Recently, Arizona announced plans to sell up to 50 state-owned government building and then lease them back over a period of decades before eventually repurchasing them. In essence, the plan calls for Arizona to mortgage the buildings that house its state government.

Since many find the idea of paying rent on buildings previously owned free and clear by taxpayers distasteful, the Obama administration is being careful to differentiate its own plan from Arizona’s.

“We’re not changing ownership of the White House,” explains White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. “If we did, for one thing, that might affect my employment, so that was a non-starter.”

Instead, several rooms in the White House will be opened up to the public, in Bed and Breakfast fashion. However, customers shouldn’t expect backcountry prices. According to a promotional pamphlet released by the White House, lodgings in the esteemed Lincoln Bedroom can be fetched for $95,000 per night.

Used for Clinton-era favor gaining, the Lincoln bedroom is now literally for sale

“This is an appropriate price point commensurate with our need to address the deficit and the costs incurred in securing temporary security clearance and agent staffing for our valued guests,” said Gibbs.

He added, however, that the White House was working on discounted packages in which “for a modest fee, inner city and rural poor folks can be our guests as well.” These guests, Gibbs confirmed, would be housed in battered FEMA trailers that are veterans of the New Orleans campaign. The trailers will be  “strategically hidden from view” on the White House grounds.

Despite discounted pricing, Gibbs stressed the guests housed in trailers will “still be able to tell their friends, families and what-not that they spent the night at the White House.”

While patrons of the trailer package will be limited to the confines of their accommodations plus a 150-second tour of a rosebush dating to the Reagan administration, clients of the Lincoln Bedroom package will enjoy a much more lavish experience, including meals prepared by the White House culinary staff and an invitation to observe “no less than one” staff meeting. (Guests wishing to take advantage of the latter will have to sign non-disclosure agreements).

Lincoln guests will also be guaranteed to have their photos taken with at least one cabinet-level administrator, and possibly the president if he’s available. In a lighter touch, they will also be given blacklights and invited to participate in a “spot the stain” competition in which contestants vie to see who can find the most Clinton-era blemishes that still adorn certain furnishings, carpets and draperies.

In reply to critics who say the ploy threatens to cheapen the White House, Gibbs said, “This may be a cheap gimmick, but we’ve got a very expensive problem, which is the out of control deficit my boss has created – I mean that he inherited from Bush.

“We’re already booked solid into the first half of Obama’s second administration, and calculations show this could generate nearly $1 billion over two full terms. That money is going straight back to the taxpayers.”

Originally posted 2009-07-29 20:35:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Disgust with the 11-hour show trial focused mainly on the self-righteously affected rage that Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) put on show when hectoring Goldman executives. During the course of his ramblings, Levin repeatedly brandished an internal Goldman memo containing an expletive that he seized upon as an opportunity to utter profanities with impunity within the halls of the Senate. Peering sharply over the edge of his low-slung readers, the senator punctuated a hateful, didactic stare with nearly a dozen repetitions of the word “shit.”

Levin excoriated the executives for taking advantage of the housing bubble by short selling packages of mortgages tied to houses that were vastly inflated in value and occupied by people who, far from paying down their housing debt, were using the properties as ATM machines.

Now, pressured to at least pretend there was a shared responsibility for the housing collapse, Levin and the Subcommittee have agreed to subject greedy consumers to at least a cursory level of questioning.

Senator Levin, in mid-shit.

One couple that will testify is Chloe and Logan Robinson. In 2004, the couple purchased their first home in suburban Phoenix. “It was our starter home,” Chloe recalled. “Only 4,000 square feet, so pretty cozy, but for a couple of newlyweds, we couldn’t complain.

“Mommy and Daddy had just taken out a second mortgage on their own home to pay for our wedding in Tahiti, so it’s not like I could ask them to help with our house, so of course we were all over the deal.”

“The deal” entailed no money down and a monthly mortgage payment of $200.

“Like, it was cheaper than the rent for the studio apartment in Tempe where we used to make the Girls Gone Wild videos with Chloe and her ASU friends,” observed Logan.

The couple admitted they scarcely glanced at the reams of papers they willingly signed. “I think it said something about an introductory rate, kinda like a credit card, I guess,” Logan said. “We didn’t worry about it ‘cause home values always go up and we knew we’d need something bigger within two years anyway, plus there was a Nickelback concert we really had to get to and the closing was, like, taking forever.”

But home values went down, interest rates went up, and the Robinsons walked away from their home. “They wanted like $2,000 per month or something totally crazy like that,” laughed Logan. “We were like, ‘see ya!’”

