Writing today on NRO, Stanley Kurtz does the nation an immense service by connecting the dots between ACORN (a far-left pressure group), congressional Democrats, Fannie and Freddie, bank lending standards, and the housing crash. I strongly recommend reading this and sending it to everyone you know who has an interest in our current situation. (That ought to be everyone, since we’re all going to be paying for it!)
I think Kurtz has the story right: the sine qua non of this disaster is the leftist vision that the way to make life better for poor people was to get them into homes they owned rather than apartments. When you think about that, it’s ridiculous. A house you own isn’t necessarily any better a dwelling than an apartment. Were the low-income people ACORN says it champions really helped by all the pressure to get them into inexpensive houses compared with inexpensive apartments? I doubt it. The best help for poor people is economic growth so they can find better-paying jobs, but left-wing activist groups aren’t interested in anything fundamental. They profess to hate capitalism, the very thing that actually does help the poor. What they demand are grandiose government projects where they can play the starring role.
