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To: WmShirerAdmirer
I have sent an official challenge to Snopes.com, who characterize this as FALSE accusation:

"I never thought I'd see the day, but I have to DISAGREE just a bit about something in one of your explanations.

Under "Barack Obama - The Loan Arranger" you state...

"The case was eventually settled out of court,... Citibank agreeing to help ease the way for low- and moderate- income people to apply for mortgages."

Why? If the case is about race, then for Citibank a compromise settlement would not be about income-level loans, it would be about a commitment to watch over the process better, diversity training, or some other race-related policy changes.

Citibank's side of the settlement makes it specifically about the income-level of they're loaning practices.

I have no doubt the plaintifs were wronged, at least in part, by suspicions on the part of Citibank personnel, but the RESULT of the lawsuit did force Citibank down the bad-loans road. And I'm sure the settlement included proving to some watchdog group that corrections had been made, and I doubt they'd accept "no loans to any-color poor people" as the spirit of the intent of this settlement."

76 posted on 10/09/2008 8:02:28 AM PDT by davidlachnicht ("IF WE'RE ALL TO BE TARGETS, THEN WE ALL MUST BE SOLDIERS.")
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To: davidlachnicht

I went to that snopes article to see what you were talking about, and although it categorizes it as false, it only categorizes it as false because Obama was only a junior lawyer in the suit.

That snopes article, after the big flag of “false”, when some might just stop reading and say “oh, ok, that is just false then”, goes on to show Obama WAS in on the action, if only as a junior lawyer. That article defines Obama’s part as representing a Calvin Roberson in 1994 against Citibank, charging that “the bank systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods.”

Snopes admits (after they claim the information is false to begin with) that the lawsuit (in which they themselves admit Obama was a part of) charged that Citibank (and I’m writing from snopes.com itself) “rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories.”

So here is what I get from the snopes.com attempt to call this false — that snopes called it false because Obama was only one of the lawyers involved and not the one who actually “FILED” the claim to begin with. Obama WAS involved, according to snopes (if you were careful enough to read the article itself) and Obama represented one of the cases, again according to snopes.

Oh, there are plenty other Obama articles on snopes as well, mostly flagged as false as well, but DO make sure you read the articles with a keen eye for WHY they might declare them as false. There is usually a minor detail in the story they will take to declare the entire thing false, and if you just read the true or false flag, you’ll be sorely unaware of the truth itself!


100 posted on 10/09/2008 9:29:32 AM PDT by casinva
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