also. Lies, lies and more lies. What a dog!
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WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton spends considerable time on the campaign trail bemoaning unscrupulous lenders who have left millions of Americans scrambling to keep their homes but all the while her campaign manager, Margaret “Maggie” Williams, has sat on the board of one of the nation’s once-largest and now-bankrupt sub-prime mortgage lenders.
Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told FOXNews.com late Sunday that Williams, a longtime Clinton ally, didn’t join Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign as a volunteer until after Delta Financial Corporation — for which Williams is a director — went bankrupt in December 2007.
That’s more than seven years after Williams joined New York-based Delta Financial in 2000. She became a director one month after a federal settlement was reached with the lender over discriminatory lending practices. More recently, Delta has been accused by consumer advocates of pursuing predatory practices throughout the housing boom and bust.
As of September 2007, Williams owned 12,500 shares of Delta’s common stock, and by 2007 had earned at least $175,000 for her board obligations, according to company filings available in the Securities & Exchange Commission online database.
Clinton’s Tough Stand on Housing Crunch
Intently focused on the nation’s housing crisis in recent appearances, Clinton has been clear that sub-prime mortgage lenders, particularly in poor, working class urban neighborhoods shoulder much of the blame for the credit crunch.
“I am reminded every day as I meet with families and listen to their stories that the effective functioning of our financial markets isn’t just about Wall Street. It’s about Main Street,” she said recently.
In a proposal last week, Clinton suggested giving “a $30 billion lifeline to avoid a crisis for Wall Street banks” by providing assistance to at-risk communities and families facing foreclosure. In a speech earlier this week, the New York senator suggested protecting lenders from lawsuits by investors who bought mortgages expecting big profits off high interest rates.
“Many mortgage companies are reluctant to help families restructure their mortgages because they’re afraid of being sued by the investment banks, the private equity firms and others who actually own the mortgage papers,” Clinton said.
“This is the case even though writing down the value of a mortgage is often more profitable than foreclosing,” she said, offering legislation “to provide mortgage companies with protection against the threat of such lawsuits.”
Delta’s Sub-Prime Lending
But as it turns out, Clinton’s top aide is on the board of what had been — until its bankruptcy — the ninth-leading sub-prime lender in the nation, handling almost $800 million worth of sub-prime lending in the third quarter of 2007 alone, according to National Mortgage News.
Delta Financing — and subsidiary Delta Funding — made much of its money by turning around and selling its loans at a profit — either through securitization or straight sale. Financial statements and federal filings indicate that Delta made huge profits between 2004 and 2007 mostly by refinancing loans to homeowners with moderate and middle incomes in urban neighborhoods.
In 2006, it reported a net income of $28.8 million compared to $18 million a year earlier. It also originated a record $4 billion in loans that year, a 5 percent increase over 2005. In 2006, it had increased its line of credit by $500 million to a total of $1.75 billion.
Te average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage is 6.25 percent. Financial sources and the company’s public records show that in the last decade Delta brokered thousands of fixed-rate refinancing loans with rates of anywhere from 11.3 to 13.6 percent.
Reports provided by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), an inter-agency body that proscribes standards for U.S. financial institutions, found that in 2006 the vast majority of Delta’s refinancing loans had rates of around 13.3 percent. The average rate on home mortgages was 14.9 percent.
“They were basically trying to extract whatever blood they could get away with and then sell their loans on the secondary market,” said Irv Ackelsberg, a Philadelphia attorney who assists homeowners in complaints against lenders and brokers.
Industry experts say the company’s demise did not come from its struggle against various lawsuits or foreclosures, but its being a victim of the credit market. The value of its loan-backed securities plummeted at the same time its investors stopped buying new loans. Delta’s creditors soon came calling and the company couldn’t keep up with its own financing agreements.
Delta’s status is in the hands of a federal bankruptcy judge. All operations out of its Woodbury, N.Y., headquarters have ceased.
The Williams Difference
Williams joined Delta’s board less less than a month after one federal official said Delta’s practices were “turning the American dream of homeownership into a nightmare.”
At the time, Delta had a 5 percent foreclosure rate nationwide — double the industry standard — and was in the midst of settling several state and federal lawsuits that alleged predatory and discriminatory lending practices.
Williams, now 53, was between jobs with the Clintons when she got the overture to join the board at Delta. She had worked as the former first lady’s chief of staff from 1993 to 1997, and had just become president of Fenton Communications, one of the largest public relations shops in the country in 2000. It made her the highest-ranking African-American woman in a top 50 public relations firm in the country. Williams joined Bill Clinton’s Harlem office in 2001. She later became a partner in management consulting firm Griffin Williams.
