As I said, you can address the column’s content without the personal
attack.

Bob Hunter
Editor
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR)
Ashland Daily Tidings
541-776-4460

—–Original Message—–
From: Chuck
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 3:58 PM
To: Hunter, Bob
Cc: Conrad, Chris
Subject: I merely said it was a symptom of alcoholism.

Bob,

I merely said it was a symptom of alcoholism. (which it is)  If the shoe

fits ,wear it.

I’m sure that the homeless shelters are disappointed in the Mail Tribune

publishing this kind of trash.

Are you open to me editing it?

Chuck

—– Original Message —–
From: “Hunter, Bob” <bhunter@mailtribune.com>
To: Chuck
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 3:36 PM
Subject: RE: Could you please print my letter in your letters to the
editor
e-vents

Chuck:

We are not planning to run this. You are accusing him of being an
alcoholic. If you would like to criticize the column, that’s fine, but
no personal attacks.

Bob Hunter
Editor
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR)
Ashland Daily Tidings
541-776-4460

—–Original Message—–
From: Chuck
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 3:33 PM
To: Hunter, Bob
Cc: Conrad, Chris
Subject: Could you please print my letter in your letters to the editor
e-vents

Hello Bob,

Hopefully this will get printed. Chris Conrad is a troubled individual
and
should be placed in an alternate position. I sent this in several days
ago.

Thank you,
Chuck
==========================================================

—– Original Message —–
From: Chuck
To: <e-vent@mailtribune.com>
Cc: “Hunter,Bob” <bhunter@mailtribune.com>
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 9:19 AM
Subject: Could you please print my letter in your letters to the editor
e-vents

> =============================================
>
>
> It’s a sad day when the Medford Mail Tribune allows one of it’s
> reporters,Chris Conrad to berate and degrade the plight of the
homeless
> people that live in our city. I’d suggest that Mr. Conrad quit
pointing
> his finger at defenseless people and start looking at what type of
person
> would
> drink gut rot alone on a Saturday night. Isn’t that a sign of
alcoholism?

Hi Bob,

I decided to publish the letter myself.

 That way the world could see it.

 It wouldn’t be limited to only Southern Oregon.

 You can view it by googleing “Medford Mail Tribune Sucks”.

Then click on the home page and there it is.

Isn’t the internet great!

Thanks a lot,

Chuck 

 =============================================

It’s a sad day when the Medford Mail Tribune allows one of it’s
reporters,Chris Conrad to berate and degrade the plight of the homeless
people that live in our city.(31) I’d suggest that Mr. Conrad quit pointing
his
finger at defenseless people and start looking at what type of person would
drink gut rot alone on a Saturday night. Isn’t that a sign of alcoholism?

Chris and Bob,

Articles like Chris Conrad published “40 oz. to Deadline” contribute to the
homeless plight.

Did you read the article in todays paper titled “Transient recovering from
Burn Attack”?

I’d hate to think bashing homeless people is “OK” . You could look at
Chris’s article as a “Hate Crime”. A bit far out? Maybe. Think about it.

Most of them have mental illiness and suffer from addictions.

Hopefully we won’t be seeing any more off color articles in the Mail
Tribune.

Making fun at other people’s expense is not OK.
Chuck

Bob Hunter Censors letters to the editor and is afraid of the truth. He is in a dying business and is stuck in his ways.I pity the poor old bastard.

It’s a sad day when the Medford Mail Tribune allows one of it’s reporters,Chris Conrad to berate and degrade the plight of the homeless people that live in our city. I’d suggest that Mr. Conrad quit pointing his finger at defenseless people and start looking at what type of person would drink gut rot alone on a Saturday night. Isn’t that a sign of alcoholism?

The Medford Mail Tribune won’t publish these articles
Following is last week’s column. I apologize for the delay in sending it out.

Larry

The Politics of Hope

Every true leader in a democratic society knows that you can only lead by hope, inspiration and example. The use of fear, reproach and guilt are the tools of despots and totalitarians. In a democracy those who stoop to fear are usually short timers or Speaker of the House.

Those who do not have experience in leadership often succumb to their own fears and broadcast those fears in the form of despair and deepening crises.

Enter Barack Obama.

As a candidate for President he talked incessantly about hope and change – never defining either – but focused just as incessantly on a rapidly deteriorating economy. It was his campaign’s raison d’être – only he could save us from the excesses of George Bush and the Democrat Congress. And the voters bought it. Obama was elected, not on the issue of the war in Iraq as the Far Left would have us believe, but rather on a souring economy and a disgust that President Bush failed to warn about, act on, or solve the economic crises.

