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MORE PAGE ONE Mortgage Bailout Infuriates Tenants (And Steve Forbes) 'Angry Renter' Web Site Has Grass-Roots Look, But This Turf Is Fake By MICHAEL M PHILLIPS May 16, 2008; com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows -- all emphasizing prudent renters' outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners. The Web site urges like-minded tenants to let Congress feel their fury by signing an online petition. "We are millions of renters standing up for our rights!" com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington.
The housing crisis has sparked broad financial and economic distress. The House of Representatives responded last week by passing a bill that would provide up to $300 billion in federal insurance to help refinance troubled mortgages. President Bush has threatened to veto it, calling the measure a reward for speculators. On Thursday, key Senate Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement in principle on a compromise housing-rescue bill. com does get to the center of the housing debate: Who deserves help and who pays for it? As interest rates on some mortgages rise, many homeowners are unable to make their payments or refinance into cheaper loans.
FreedomWorks FreedomWorks officials say the current housing bill is just the beginning of what could be an onslaught of election-year bailout legislation. By providing relief to mortgage holders, the site argues, the government will prop up housing prices and reward people who borrowed more than they could afford to buy more house than they needed. That will continue to freeze out renters who were sidelined as home costs soared. "We are the class that has been ignored in this debate," the site says. com and discloses on the back pages that it is the source of the effort. The site is nonetheless designed to look underdoggy and grass-rootsy, with a heavy dose of aw-shucks innocence. "Unfortunately, renters aren't as good at politics as the small minority of homeowners (and their bankers) who are in trouble," the site says. We don't get a tax deduction for our rent and we don't get sweetheart government loans." Much of the income came from large donors the group declines to identify. A spokesman described the secrecy as "standard DC practice." FreedomWorks President Matthew Kibbe, a former top aide to a Republican lawmaker, says the site is an effort to "reach out" to renters who share the free-market views of Messrs. "I'm an angry homeowner who pays his mortgage," Mr Kibbe says.
The county lists at least half a dozen other Forbes properties in the area. The Forbes family has sold off its private island in Fiji and palace in Morocco, but still owns a chteau in France. Mr Forbes didn't respond to repeated interview requests through his spokeswoman. Mr Armey, FreedomWorks's chairman, left Congress in 2003 and now lobbies his former colleagues as a senior policy adviser at DLA Piper, an international law and lobbying firm. Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services Committee and author of the housing bill that passed the House last week, says he finds it amusing that Mr Armey is portraying himself as a champion of the tenant class. "I worked a long time trying to improve the condition of renters," says the Massachusetts Democrat. "From our point of view, we have an industry in which people were very careless, very reckless -- both lenders and borrowers," says Mr Armey. "What various policy makers are saying is we need to rush in here with a program to protect people from the consequences of their own bad judgment." As for the site's grass-roots facade, he says, "It's a wholly voluntary thing -- you can either sign up for it or not." com does seem to be tapping a vein of genuine public ire. Rich Toscano, a renter who is a financial adviser with Pacific Capital Associates in San Diego, initially thought the site was an authentic, popular enterprise. He was instinctively sympathetic, having started his own blog: Professor Piggington's Econo-Almanac for the Landed Poor, a celebration of foreclosures and other misfortunes suffered by real-estate brokers who he says helped inflate the local bubble. com, he says the message is more important than the identity of the messenger. Among the renters who work at FreedomWorks is Chris Kinnan, who designed the site.
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