Why we did not "Wait and See"

[Guinevere]

But marched yesterday, and have been organizing since November - because *they* didn't either:

1. Friday a scheduled roll back of FHA mortgage insurance premium was stopped via Executive Order. That means home ownership becomes more expensive and less accessible for middle class individuals and families, especially in areas where housing costs are high so saving 10-20% down becomes a significant hurdle. Mortgage insurance protects the bank (even where the loans are underwritten by the Federal Government) not the homeowner.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/whe ... bb8eda0b23

2. On Friday another Executive Order purported to allow executive agencies the ability to roll back broad swaths of the Affordable Care Act, including enforcement of the individual mandate and essential health benefits, before Congress takes final legislative action. Equality of benefits - the non-discrimination provisions that allow birth control and viagra to be covered equally, and makes health insurance no more expensive for women than it is for men, are only some of the likely provisions that could drop away.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... 3cab6b4248

3. Today by Executive Order, the full global gag rule on organizations that provide counseling to women about reproductive health and family planning services, including abortion, even though no federal monies are or have been used to fund abortion services.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/don ... d8cad1f774

Three days in and our rights are being rolled back by an administration that clearly does not care about supporting its citizens (especially its women), helping them create individual wealth, or keeping them healthy, safe, and prosperous.

[wesw]

buckle up, you ain t seen nuthin yet....

yer gonna say, ""mr President, we are tired of you giving us things to complain about" "we know that we wanted them, but enough already"

and hes gonna say.... "no, you wanted things to complain about, and I m gonna keep on giving em to you...."

[Big RR]

So wes, if I get this right, you applaud these orders not because you believe they are good policies, but because they piss some people off? That makes no sense.

you want to defend any of them--go ahead.

quite franky, Trump "ain't seen nuthin' yet"; he'll find out how well people the affected people will respond to his arbitrary cuts or orders. these are orders that are going to hurt the very people he says he cares about.

[Guinevere]

God forbid your daughter wants to buy a home of her own some day or needs birth control at an affordable price. You may think you can lock her up forever, but you can't. And what happens when your disability payments stop rolling in -- because believe me, SSDI is on the list.


ETA: What BigRR said. This is about taking care of the residents of this country right now, not about some amorphous ghost-people who you can't identify. This is YOU, this is US.

[wesw]

RR, I didn t applaud anything. i only tried to portray what i see coming in an accurate way with a touch of humor.



guin, i didn t expect this to be easy. i m more worried about what will happen if you keep up your outrage and manage to help to instigate civil unrest.

you and Madonna....

well, i don t really worry about Madonna, you are more formidable, i think......

i did like scarlet johansen s words...., easy on the eyes too

[rubato]

Trump's meltdown has already begun. I would give even money he does not last the year. The idiotic flailing by all three of them, Spicer, The Lizard, and Trump about crowd sizes and "alternative facts" have him on his heels already. He is finding out that the press cannot be bullied and will call lies lies.

But in the meantime his policies will be uniformly harmful. Cutting Planned Parenthood will have terrible effects on the delivery of healthcare for women overall, not just reproductive healthcare.

yrs,
rubato

[Guinevere]

Some of that "flailing" is pure gaslighting. Don't get too distracted, keep your eyes on the prize.

[Long Run]

1. Friday a scheduled roll back of FHA mortgage insurance premium was stopped via Executive Order. That means home ownership becomes more expensive and less accessible for middle class individuals and families, especially in areas where housing costs are high so saving 10-20% down becomes a significant hurdle. Mortgage insurance protects the bank (even where the loans are underwritten by the Federal Government) not the homeowner.

Don't know about the others, but this was a last second insincere Obama action while he headed out the door. If he actually wanted to provide this benefit, and it was prudent to do so, he could have acted at any time in the last several years to lower the premium. Of course, he wasn't sincere which is why he did not implement this policy when he had a chance.

Instead, this was another cynical political "gotcha" Obama action; he knew the R's were not in favor of easing credit standards, would reverse this, and this would allow the D's to score talking points. Obama's executive action was repealed before it ever became effective, so no one had anything taken away and few if any new loans were started with this easier criteria.