The economic crisis was created by a manipulation of the housing market. It started with Democrats in Congress insisting that the nation’s financial institutions lend money to persons who could not and would not repay it. This alone should have triggered concern in the national government but since the Democrats had triggered it, any investigation by the Congress was quashed and the Bush administration was so pre-occupied with the war in Iraq that it neither wanted the distraction of a fight with Congress or the alienation of desperately needed support for continuation of the war.

The availability of this money through subprime mortgages and other financial manipulations accelerated the demand for homes which in turn drove a rapid increase in home prices – far beyond the historic growth in value and this, again, should have triggered concern in the government – especially since it followed so closely a similar rapid and unwarranted acceleration in the dot.com industry during the Clinton years followed by a resulting catastrophic collapse. Again silence from the Bush Administration and the Democrat Congress.

But the greatest fault may well lie with the spurious financial instruments created by packaging loans and marketing them as securities, derivatives and other instruments that allowed the stacking and leveraging of specious securities to make a bad situation even worse. This stacking was the proverbially “house of cards” that collapsed almost immediately upon disclosure. The suppression of an investigation into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the behest of Congressional Democrats and a failure of the Bush Administration’s Security Exchange Commission to ask hard questions was the moral equivalent of throwing kerosene on a burning house.

Okay, we all know that President Obama is not to blame for the current crisis, but that does not mean he is without blame. As a junior senator from Illinois he participated with his Democrat colleagues in demanding loans to those who could not and would not repay them and in suppressing investigation of the mortgage practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But the important thing here – the important thing for demonstration of leadership – is not who is to blame but what are you going to do about the current situation. Obama knew full well what he was getting into. He ran on a platform that highlighted it. His party reveled in every sign of a worsening crisis as an omen of their eventual electoral success.

It’s not like this is that hand Obama was dealt, it is more like the hand he reached out and grabbed. And since he grabbed the hand, a compliant Congress has given him everything that he has asked for in record time – doling out over $2 Trillion in a bacchanalian frenzy of spending and political payoffs for past loyalty.

And yet, with the exception of his inaugural address, all we have heard from Obama is doom and gloom. That the nation is on the verge of a catastrophe from which it may never recover. That the crises is so great, so critical, so overwhelming that we must act without thinking, we must accept each and every proposal from Obama and his administration as the only choice. And that the country has suffered, is suffering, and will suffer for the foreseeable future. Obama’s rhetoric is not that of the nation’s great leaders but rather that of one of its most miserable presidents – Jimmy Carter and his national malaise.

Compare Obama’s dire warnings of impending catastrophe with those of previous leaders:

“. . . It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

“. . . This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural speech

“So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward–and so will space.

* * *

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

John F. Kennedy’s Speech on the Frontiers of Space

“ . . . If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here, in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter—and they are on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They are individuals and families whose taxes support the Government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education. Their patriotism is quiet but deep. Their values sustain our national life.”

Ronald Reagan’s Inaugural Speech

And finally, the most telling quote of all:

“I hope I have appealed to your greatest hopes and not your worst fears.”

Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Speech

This column is written before President Obama’s speech on the economy scheduled for Tuesday evening. I am not surprised by Obama’s conduct thus far since he has never had leadership experience prior to being elected president. However, it is my hope that he will learn quickly and stop seeking to fix blame and commence leading by hope, optimism and example.

Medford Mail Tribune

Medford Mail Tribune sucks and will not publish this author.
A Bluebird in a Pile of Manure

It is hard to imagine any part of the Bush/Obama stimulus packages with which I agree. For all of the criticism that Obama and his fellow liberals heaped on George Bush during the campaign, their solutions are remarkably consistent with the bonehead initiatives of the Bush administration – namely, reward those who have caused the problem by making the innocent pay. And the bigger the mistakes the richer the rewards.

The major part of our current economic problems can be boiled down to a pretty simple fact – banks loaned money to people who they knew could not afford to repay it. They did it, in part, out of greed and, in part, in response to Congressional Democrats who were critical of the financial institutions “leaving the poor behind” – you know the people who couldn’t afford to pay the loans that were being made. In doing so the government and the financial institutions created an artificially high demand for housing to which the construction industry responded by overbuilding the housing market.

Whatever the reason, the financial institutions were rewarded handsomely while making the loans. And now that the loans have gone bad – as everyone with half a brain knew they would – the financial institutions are being rewarded again by being relieved of the consequences of their spectacularly poor business judgment. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars are being pumped into these financial institutions because the are “too big, too important” to fail. (It is the same rationale applied to the nation’s automakers after years of poor financial decisions, poor design, inefficient production methods and a proliferation of dealerships – they are just “too big, too important” to fail.)

Meanwhile you can walk down the streets of our nation’s cities – large and small alike – and observe the empty storefronts as small businesses fail left and right. In most instances those business are failing because of a collapsed economy brought on by the sins of the financial institutions and the stupidity of people who bought homes they knew they could not afford and borrowed money they knew they could not repay. They are also failing because the very financial institutions that have been so richly rewarded with “stimulus” money have unnecessarily tightened the credit markets to the point that small businesses no longer have access to “working capital” in the form of inventory financing.

Now Obama and Congress are hell bent on rewarding those very people who could not afford to repay those loans.

I do have some sympathy for some of those people who borrowed money that they could not afford to repay. First they were being solicited by unscrupulous financial institutions. They were told that the money was there for the asking. They were told that they would not have to produce proof of their earnings or their financial status – the “financial institutions” would simply take them at their word. They were told not to worry about repaying it because by the time the “introductory” subprime amounts were exhausted the value of their property would have increased so much that they could sell the home, pay off the mortgage and still have money to do it again. Everywhere they turned for advice – the real estate agents, the mortgage brokers, the property appraisers, and the financial institutions – they heard the same chorus.

However, in the end, common sense should tell them that if a deal seems to good to be true, it probably is. In the end you are responsible for your own decisions. If you looked at your income from the past three years and it was insufficient to pay the mortgage, what would make you think that in the next three years things would improve so dramatically that you could afford to pay it in the future. Yes, many of these people were duped in a modern-day-Music-Man scam but ultimately they are responsible for their own bad decisions.

Having said that and having continued to object to all phases of the bailout and stimulus packages, I do have to say that the latest proposal to aid in the payment of these “upside down” mortgages probably makes more sense than all of the other proposals to date. That proposal has not been “fleshed out” at the time of writing this column and given the penchant of Obama and the Congress to throw money without responsibility at a problem, I’m sure I’m not going to like their versions. However, I submit the following as a responsible way to administer such a program.

As it stands now, mortgage foreclosure rates are extraordinarily high. The financial institutions are taking over properties that are worth less than the balance on the mortgages. In turn, the banks are putting these properties back out on the market, flooding an already surplus market and further suppressing the value and price of the markets. (For those of you educated in Portland public schools – if there is more supply in the market than there is demand, prices go down.)

Look it’s pretty simple. Let’s say a financial institution has loaned $200,000 on a property that is now worth $150,000. The interest rate on the loan is 6.5%, which would have required the owner to pay approximately $1264 per month. However, in order to seduce the owner into purchasing the property and borrowing the money, the financial institution reduced the monthly payment to $800 per month for five years and tacked on the difference between the required amount and the actual payment to the principle of the loan. At the end of the five years, the monthly payments kick up to amortize the increased principle amount over the remaining twenty-five years. Five years of reduced payments will increase the principle amount of the mortgage by more than $15,800 (not including interest on that amount). Now the mortgage payment will have to be around $1450 – a significant increase over the reduced $800 per month and most likely in excess of the owner ability to repay.

If the financial institution forecloses, it will not recover its $200,000. It will not recover the additional $15,800 it lent to cover the difference between the reduced rate and the actual amortization requirement. It will recover a home valued at $150,000 and be lucky to resell it for $125,000.

In the meantime, amortization of the principle amount of the original loan -$200,00 – over the remaining twenty-five years would require a payment of $666.67 per month. Continuation of the payments at $800 per month for a period of time would reflect a return of 1.5% to the financial institution. Even a 1.5% return on $200,000 is better than a current loss of $75,000. If it is necessary for the government to subsidize the payment (and it should not be) any subsidy should not exceed one half the difference between what the original payments ($800 per month) would yield as a return, and current thirty year fixed rates (something less than six percent). The financial institutions should eat the rest and be happy as hell.

But there is a catch here too. The purchasers of homes they couldn’t afford should not be rewarded for their stupidity. If the government provides them some sort of subsidy, then that subsidy needs to be repaid from the proceeds on the eventual sale of the house. The automakers have to repay there loans before their executives can receive raises; the same philosophy should apply here. There is simply no reason that innocent taxpayers should have to bear the burden of the poor choices of the banks or the borrowers.

One final adjustment needs to be made. The current accounting rules that require financial institutions to write down the current value of property securing performing loans needs to be changed so that the financial institutions do not have to display paper losses that may never be actually incurred.

The benefit to all of this is that people will be able to remain in their homes. An already oversupplied housing market will not be further burdened by an inordinate number of foreclosures. The financial institutions will get some return on their loans and will not have to record losses that may never occur. And an economic recession will not be prolonged by more foolish decisions by the government.
By Larry Huss
The Medford Mail Tribune will not publish this author.This is one of the reasons that the Medford Mail Tribune Sucks.Bob Hunter,editor of the Medford Mail Tribune is biased and has censored this author .

If you have ever tried to get a letter to the editor published by the Medford Mail Tribune and been denied then here is the place to post it.

Chuck (editor of Medford Mail Tribune Sucks)