So says a devastating new report just issued by ACORN. This is a response to the crazy, grainy-footage, scary-music ad that McCain released last week Friday attacking ACORN. For a laugh, you can watch the video here.
In it, McCain makes the absurd claim that "ACORN forced banks to make risky home loans, the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today." Oh, John. You just created an opening for ACORN to take the years of fighting they've done against predatory lending and foreclosures and compare it with your snoozing, deregulating, economically illiterate career in the Senate. Thus is born: "ACORN and John McCain: The real story of the financial crisis 1999-2008".
Senator, my friend, you're about to get pwned by ACORN over the flip.
From the Executive Summary of the report:
This report chronicles and analyzes the roles played by both ACORN and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) over the past decade leading up to the economic crisis that the United States faces today. Although perhaps an odd pairing on the surface, this comparison was invited by the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign when it released an advertisement on Friday, October 10 blaming ACORN for the crisis.
This is going to be good...
As documented herein, ACORN has a rich and consistent history of identifying predatory lending as a serious threat to borrowers, of warning that massive foreclosures were an inevitable result of widespread predatory practices, and of fighting with every tool at its disposal against those risky and dangerous practices. From working to pass city ordinances and state laws restricting risky lending practices, to protesting and suing lenders, and from lobbying for federal laws and regulations to releasing numerous reports warning of impending crisis, one must conclude that ACORN fought against predatory lending. Though this conclusion may appear self-obvious, it is unfortunately counter to the prevailing narrative in recent reporting in most media outlets.
So true. When are the media going to challenge this ridiculous claim? I'm not holding my breath, but hopefully this push from ACORN will help. And what about Senator "Phil Gramm is my economic mentor" McCain?
John McCain’s history with this issue is more difficult to document, mostly because there is not much history. In a search of mccain.senate.gov, which contains records dating back to 1988, there is not a single mention of predatory or risky practices in lending and only one mention of foreclosure, from a speech this March about earmarks in which he acknowledges that foreclosures are increasing. This level of engagement is far less than one would expect from a Senator representing the state with the third highest foreclosure rate, where one in every 182 households is in foreclosure1. By comparison, a search of acorn.org yields 479 hits about foreclosure and 737 hits about predatory lending. Nor is it the case that Senator McCain’s website is just lacking information on his work – a search for "earmark" yields 240 hits.
That information on his website is absolutely devastating. I looked myself and it's true. Phoenix is burning, and John McCain is fiddling on earmarks. Wow. No wonder he is endangered in 2010.
Aside from a generally harsh view of regulation and support for Phil Gramm’s financial services deregulation bill in 1999, Senator McCain’s record on this crisis is thin, involving only a handful of votes. In casting blame on ACORN, Senator McCain demonstrated a true misunderstanding of the cause of the financial crisis and in so doing belied the notion that he is qualified to solve it. Indeed, in looking at the totality of their work, the only available conclusion is that ACORN fought with all its might for a decade to prevent this crisis while Senator McCain sat on the sidelines and cheered on the deregulation of the financial services industry that paved the way for the nation’s economic collapse.
McCain sat on the sidelines? That sort of implies he was at least paying attention to what was going on. I would go with "snoozed on the sidelines." And, to be fair, ACORN doesn't blame McCain per se, that was a reach in my headline. ACORN appropriately blames predatory lenders, deregulation, and governmental inaction in the face of overwhelming evidence of an impending crisis. The list of investigative reports they've issued over the last decade alone, one of four categories of work cataloged in the report, is a clear rebuttal to McCain's lie about who caused the crisis.
Anyone who's been following our national economic crisis (which is to say, anyone with a pulse) knows that John McCain wants to change the subject from the economy. His campaign even admitted it, and Barack called him on it last night in the debate.
John McCain's diversionary tactic is to put the focus on ACORN - so ACORN just took the spotlight he gave them and started talking about the economy and John McCain's pathetic history in the lead up to the crisis!
And one last note, look at this from page 3 of the report (which is really worth a read in its entirety) - a graphic representation of what ACORN has done over the last decade and what McCain has(n't) done. They charitably left off "take a nap" on his work. (Click on the image to be able to read all the great text - but definitely let the visual hit you first.)
Devastating.