Mayor Buying Votes

That is exactly what he's doing:

• Speaking about the increasing number of home foreclosures in Chicago and in the nation, Mayor Richard Daley said Saturday that the city hopes to compile a list of people who lost their homes to foreclosures, in an effort to try to help them.
  
  "We have to take a list of all of them, get all the mortgage companies and have to try to build their lives," the mayor said at a news conference announcing a new principal at Harper High School in West Englewood. He did not specify what the city would do with the list.
  
  The mayor said the increase in foreclosures is a national problem and faulted the federal government for not regulating the issue.
  
  "Where was the federal government on this?" he said. "They completely failed."

The federal government is to blame? Then why aren't we seeing waves of indictments against these subprime mortgage lenders? Probably because the lenders followed the rules in place. The lenders took risks and so did the borrowers. It didn't pan out and the lenders seem to have over extended themselves a bit. How is that our problem? How is that the City's problem?

This reminds us of the Rosemont casino license debacle - certain politically connected investors had a "can't miss" opportunity and when it all went south, they expect the taxpayers of Illinois to bail them out. Doesn't the mayor have a $218 million hole in his budget? Shouldn't he be taking care of that instead of trying to pick up votes from people who can't manage their finances properly?

And speaking of subprime lenders, we read this over at Captain's Quarters:

• As a presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards has regularly attacked subprime lenders, particularly those that have filed foreclosure suits against victims of Hurricane Katrina. But as an investor, Mr. Edwards has ties to lenders foreclosing on Katrina victims. The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report.

After preaching about "two Americas" for the past few years, seems Edwards contributes to those "two Americas" in words AND deeds. Maybe he and the mayor could get together and work out a few of these loans.