According to a June 2000 article in Directors and Boards magazine, Williams spent the six months prior to her decision to join the board asking a lot of questions and making a flurry of calls to Hugh Miller, president and CEO of Delta Financial Corp.
It was the period of time when Delta was embroiled in the state and federal lawsuits. According to the magazine, Williams said she was convinced that the company was enabling individuals who would otherwise not qualify for mortgages to get loans.
“There are people who miss payments and have bad credit for all kinds of reasons,” she told the magazine. “It is a very middle-American kind of problem, although I believe it does affect poor people disproportionately.”
Miller told the magazine he was most attracted to Williams’ skill at anticipating “issues and problems before they come up and then develop(ing) a battle plan. It’s something that we’ve previously been remiss in doing.”
Delta company officials would not elaborate on Williams’ role other than to say that “like other board members, Ms. Williams served in an advisory and oversight role and did not have a role in the day-to-day operations and management of the company.” A 2002 annual report, the only one found with this figure, shows Williams attended at least 70 percent of the company’s board meetings.
Wolfson said Clinton “had no involvement in (Williams’) joining the board, and Hillary’s strong set of initiatives to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure — which are the most aggressive and comprehensive in the race — speak for themselves.”
Predatory Practices
Delta, which declared bankruptcy in December 2007, settled lawsuits with both federal and state regulators in 2000, before Williams’ era, but has maintained dubious lending practices, allege consumer advocates in New York and Philadelphia.
“They were one of the worst and most abusive sub-prime lenders in New York City,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP).
Zinner helped bring a 1999 lawsuit against Delta Funding through the New York State Banking Department and then-state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office. The case was settled with an agreement that included $12 million in payouts to borrowers. It has been caught up in court ever since over the price tag.
A separate class action suit against Delta by some 67,000 New York borrowers in 1998 is also ongoing, according to attorneys for Lopez v. Delta Funding Corp. In that case, the company agreed to settle on claims that Delta violated federal and state statutes governing fair lending practices. The plaintiffs are appealing for additional restitution.
In March 2000, the federal government charged Delta with violating consumer protection and fair lending laws by approving and funding loans regardless of the borrowers’ ability to pay, paying unearned fees and kickbacks to brokers and disproportionately charging African-American females higher rates and fees than “similarly situated” white males.
The immediate settlement of the suit filed jointly by the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Housing and Urban Development did not result in restitution to anyone but an agreement by the company to adhere to stricter, fairer lending standards and to submit to greater governmental oversight.
Delta never admitted any wrongdoing in the New York or federal cases, and not everyone believes the company was as nefarious as the headlines made it out to be. Jonathan Pinard, a lending expert and president of the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association, said Delta “stayed in the agreement” set out in the federal settlement and kept its nose clean. Later, when the sub-prime lending market went sour, Delta was “painted with a broad brush” as one of the bad guys, he said.
But since Williams joined the board, Ackelsburg has assisted clients embroiled in predatory lending schemes that involve Delta.
“(Delta) didn’t have as big a market share as they did in New York,” Ackelsberg said. “But the most unscrupulous brokers tended to work with Delta.”
He pointed to a near million-dollar settlement presided over by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission in 2002, in which an African-American brokerage firm linked to Delta was found guilty of predatory lending and discriminatory practices in predominantly black Philadelphia neighborhoods.
In six of the cases named in the Taylor, Poindexter v. McGlawn & McGlawn and Reginald McGlawn lawsuit, the loans were signed with Delta Funding. At least four of the 10 loans had originated in 2000 or afterward.
Each of the individuals who received Delta loans through McGlawn & McGlawn also filed complaints with the PHRC against Delta Funding, according to commission sources. Those cases were all settled, but terms of the agreements are confidential. Delta officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment by FOXNews.com.
“I would say Delta Funding, in the ’90s in particular, sort of epitomized predatory lending,” said Zinner, who worked for the Foreclosure Prevention Project at South Brooklyn Legal Services at the time of the New York suit. After the 2000 settlement, Zinner said his group “didn’t get the high volume of calls (about Delta loans) … but we definitely got quite a few complaints.”
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The government makes the gas shortage worse
What I read is the government has pushed this corn shortage on us by mandating ethanol production. This in turn has caused a corn shortage which has driven up food prices. What the government has producted here is nothing but higher costs for food and gas. Ethanol prices will continue to increase as corn prices do and also will food prices. Ethanol has and will not solve the energy shortage of gas and oil. It has added a burden on the public only in higher ethanol prices along with food prices. The solution is for the government to allow drilling of oil offshore and inland and change the laws that make oil production in this country, more open to the production of oil. This will eventually free us from some of the foreign oil we will import. The US government has not solved anything, only increased the cost of living for us all. We also need more nuclear plants. Building more refineries would help the gas shortages and would reduced the price spikes for gas also.
