The all new "Perils of Pauline," starring John Edwards as the Evil Landlord?
Posted on 08/18/2007 9:58:49 AM PDT by LdSentinal
Once again, John Edwards' money is getting in the way of his message. His Democratic presidential campaign spent Friday responding to a front-page Wall Street Journal report showing that a company that Edwards worked for and has invested $16 million in, Fortress Investment Group, owns mortgage companies that have sought to foreclose on homeowners in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. The newspaper identified 34 homes that are the subject of foreclosure suits.
Edwards, who made a fortune as a trial lawyer, worked for Fortress from late 2005 through 2006. Campaign finance reports show its employees and family members have contributed heavily to his campaign.
Edwards, a former U.S. senator who makes his home in Orange County, told The Journal that he would personally provide financial help to New Orleans residents who have lost their homes to Fortress-affiliated businesses.
He also said that he would pull out any investments he had that profited from those homeowners' losses.
"I will not have my family's money invested in these firms," Edwards said.
His staff said he was on the campaign trail in Iowa on Friday and unavailable for comment.
A campaign spokesman, Eric Schultz, released a statement that said Edwards would take responsibility for those hit with foreclosures, but it provided no details as to what Edwards planned to do.
"He's taking responsibility, because for him that is the meaning of leadership," Schultz said.
Edwards has sought to be identified on the campaign trail as a champion of the poor and the working class. At many campaign stops, including New Orleans, he has criticized predatory lenders for taking advantage of people who can ill afford it.
It's that contrast between his public message and his financial dealings that continues to dog his campaign.
Money and trouble
Over the past several months, he has had to respond to reports about $400 haircuts, a $6 million estate he built last year, and a nonprofit he created and pitched as an anti-poverty organization that benefited his campaign.
His attacks on conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch led to the disclosure earlier this month in one of Murdoch's newspapers of a $900,000 book deal Edwards struck with a Murdoch-owned publisher. Edwards' campaign said he is donating the proceeds from the 2006 book "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives" to charity.
Andrew Taylor, a political science professor at N.C. State University, said issues like the expensive haircuts or palatial home are peripheral compared to the war in Iraq or the nation's health-care crisis, but they hurt Edwards more because of his populist message.
"It really shows you're on the other side of the message," Taylor said. "It says you're one of the other guys -- the rich guys."
The problem lenders
The Fortress-affiliated companies that made the home loans -- Green Tree Servicing and Nationstar Mortgage -- are known as subprime lenders. These are companies that will make home loans to people with credit problems, though the borrowers are likely to pay higher costs.
Some of these subprime lenders have been labeled predatory by critics, because the lenders offer high-interest mortgages that often include additional fees, and penalties for early payoffs. The Journal reported that the two lenders fit that profile.
Lenders have faced heat for foreclosing on homes in areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Some mortgage companies have cut homeowners slack as they try to get back on their feet.
Edwards' financial ties to subprime lenders first surfaced in a Washington Post article in May. The newspaper reported that Green Tree threatened foreclosure of a 67-year-old woman whose home had been flooded out.
Edwards told The Post then that he had asked Fortress to find Katrina victims foreclosed on by Green Tree and to help them.
"I said, 'This is not O.K. that this is happening,' " Edwards said in the report. "I don't know how many cases there are ... but the right thing is to go back and fix this."
Now that Hillary smells blood in the water, she is starting to knock her opponents off.
He’s trying to buy his way out of his bad choices.
Edward’s is indignant because he was caught.
Hillary is just getting warmed up, too. (Edwards will be lucky if he’s left with one friend in the world.)
Edwards will be lucky if he’s still alive. Those who have opposed the Clintons have been known to perish in “accidents”.
Maybe he could purchase some Mortgage Foreclosure Offset Credits.
Like all hypocritcal liberals Edwards is sorry - sorry he got caught.
Edwards is a complete phony.
If there had been no publicity about his relationship with Fortress, what would he have done for the Fortress-foreclosed families?
NADA.
john edwards the “michael vick” of the democrat party, maybe he can get some homeless people to fight to the death for a free home(with strings attached), all his dem friends can sit around and watch it on pay-per-view in their mansions and talk about tax cuts for the middle class
Exactly my thoughts and several above beat me to it. Whenever anyone opposes the “hacksaw” Hillary, their underwear always shows up out on the clothesline. Besides the media, I wonder who she is using now instead of the FBI? Now, if only she could shut his/her wife up.
These are the sorts of things that the Democrats figure the government (everyone else - including those whose fault this is NOT) should pay for. It makes them look oh so much better.
the real problem is not that he is foreclosing on these homes, the people that he is foreclosing on failed to keep up their end of a legal agreement and are suffering the consequences, the problem is that he goes around condemning other people that are simply going on about their own business and enforcing their contracts
culture of hypocrisy alert...
Certainly the government has a part in rebuilding the infrastructure and providing all the aid they can, but since when has the government been responsible for bailing out uninsured private home losses? If we bailed out all the Katrina victims for trillions, wouldn't all the Florida hurricane victims expect the same? What about the wildfire losses in California? Should the government be our homeowners insurance? And what's next...replacing our cars, our laptops?
Democratic compassion sounds a lot like socialism to me, and it sounds worse coming from someone who clearly lives in that "other America" who made his fortune off the legal and property losses of others.
Now I can daydream all those images of Edwards as the silent movie villain foreclosing on granny's home.
And they're true!
John Edwards is a she-devel.
The all new "Perils of Pauline," starring John Edwards as the Evil Landlord?
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