Medina County Foreclosures Double Under Bush

In 2000, the last year of the Clinton presidency, there were 337 foreclosures filed in Medina County Common Pleas Court. In 2007, after seven complete years of the Bush Administration, there were 856 foreclosures filed in Medina County. That's an increase of over 250%.

Foreclosures affect communities in many ways. They bring down the value of residential real estate. They can blight a neighborhood with vacant houses. They can lead to divorce and homeless families. In short, there is nothing good about a foreclosure of a family's home.

Now, here's why we think that Bush bears some responsibility. During his administration there was apparently no oversight of mortgage lenders. The worship of the free market meant that the Bushies didn't really care about what financial institutions were doing. After all, if the lenders made bad loans, then the market would give a "correction." A "correction" is, of course, a term like "collateral damage", a term that allows government officials to hide the pain of their decisions, or in this case, their non-decisions.

No one should be surprised by these events. After all, during the eighties under St. Ronnie and George H.W. Bush, we had the savings and loan crisis. Republican presidents follow policies that lead to financial institutions crashing and burning. Such presidents don't really care because they don't see the damage that such policies wreck on ordinary people.

What is surprising is that Democrats aren't jumping on the sub-prime mortgage crisis to make the point that we are making in this entry: Americans can't afford another Republican presidency. There is too much to do to clean up the mess from this one.