California’s crazy one-party liberal politics is why I had to finally leave the state -- and I’m not alone

"California isn’t the future, rather, it’s what America’s 2016 election of Donald Trump saved the nation from becoming." @ChuckDeVore https://t.co/wEoyhKVQJi #CAPolitics #CAExodus

— HJTA.org (@HJTA) April 16, 2018

Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, infamously tweeted a link in early April to a story calling for a bloodless civil war to solve America’s problems. The piece, “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War: Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history — one side must win” was authored by Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira.

The duo assert that this new civil war will follow a path blazed by California 15 years ago, namely, the crushing of the Republican Party. “The Democrats won; the Republicans lost,” they intone, “California is the future…”

Living and working in places like Washington and San Francisco as Teixeira and Twitter’s Dorsey do, tends to distort the view of the real world....

In 2011, after spending my adult life in California, working in the once-thriving aerospace industry there, serving 19 years in the state’s National Guard and six years in the legislature, I picked up my family and moved to Texas.

The first benefit of moving was buying a home that was close to twice as large as our old home in California for $110,000 less—providing needed room to care for two ailing parents.

That home prices and rents in California average 55 percent higher than in Texas isn’t just due to the former’s good weather—the Golden State’s high taxes, capricious regulations, onerous lawsuit climate, and powerful unions all contribute to constraining the supply of new housing while jacking up the price of existing housing....

From the CA Dept. of the Obvious: "Proposed corporate tax hike in California could drive more businesses to Texas." https://t.co/IQRZ8KbcPr via @SFBusinessTimes

— Jon Coupal (@joncoupal) April 13, 2018

The Stunning Failures of Obama's Mortgage Program

◼ Way back in 2009, President Obama's Treasury Department launched the Home Affordable Modification Program, a massive authorization to help homeowners struggling with their mortgages in the wake of the financial crisis. 1.2 milllion people participated in the program at a cost to taxpayers of $4.4 billion - Kevin Glass/Townhall

A report ◼ [pdf] dropped this week from the Office of the Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP) that HAMP has a stunning failure rate. Of the 1.2 million HAMP participants, 306,000 have re-defaulted on their mortgages, at an additional cost to taxpayers of $815 million. What's more, another 88,000 homeowners in the HAMP program have missed payments and are at risk to re-default.

California Attorney General's Office Subpoenas Fannie, Freddie

◼ Investigators with the state attorney general's office are seeking information on the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as landlords who own thousands of foreclosed properties in California. - Alejandro Lazo and Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times

Investigators with the California attorney general's office have subpoenaed information from mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into lending and foreclosure practices in the state.

The subpoenas ask the government-controlled finance companies to answer a series of questions about their activities in California, including their roles as landlords who own thousands of foreclosed properties. The attorney general's office is also seeking details of Fannie and Freddie's mortgage-servicing and home-repossession practices, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In addition, investigators want to learn more about the companies' purchases and sponsorship of securities holding "toxic mortgages" in the Golden State, said the person, who was not authorized to speak on the matter and requested anonymity....

According to the person familiar with California's investigation, the central question posed by the California investigators is: To what extent did the two mortgage giants contribute to the foreclosure crisis in California?

Fannie and Freddie hold a vast number of loans in California. The major banks that are employed to act on their behalf — collecting payments from borrowers, foreclosing or evicting borrowers or striking deals with homeowners to modify their mortgages — must adhere to their guidelines.

Mayor Bloomberg to #OccupyWallStreet: Blame Congress, Not Banks

Bloomberg: Protesters Should Stop Looking For Villains: MyFoxNY.com

“I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg said at a business breakfast held in midtown New York.

“Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp,” Capital New York reports Bloomberg saying. h/t: The Blaze

Smoking Gun: Document Found That Touched Off the Mortgage Meltdown

◼ [In 1994] the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history. - Doug Ross

At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties.

The threat was codified in a 20-page "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining. Read the rest.