Reply #52: Maxine Waters advocated for minority-owned banks

[suffragette]

and it looks to me like there is a concerted effort to use this against her to try to take her down.

It also looks to me to be part of a series:

Acorn: advocating and "organizing a majority consituency of low- to moderate-income people across the United States. The members of ACORN take on issues of relevance to their communities, whether those issues are discrimination, affordable housing, a quality education, or better public services. ACORN believes that low- to moderate-income people are the best advocates for their communities, and so ACORN's low- to moderate-income members act as leaders, spokespeople, and decision-makers within the organization."

Shirley Sherrod: Advocate for small farmers, who brought that history of advocacy into a major agency, the USDA

Maxine Waters: Long-time progressive advocate for civil rights


All notably effective advocates, all smeared in an effort to remove them specifically, to shift away the advocacy and appropriate support their constituencies receive and reduce the likelihood of others willing to risk the same attacks who might otherwise take up these causes.

From 2009:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/waters_i_didnt_take_improper_action_for_bank.php


Waters: I Didn't Take Improper Action For Bank
By Zachary Roth - March 13, 2009, 2:15PM
Yesterday we noted a report by the New York Times about Rep. Maxine Waters' ties to OneUnited, a bank that got bailout money after Waters set up a meeting between Treasury Department officials and the heads of minority-owned banks, including OneUnited's CEO.

Now Waters is pushing back.

In a statement on her website, Waters asserts that the stories "revealed one thing: I am indeed an advocate for minority banks. Despite my public and consistent advocacy, news reports suggest that somehow I have acted improperly."

The full statement follows after the jump...



http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/13/the-war-on-minority-lending-ny-times-helps-bush-aide-smear-maxine-waters/
The War on Minority Lending: NY Times Helps Bush Aide Smear Maxine Waters
By: Teddy Partridge Friday March 13, 2009 7:00 am
As part of the right-wing effort to blame The Bush Economic Miracle Financial Sector Meltdown on minorities who should have kept in their place rather than tried to join The Ownership Society as owners, a bunch of Bush-era Treasury politicos spun the New York Times into casting scary aspersions on heroic Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) for her involvement in a meeting with them about minority bank participation in TARP and the recovery.
~~~
An ex-Treasury colleague too afraid to attach his name to the canard being floated about Congresswoman Waters went farther in his accusations against the bank owners, not surprisingly, since the New York Times granted him anonymity:

“They wanted money — cash,” said a former Treasury Department official who attended the meeting but asked not to be named, because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “That is why they were there. It was very, very explicit.”

Wow! That’s shocking — bankers who wanted cash from the United States Treasury and were unafraid to ask for it in a meeting called to discuss the participation of minority-owned financial institutions in the great shoveling-out-the-door of taxpayer cash. Just imagine: a "very, very explicit" interest in Treasury-managed cash from bank owners! That must have seemed unprecedented to these Bushie lame ducks.

No wonder they felt the need to alert the media, even if they’d rather not have their names used.



http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/letters_bolster_waters_claim_on_bank_conflict.php
Letters Bolster Waters' Claim On Bank Conflict
By Zachary Roth - March 13, 2009, 5:08PM

Rep. Maxine Waters is stepping up her campaign to show she took no inappropriate action on behalf of OneUnited bank.

Waters' office has released to TPM two letters sent by the National Bankers Association (NBA), a trade group for minority-owned banks, to the Treasury Department, in reference to a September 2008 meeting Waters had helped set up between NBA and Treasury. The letters appear to back Waters' contention that the meeting, at which OneUnited's CEO reportedly asked explicitly for bailout money, was not set up exclusively to help OneUnited, but rather on behalf of minority-ownded banks more broadly.

That doesn't contradict anything the New York Times reported, it's worth noting. But it does appear to bolster Waters' claim, made in a statement she put out earlier today, that she wasn't looking out for OneUnited's interests above those of other minority-owned banks. Waters has long been an advocate in Congress for minority-owned banks.

Note: there's a link at TPM to the two letters. Do read them.




So we have former Bush treasurers making the allegations (and spinning them for the maximum negative). The NY Times taking up from there and consistently casting Waters in the most negative light over this past year and the OCE, with Goss co-chairing it pressing that Waters be investigated.

I think there are questionable ethics involved here, but those aren't Maxine's.