SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD … AGAIN
Fred Thompson is dead …
The former “Republican” presidential candidate, U.S. Senator, Law & Order actor and hawker of reverse mortgages kicked the bucket at the age of 73 due to a recurrence of lymphoma.
To read the sprawling, fawning obituary in his home state paper, click here.
Our view on Thompson is less favorable … although we’ve been repeatedly told we’re not supposed to say bad things about former elected officials after they die. So … we’ll refer our readers to an open letter published last January, around the time Thompson started shilling for a company that sells taxpayer-guaranteed loans targeting old people on fixed incomes.
Written by Liz Main, the open letter exposed the predatory nature of these loans – and then sought to determine whether Thompson was vouching for them in his capacity as an actor or former elected official.
Or both …
“People who are hooked by your ads are living with the thermostat turned way down, Fred,” Main wrote. “Even if they get a reverse-mortgage loan, they may not hang on to their homes for long, because they’ll still have to pay taxes, insurance and upkeep – or their home will be sold to pay off the loan and all its related fees and charges. A year in a nursing home also triggers a home sale.”
Main then asked Thompson whether any of that worried him.
“Do you feel even a little bit bad about the script’s reference to President Reagan—the one that makes it sound as if The Gipper were personally blessing every loan?” she wrote. “Because the FHA reverse-mortgage bill Reagan signed into law in 1988 does more to protect the lender than the homeowner. It allowed for reverse mortgages to be insured by the FHA, meaning the lending institution would not lose money. Once there was no financial risk for lenders, they started pushing the loans aggressively.”
Indeed …
As of September 2013, roughly 10 percent of reverse mortgage borrowers had defaulted on their loans. According to the U.S. Census, roughly 620,000 Americans aged 62 or older are currently using a reverse mortgage.
So … do the math.
Are we saying Thompson is to blame for all that? No. Nor are we saying he’s to blame for the broader “Republican” failure of the last decade, which – along with the epic fail of U.S. president Barack Obama – has forced so many seniors into such a financially prone position.
But there’s a definite difference between standing and fighting for what’s right … or going along to get along with a status quo that’s taking advantage of people.
58 comments
He’s just another shyster Republican using his name to profit off of his not-so-smart voter base to hock a bullshit ‘product’? Big deal. Huckabee does it and so does your current front runner for President, Ben Carson. Pretending to run for president is their biggest, most lucrative, scam going today.
The GOP has truly perfected the professional presidential candidate business….Huckabee, Santorum and I know that’s what Carson is up to, selling books as they run for president is a dead give away. More than likely, Trump, too.
And, their voters are too dim to recognize a con man – or, woman – when they see one.
It isn’t till after election day that these rubes feel duped.
Then they go right back to the polls next time and vote for the same con-men.
Incapable of learning from experience.
yep and they don’t care how many boys they violate as long as they preach family values
They don’t care? I thought they kept score and bragged behind closed doors.
Nitrat: It’s a strategy they use to maintain prominence in the right-wing media bubble and thereby keep raking in the cash. It beats working.
?
Trump hawks a bullshit product too. It’s called Trump.
Oh yeah, you name it, I’ve sold it. Shitty books, shitty videos, shitty schooling, shitty steaks, shitty clothes, shitty golf courses, now all that’s left is to sell a shitty campaign to my master, Mrs. Clinton.
Don’t forget the Bottled Water.
They all are more or less running for their own benefit, using their sometimes questionable, sometimes downright sad previous “success” as a positive line on their resume.
Isn’t there a Hollywood “shyster” has been out there profiting from “hocking” this “bullshit product”?
All the GOP does is sell snake oil to suckers. What’s the point?
Trump and Carson leading the polls proves that clear as day.
“Selling snake oil to suckers”=====hell’s bells—-that’s right wingnut talk radio to a “T”!!!
One of the biggest segments of our entertainment industry.
No, not really. Their screaming just makes it seem that way.