And why were the R's not in favor of this? Maybe because they remember that this sort of loosening of credit standards led to the housing crisis that lead to a worldwide recession. Obama didn't forget this either, which is why this was such a transparent attempt at scoring political points and had nothing to do with reducing the effective points paid by borrowers.

FHA loans are made to those buyers with small down payments and other hits to their credit. They pay similar mortgage rates as on conventional loans, but they have to pay mortgage insurance premiums (both up front and monthly) to reflect the higher risk of default, until there is sufficient equity in the property to cease the premiums. FHA uses the premiums to pay off the losses from the higher rate of loan defaults. While the last administration stated that the FHA program was sufficiently funded for the expected defaults, Congress disagreed citing the recent housing market collapse as ample evidence. The new administration agreed with Congress, and acted quickly so as to limit the number of people who would be adversely impacted by being in the middle of this little political game.

[rubato]

Some of that "flailing" is pure gaslighting. Don't get too distracted, keep your eyes on the prize.

In order to gaslight someone the gaslighter has to have a grasp on reality so they know how they are manipulating the perceptions of it. Trump does not. And the press (having been insulted and abused for months) are finally willing to point it out when he lies lies lies.

And while I would like to get rid of Trump it won't help anything. Pence and the GOP are going to do just as bad in most ways.


yrs,
rubato

[Guinevere]

I completely disagree Long run. The reason it happened now is that interest rates are going up and the Administration wanted to give a little relief to the FHA borrowers. FWIW -- I'm an FHA mortgagee. It was the best way for me to get into an expensive housing market as a single professional still paying law school student loan debt. Saving the 60K required to get a conventional mortgage on a very modest home (around here) on one income wasn't possible for me, good credit and good job notwithstanding.

Also, the housing market collapse, as you know, was not due to FHA loans. And since that collapse, lending guidelines have been strengthened and the amount of PMI required increased significantly (a single Mom friend who bought her similarly priced house a year after me is paying 2.5X the PMI I am). Also, unless you refinance you are locked into that PMI for 10 years regardless of how much equity you have in the home (i.e., increases in market value are not factored into the requirement -- I have at least 1/3 equity now but my rate is so low I won't refinance and I've almost paid off my PMI -- but it's ridiculous that I'm even paying it now).

[Long Run]

I like FHA too and have benefited from it, but the premium structure must be financially sound. This was a purely political move by Obama -- it was never meant as serious policy and was just a slightly clever ploy to manipulate a certain population to get mad. The interest rates rising excuse doesn't hold water -- mortgage rates are still historically low, making housing very affordable. One way to make housing affordable is to have a stable and financially sound FHA program so that it is available to more people; if reducing premium rates causes FHA to go into the red again,then borrower criteria has to be tightened and premiums have to be hiked again, meaning that fewer people can get home loans -- just the opposite of the supposed rationale for the action. Given that FHA was underwater just a few years ago, there should be consensus that the premium reduction is a good idea. The only issue here is whether the premiums can prudently be reduced.

But Republicans cast the move as hasty and said it threatened to undermine the stability of the system. So shortly after Trump was sworn in at noon Friday, General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Housing Genger Charles — an Obama administration holdover — announced that HUD would "suspend indefinitely" the rate reduction, saying "more analysis and research are deemed necessary."

The premiums fund the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, which would bail out lenders if borrowers default on their mortgages.

It was Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who pressed the issue at confirmation hearings for Ben Carson, Trump's nominee for HUD secretary.

Toomey said the planned rate reduction was "surprising," since the balance in the fund that backs FHA mortgages is just 16% higher than the legal minimum. "This strikes me as very little buffer above the minimum. And after all, as recently as 2013, the FHA needed a bailout," he said.

* * *

The timing of the Trump administration action was dictated more by the procedural requirements that govern such changes, said David Stevens, a former Federal Housing Commissioner in the Obama administration.

"If they stop a fee that hasn't been implemented, then it’s no-harm, no-foul," said Stevens, who now heads the Mortgage Bankers Association. "Today was really the last day to do it in order not to disrupt a whole lot of mortgage closings."

Without any action, the new rates would have gone into effect Jan. 27.

