Pay-for-play allegation hits Andrew Cuomo in New York

Has a corruption commission launched by New York governor Andrew Cuomo backfired on his political ambitions? The New York Daily News reports that Cuomo received two donations totaling $100,000 from a developer who stands to reap millions from a tax break signed by Cuomo — two days before he signed the bill:

Well, maybe these were longtime supporters just making a regular contribution … or not:

Less than three weeks later, the NYDN discovered, Extell CEO Gary Barnett donated another $100,000 to the state Democratic Party. This was also Barnett’s first time at the Democratic rodeo, at least going back to 1999, the oldest records the NYDN could access. Coincidentally, that’s precisely the time when Cuomo used party funds to run ads pushing his political agenda.

That’s not to say that Extell didn’t use good business sense in kicking into the kitty. The bill will cost New York City $35 million to service those tax breaks on Extell’s apartment building, ONE57. The return on investment, as well as the timing, give a strong suggestion of a quid pro quo at play.

When the NYDN first discovered this big tax break two months ago, the bill’s five legislative sponsors couldn’t even recall who picked the projects to receive benefits. A commission on political corruption may get to the bottom of that soon, as they have issued subpoenas to Extell and four other companies who ended up with lucrative tax breaks. Ironically, the commission was created by Cuomo himself to probe state government corruption after a series of scandals in New York.

Needless to say, this complicates Cuomo’s ambitions for his future political career, if not his current position in New York. Empire State voters should pay particular attention to the commission’s work in unraveling the mighty coincidental timing of tax breaks and big campaign contributions.

Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie
Village Voice ^ | August 05, 2008 | By Wayne Barrett
FR Posted January 09, 2013 by Brad from Tennessee.

There are as many starting points for the mortgage meltdown as there are fears about how far it has yet to go, but one decisive point of departure is the final years of the Clinton administration, when a kid from Queens without any real banking or real-estate experience was the only man in Washington with the power to regulate the giants of home finance, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.

What he did is important—not just because of what it tells us about how we got in this hole, but because of what it says about New York's attorney general (now gov), who has been trying for months to don a white hat in the subprime scandal, pursuing cases against banks, appraisers, brokers, rating agencies, and multitrillion-dollar, quasi-public Fannie and Freddie. . . (Excerpt) Read more at villagevoice.com ...

REFERENCE Cuomo's Social Engineering as HUD Chief Contributed to Subprime Crisis / originally published on Examiner.com

Have those New Yorkers, residents of one of the highest taxed states in the union, voting for Andrew Cuomo to be their next governor allowed their ideology to trump sound reasoning? As many Americans across this great land continue to struggle with the loss of their homes, savings and retirement resources, those that were complicit in not regulating the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) in the second market namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac causing the subprime loans to detonate are jockeying for power.

Sadly, we are giving those same culprits the honor of office through our votes. Note: the use of the term 'we' and 'our' is a reference to the electorate and not suggestive of the voting record of the author.

In 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed Andrew Cuomo to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as Assistant Secretary. In 1997 Cuomo took over as HUD chief replacing Clinton appointee Henry Cisneros. During Cisneros tenure he championed Clinton's goal of social engineering within the housing market forcing lenders to issue loans to those that would not financially qualify for the lending.

Cisneros left office in a scandal involving lying to the FBI over payouts to a mistress, Cisneros subsequently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and though never sent to prison received a pardon from Bill Clinton in 2001.

Andrew Cuomo took the HUD reins and not only furthered Cisneros and Clinton's policies but greatly expanded them.

Henry Cisneros moved the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low and moderate income families. Andrew Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages for the "very-low-income."

These bad loans were purchased and sold throughout the secondary market and the pyramid grew and the bottom collapsed resulting in the subprime crisis we are still reeling from today.

In 2008, the Village Voice published a compelling report detailing Andrew Cuomo's policy decisions "that gave birth to the country's current crisis."

The report touched on how Cuomo's 187-page rules "opened the door to abuse." The rules explicitly rejected the idea of imposing any new reporting requirements on the GSEs. In other words, HUD wanted Fannie and Freddie to buy risky loans, but the department didn't want to hear just how risky they were.

Many New York voters have been distracted by the gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's racist joke email forwards, what some are failing to see is the actual harm to the minority community directly caused by Cuomo's policies...and that is no laughing matter.

Cuomo's top aide said, "We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible." Andrew Cuomo doubled down and had this to say about his HUD standards, "GSE presence in the subprime market could be of significant benefit to lower-income families, minorities, and families living in underserved areas."

How's that working out for the minority community, where foreclosures and unemployment rates have hit the hardest as a result of such failed policies and blatant social engineering?

SOURCE http://voices.yahoo.com/cuomos-social-engineering-as-hud-chief-contributed-7077218.html

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.