NAR Lobby suspends funds to Congress

FED Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen spoke before the Senate Banking committee today to talk about the credit mess and the ensuing recession. Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York, along with his Insurance Regulator, Eric R. Dinallo, addressed the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises. They also talked about the ensuing recession and collapse of the US financial system. The Congress is now involved because years of corruption and unbridled greed created “complex instruments” that magically transformed junk grade investment paper into AAA top grade paper.

It would be reasonable to think that this was the most important thing going on in Washington. News Services ran continuous real time coverage, without advertising, for several hours. A small headline on the newswires instead caught my attention. It received no major coverage. Not even Lou Dobbs picked it up. The title read:

NAR Lobby suspends funds to Congress

The press release (yes, they sent out a press release) states that the NAR will not contribute further funds to politicians for their lack of action to resolve the housing crisis.

A fantastic watchdog group, The Center for Responsive Politics, puts this into context. During election years the lobby contributes about $ 4 million to politicians. This means that this year the lobby will not donate the expected funds to campaign coffers unless Congress passes some law that lobby feels is beneficial to the NAR. This press release interestingly occurs just 1 day before the EARMARK pork season begins.

These funds from the lobby are clearly kickbacks and should be identified as such with criminal prosecution. We have serious problems with our country. One of the most important is the public debt. The US government’s insolvency is so pronounced that the government must break its contractual agreement of social security and reduce benefits to working men and women who have paid into the system for 20 to 50 years.

Let’s talk clear. This is corruption.