The couple is not worried about the line of questioning they will receive before the Senate Subcommittee. “First of all, they’re paying us to come – as a special exception, we’re going to get the $8,000 in free money that Obama gave to first-time home buyers, so that’s cool,” said Chloe. “And second, we’ve heard it all before – like how someone can walk away from a mortgage they agreed to?

“Well, we never agreed to any of that. You can’t seriously hold a person to a signature ‘cause a signature can’t read the regular print, let alone the fine print. That’s no fair. Plus, they should of [sic] verified our income – maybe we exaggerated a little bit but banks have access to all of that. They have those accounting thingies.”

In fact, the Robinsons were both unemployed when they closed on their home. However, they listed income of $100,000 per year. “Actually, it was probably closer to $60,000 per year Mom and Dad gave us,” admitted Logan.

Today, the Robinsons reside in Chloe’s parents’ basement. To make conditions more bearable, they arranged to have the basement expanded and completely finished, using a home equity line of credit the Robinsons tapped out before completing their tactical foreclosure.

Another prior homeowner who has agreed to testify is DeTwan “Harpoon” Ishmael, 18, of Detroit. Ishmael, who has seen revenue from his heroin and cocaine sales plummet nearly one percent during the recession, admits he made up “everything” on his mortgage application.

“Yeah, man. I wrote down that I was a financial analyst for some made-up firm – you know, one of those evil firms over on Wall Street, wherever that is – and that I was making all this cash,” he said. “They was so happy to get me in that house – they kept smiling and congratulating me for being in a ‘targeted demographic,’ whatever that means.”

“I asked them what my payment was going to be, they asked me how much did I want it to be, so I said ‘free’ and they was like “We can work with that.”

Ishmael paid nothing for the first 12 months of his mortgage. He was foreclosed on after being arrested for selling drugs out of his home. In exchange for testifying before the Subcommittee, all charges will be dropped and he, too, will be paid $8,000 sourced from the first-time-homeowners bailout fund.

Senator Levin, when asked whether or not it was prudent to pay witnesses to appear before the Senate, angrily replied, “Shit, there is nothing prudent about dragging innocent American consumers – pursuers of the American Dream – before this Subcommittee shit.”

“But, if the Republicans want to play this shit game, if they want to insinuate that somehow this shit idea of personal responsibility lessens the suffering – the anguish – of those victimized in this housing holocaust, we’re confident that they will be judged accordingly by the American people.”

“Shit,” he added. “Shit.”

The hearings are scheduled to start next month.

Originally posted 2010-04-29 08:42:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The game, dubbed ‘Obamanopoly’, will feature many of the original’s longstanding elements like property spaces, board layout and a bank but with major rule changes celebrating the President’s newly launched policies.

Now kids can redistribute wealth, just like the President

One major twist: instead of buying properties, houses and hotels from the bank, players will now be able to finance them through a Mortgage Lender (an offshoot of the game’s Federal Bank), paying off each purchase in small installments stretched across 30 game ‘turns’.

“Instead of just a couple of hours, families can now enjoy literally months, years – heck, even unlimited playtime. It’s the game that keeps on giving!” exclaims Shrilly Bettercakes, Vice President of Fun! at Hasbro subsidiary Parker Brothers, makers of Monopoly.

Other changes from the original game include:

Foreclosures – Instead of mortgaging properties, players can simply stop paying on loans, while still earning full rent values.

GO – Changed to HOPE. When a player lands on or passes this space, they will collect a $2,000 ‘tax break’ and get two to twelve extra turns, depending on the dice roll.

Jail/Go to Jail – Jail is renamed ‘Gitmo’ and is therefore closed, effectively a free space. The ‘Go to Jail’ space is now a ‘Yes We Can’ space that instructs players to print between two and twelve $1,000 bills using the game’s added rubber stamp U.S. Treasury Printing Press and stack of blank bills, depending on the dice roll.

“You’ll never go bankrupt again!” Bettercakes replied to questions as to purpose of the added game pieces.

Free Parking – Changed to ‘Free Housing’, granting anyone lucky enough to land on the space freedom from all debts to the Federal Bank.

Chance and Community Chest Cards – Now Called ‘Change’ and ‘Entitlement’ cards respectively.

Examples include a Change card that forces the player with the most money to pay a $10,000 tax break to all other players and an Entitlement card that grants the player with the least amount of property their choice of half of the properties owned by the richest player.

For now, both Hasbro and Parker Brothers are remaining mum as to the shapes of the player pieces as well as property names, including the Railroad spaces, Water Works and Electric Company spaces.

As for the Income Tax and Luxury Tax spaces, Ms. Bettercakes tells us that “the player with the most money who lands on these spaces must pay fifty percent of their assets to the Federal Bank.”

Originally posted 2009-03-04 19:40:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter