Your 18 years of Measure D Tax Dollars were not wisely spent for badly needed road work, and much was spent for "alternative transportation" based upon "concept" over reality
Brooks Firestone, Lois Capps, Salud Carbajal, The Doreen-Machine (unless Pappas beats the Chumafia money lords)
and the County Supermalfeasors are ready to waste more tax money on unaccountable political agendas, which could send Santa Barbara County to the depth of a similar financial disaster as is the Federal mortgage bailout. If you vote for Measure A, then you are to blame just as well as the people who bought no-interest loans on million dollar shacks.
Here it appears that certain members of Congress fought against regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004, resulting in gross malfeasance and the mortgage bust that we have today.
In the Congressional Investigation, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight described illegal activity by Franklin Raines (Barack Hussein Obama's economic advisor), and warned of market problems.
Frank Raines stated, "these assets are so riskless, that their capital for holding them should be 2% (instead of 4%)."
Rep. Ed Royce (R) pleaded for more regulation. However Representative Gregory Meeks (D) stated, "I'm pissed off... there's been nothing indicated is wrong with Fannie Mae."
Barney Frank and others also played it down.
Representative Maxine Waters (D) stated that, "Everything in the 1992 Act has worked just fine. In fact, the GSE's have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede the affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish, from desktop underwriting to 100% loans."
Doesn't this sound like the "innovations" of the present Santa Barbara City government?
Even Bill Clinton admitted that the Democrats were "resisting any efforts...to put some standards and tighten up a little." Yet in 1999 the New York Times reported that, "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."
Then Bush, Cheney, Paulson, Bernanke and many others sacrificed the self-respect of the Republican Party and continued this march to financial hell.
Where would we be today if the George Bush had gotten his wish to privatize Social Security and put our retirement money into the stock market for their crooked friends on Wall Street to juggle it all.........
18 years of Measure D Taxes! Where did the money go?