"The Trump team coming into office, they haven't had their own chance to look at the state of the reserves, the strength of the fund and make their own analysis," he said. "My view of this is that it is not ideological whatsoever. It is a technical decision."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /96853446/

[RayThom]

... And while I would like to get rid of Trump it won't help anything... Pence and the GOP are going to do just as bad in most ways...yrs, rubato

I agree. I've been pointing this out since Drumpf named Pence his running mate. Drumpf has no known ideology, however, Pence is a consummate and divisive ideologue of the worst type.

Now if they both die at the same time... problem solved.

[Jarlaxle]

1. Friday a scheduled roll back of FHA mortgage insurance premium was stopped via Executive Order. That means home ownership becomes more expensive and less accessible for middle class individuals and families, especially in areas where housing costs are high so saving 10-20% down becomes a significant hurdle. Mortgage insurance protects the bank (even where the loans are underwritten by the Federal Government) not the homeowner.

Don't know about the others, but this was a last second insincere Obama action while he headed out the door. If he actually wanted to provide this benefit, and it was prudent to do so, he could have acted at any time in the last several years to lower the premium. Of course, he wasn't sincere which is why he did not implement this policy when he had a chance.

Instead, this was another cynical political "gotcha" Obama action; he knew the R's were not in favor of easing credit standards, would reverse this, and this would allow the D's to score talking points. Obama's executive action was repealed before it ever became effective, so no one had anything taken away and few if any new loans were started with this easier criteria.

And why were the R's not in favor of this? Maybe because they remember that this sort of loosening of credit standards led to the housing crisis that lead to a worldwide recession. Obama didn't forget this either, which is why this was such a transparent attempt at scoring political points and had nothing to do with reducing the effective points paid by borrowers.

FHA loans are made to those buyers with small down payments and other hits to their credit. They pay similar mortgage rates as on conventional loans, but they have to pay mortgage insurance premiums (both up front and monthly) to reflect the higher risk of default, until there is sufficient equity in the property to cease the premiums. FHA uses the premiums to pay off the losses from the higher rate of loan defaults. While the last administration stated that the FHA program was sufficiently funded for the expected defaults, Congress disagreed citing the recent housing market collapse as ample evidence. The new administration agreed with Congress, and acted quickly so as to limit the number of people who would be adversely impacted by being in the middle of this little political game.

Thank you! This is spot on...it SHOULD be harder to get a mortgage. When people with no business financing a house finance a house, the result it, invariably, serious trouble.

[Bicycle Bill]

guin, i didn t expect this to be easy. i m more worried about what will happen if you keep up your outrage and manage to help to instigate civil unrest.

I see this more along these lines.  If a building starts to burn then the fire department shows up to fight the blaze.

That's what we have here.  Trump as Emperor Nero, trying to burn down the structure of government, and "WE THE PEOPLE" are answering the call and showing up with our garden hoses and fire extinguishers to try to put it out before it becomes an all-consuming inferno.

-"BB"-

[Bicycle Bill]

And while I would like to get rid of Trump it won't help anything. Pence and the GOP are going to do just as bad in most ways.

Not necessarily.  When the French removed the head of government (by guillotine) in 1793, Marie Antoinette knew that it wouldn't be too long before she'd also be lying face down on the bascule with her neck in the lunette.

We're not quite that ruthless today, but when Trump finally does get the heave-ho I think Pence is smart enough to know that he is then the man under near-microscopic observation and would realize that in order to get along he'd better learn to go along.

-"BB"-

[Guinevere]

The idea that I'm fomenting "civil unrest" is laughable. What I'm doing and "instigating" is pure First Amendment activity -- demonstration, protest, and petitioning my government for redress of grievances.

[Econoline]

Bill - The difference is, the Republicans in Congress will WANT to impeach Trump (they'll put up with him only as long as he's useful to their interests) but they much prefer Pence (who they consider "one of their own").

(It would be nice if Pence replaced Trump, and then someone a bit more sane replaced Pence as VP--and *THEN* "something happened" to Pence...)

[wesw]

assassination fantasies?

[Econoline]

There are plenty of other scenarios besides assassination to fantasize about (e.g. impeachment, incapacitating health problems, death from natural causes, resignation due to some sort of embarrassing scandal, Russian blackmail, removal by the VP+Cabinet via the 25th Amendment, etc.)

[wesw]

and yet still you fantasize about the worst of these.....