Stop blending so many types of gas to appease the waco environmentalists. This makes gas prices increase also. Ethanol does nothing to help increase gas availability at a lower cost, it only makes it worse.
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Farmers' choice about how much corn to plant key to consumers
By HENRY C. JACKSON | Associated Press Writer
12:51 PM CDT, March 28, 2008
DES MOINES, Iowa - As spring planting nears, farmers are making a choice that could affect what Americans pay for everything from car fuel to chicken wings.
If they choose to plant as much corn as possible, prices that have soared to record highs above $5 a bushel could stabilize. But if many farmers rotate their plantings to other crops such as soybeans, or the season is disrupted by bad weather or drought, the price of this key ingredient could soar even further.
That would leave other food producers -- especially poultry, beef and pork companies, where corn feed comprises up to three-quarters of their operating costs -- with little choice but to raise their prices as well.
Livestock producers typically blame higher corn prices on demand for the crop from ethanol plants, saying the alternative fuel drives up costs for everyone. But ethanol makers say the rising corn prices hurt them as well.
Against all those factors is one fixed point: Farmers are running out of new land to plant crops.
How farmers choose to use the land this year is the focus of the planting report due March 31 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will offer the first detailed look at farmer's planting intentions for 2008 and give the first indication of this year's corn crop.
"Everybody is looking to see what that report is going to look like," said Bob Dinneen, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association. "Everybody is anxious, us included."
Last year, American farmers produced more corn than ever before, 13.1 billion bushels, as they put more land into corn production and most of the Corn Belt saw ideal weather.
"It's kind of hard to believe we'll even be able to hit that mark again," said Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council. "The amount of land in this country is not infinite. ... Some people think it's entirely possible a bad drought is coming. It's all guesswork, but there are some ominous signs."
The surge in corn prices -- which began in early 2007, when corn was trading for a little more than $3 per bushel -- came despite the higher-than-ever production. If the values hold, the average yearly price per bushel in 2008 will be higher than ever before, according to statistics kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dave Moody, president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, said the end result is obvious: "If corn prices stay high or increase, in the long term prices are definitely going to come up."
Even at current prices, meat producers are hurting.
Last month Pilgrim's Pride, the nation's largest poultry company, closed a processing plant in North Carolina and distribution centers in five other states, putting 1,100 people out of work. The company blamed its move on high corn prices caused by the heavily subsidized ethanol industry.
Corn prices are also affecting more boutique products. Maple Leaf Farms, a leading U.S. producer of duck meat, recently announced it would close a meat processing plant in Wisconsin that employs about 200 people because of increase feed costs.
"This is the single biggest issue we face," said Lobb. "The costs are very high historically speaking, but what really bothers people is not so much that they're high but they're sort of locked in at a high level.
"We've had price spikes for corn because of drought or other short-term types of things, but in this case the high costs are locked," because of ethanol demand.
Ethanol plant owners acknowledge they've increased demand for corn. The number of plants has increased dramatically, from 50 in 1999 to 134 now with more being built, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Most rely completely on corn.
An average, 100 million gallon-per-year ethanol plant consumes about 33 million bushels of corn -- about the amount grown in some entire Iowa counties.
While ethanol is highly subsidized by the federal government, wiping out some of the industry's overhead, ethanol proponents say they too will have to pay more for corn, which could push the price of ethanol fuel higher.
There's a roundabout effect as well -- strong demand for the corn to make ethanol has boosted those prices, enticing farmers to plant corn rather than soybeans.
So some farmers could be swayed by soybean prices that have edged even higher due to the dwindling supplies and demand from foreign markets, particularly in Asia.
Among the arguments some farmers see for soybeans are that corn requires more tending and fertilizer costs are generally higher, said Mark Schultz, chief analyst at Minneapolis-based commodity trading firm Northstar Commodity.
"It takes a lot of time to put in and harvest corn," Schultz said. "There's a lot to it physically and cost wise."
The Corn Belt farmers -- who find themselves with strong incomes and plenty of options -- are the clear winners. That income is a primary reason Corn Belt states, such as Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, have largely avoided a national economic downturn, said Ernest Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.
Mindy Williamson, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Corn Growers Association, said the ethanol-fueled demand for corn has changed the dynamics.
"Before we weren't in a demand-driven market," she said. "Now, it's all about demand and you have a choice about where we want to sell (corn) and who you want to sell it to. There are still other things beyond farmers' control, like weather, but it's a good time."
Stop blending so many types of gas to appease the waco environmentalists. This makes gas prices increase also. Ethanol does nothing to help increase gas availability at a lower cost, it only makes it worse.
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Farmers' choice about how much corn to plant key to consumers
By HENRY C. JACKSON | Associated Press Writer
12:51 PM CDT, March 28, 2008
DES MOINES, Iowa - As spring planting nears, farmers are making a choice that could affect what Americans pay for everything from car fuel to chicken wings.
If they choose to plant as much corn as possible, prices that have soared to record highs above $5 a bushel could stabilize. But if many farmers rotate their plantings to other crops such as soybeans, or the season is disrupted by bad weather or drought, the price of this key ingredient could soar even further.
That would leave other food producers -- especially poultry, beef and pork companies, where corn feed comprises up to three-quarters of their operating costs -- with little choice but to raise their prices as well.
Livestock producers typically blame higher corn prices on demand for the crop from ethanol plants, saying the alternative fuel drives up costs for everyone. But ethanol makers say the rising corn prices hurt them as well.
Against all those factors is one fixed point: Farmers are running out of new land to plant crops.
How farmers choose to use the land this year is the focus of the planting report due March 31 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will offer the first detailed look at farmer's planting intentions for 2008 and give the first indication of this year's corn crop.
"Everybody is looking to see what that report is going to look like," said Bob Dinneen, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association. "Everybody is anxious, us included."
Last year, American farmers produced more corn than ever before, 13.1 billion bushels, as they put more land into corn production and most of the Corn Belt saw ideal weather.
"It's kind of hard to believe we'll even be able to hit that mark again," said Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council. "The amount of land in this country is not infinite. ... Some people think it's entirely possible a bad drought is coming. It's all guesswork, but there are some ominous signs."
The surge in corn prices -- which began in early 2007, when corn was trading for a little more than $3 per bushel -- came despite the higher-than-ever production. If the values hold, the average yearly price per bushel in 2008 will be higher than ever before, according to statistics kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dave Moody, president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, said the end result is obvious: "If corn prices stay high or increase, in the long term prices are definitely going to come up."
Even at current prices, meat producers are hurting.
Last month Pilgrim's Pride, the nation's largest poultry company, closed a processing plant in North Carolina and distribution centers in five other states, putting 1,100 people out of work. The company blamed its move on high corn prices caused by the heavily subsidized ethanol industry.
Corn prices are also affecting more boutique products. Maple Leaf Farms, a leading U.S. producer of duck meat, recently announced it would close a meat processing plant in Wisconsin that employs about 200 people because of increase feed costs.
"This is the single biggest issue we face," said Lobb. "The costs are very high historically speaking, but what really bothers people is not so much that they're high but they're sort of locked in at a high level.
"We've had price spikes for corn because of drought or other short-term types of things, but in this case the high costs are locked," because of ethanol demand.
Ethanol plant owners acknowledge they've increased demand for corn. The number of plants has increased dramatically, from 50 in 1999 to 134 now with more being built, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Most rely completely on corn.
An average, 100 million gallon-per-year ethanol plant consumes about 33 million bushels of corn -- about the amount grown in some entire Iowa counties.
While ethanol is highly subsidized by the federal government, wiping out some of the industry's overhead, ethanol proponents say they too will have to pay more for corn, which could push the price of ethanol fuel higher.
There's a roundabout effect as well -- strong demand for the corn to make ethanol has boosted those prices, enticing farmers to plant corn rather than soybeans.
So some farmers could be swayed by soybean prices that have edged even higher due to the dwindling supplies and demand from foreign markets, particularly in Asia.
Among the arguments some farmers see for soybeans are that corn requires more tending and fertilizer costs are generally higher, said Mark Schultz, chief analyst at Minneapolis-based commodity trading firm Northstar Commodity.
"It takes a lot of time to put in and harvest corn," Schultz said. "There's a lot to it physically and cost wise."
The Corn Belt farmers -- who find themselves with strong incomes and plenty of options -- are the clear winners. That income is a primary reason Corn Belt states, such as Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, have largely avoided a national economic downturn, said Ernest Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.
Mindy Williamson, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Corn Growers Association, said the ethanol-fueled demand for corn has changed the dynamics.
"Before we weren't in a demand-driven market," she said. "Now, it's all about demand and you have a choice about where we want to sell (corn) and who you want to sell it to. There are still other things beyond farmers' control, like weather, but it's a good time."
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