Our = GOP money train’s
Thompson was just another Republican whose vaunted values took a backseat to making a buck. He championed tax breaks for the rich and the undercutting of regulations against predatory lending and shady financial schemes — from which he later benefited. What else is new?.
He was a good actor, wasn’t really in politics long enough to make a judgement and the reverse mortgage thing is a scam, but he wasn’t the one making the product just taking their money to shill it. He was born in Alabama and live in Tennessee can’t be all bad.
“…he wasn’t the one making the product just taking their money to shill it”?
That somes up the whole GOP voter mindset right there.
smh
If he wouldn’t have done it someone else would have. Much like Henry Winkler is doing now and Alex Trebeck does with Colonial Life. Caveat Emptor.
That doesn’t excuse it. If he wouldn’t want his grandparent to get one, he shouldn’t have endorsed it. That is, if he purports to be a man of integrity.
“If he wouldn’t have it someone else would have…”
Really?
GOP voters in 2020:
Dr. Phil/Dr. Oz
Why d
His TV ads say, Ronald Reagan brought reverse mortgages to the country…how could they ever be or go wrong?
Just like ‘Trickle Down Economics’ and courting the religious right voting block.
How could those two ever come back to bite us in the ass?
Or, killing the Fairness Doctrine so the permanent propaganda wing can erupt from the pits of hell and become the tail that wags the Republican Party dog.
He started shilling for the reverse mortgage company in 2010, a good bit before last January.
For gerontophiles,he’d just reached dating age…
Reagan’s bill does more to protect the lender than it does the actual citizen? You don’t say?
I wonder, if we scrutinized 90% of what Republicans propose, would we find a recurring theme?
I suppose the right thing to do is to take government out of the equation entirely and let private lenders scam old people to their hearts’ content without having to worry about pesky things like laws or regulatory agencies?
They do that already
According to what’s written above, those poor lenders have to wait a whole year of you being in a nursing home to rob you blind. Those poor businesses need more liberty.
FITS is opposed to regulations, so he should champion any legal contract, be it for hookers, or reverse mortgages. As a Libertarian, you should simply say, caveat emptor, to……everything.
If we are going to shut down a method of making money because it preys on old people, why not shut down other methods of making money by preying on poor people? Can we shut down payday and title loans? Can we put a national limit on credit card interest rates? Can we make student loans able to be dismissed in bankruptcy? Can we jail people for fraudulent practices in giving people mortgages?
If you hate seeing old people get screwed over, nothing wrong with that, but why would it be OK for those other people to get screwed over?
Talk to FITS. I’m of a mind that people freely enter into these contracts, and the government (taxpayers) should not be their backstop. If a lender commits Fraud, yes, send the perpetrators to jail. All of the other items you cited are not crimes.
To enter freely into something there needs to be an agreement that the alternatives were within the range of what an average person would consider reasonable and realistic. And, the real point here is, as noted, a lot of these consumers were exploited because they were vulnerable. Not necessarily fraud, but they didn’t take any extra measures to ensure clients were making a wholly informed choice either–especially important for vulnerable populations. The study I noted earlier also stated that specials teams had been developed to ensure that consumers were truly informed of the risks involved
This is in terrible taste fits and even if you are correct it is very disrespectful at this time.I am as guilty as most at showing bad taste but this is despicable.
This is in bad taste, but does not even remotely compare to FITS’ disrespectful and TOTALLY unwarranted attack on a GENUINE American hero, Senator Daniel Inouye, at his passing.
I remember hoping Fred would run for President as he seemed a lot better than the other “choices”we had at the time. Then, I saw him pushing those scam ads for reverse mortgages and I was glad that he didn’t go anywhere above where he had already been. I lost a lot of respect for him over the scam he was helping to foist off on a lot of people.
May he pay dearly for that.
I was never actually in those ads, they were made up by the government in an effort to coax old people into giving up their homes so they could confiscate any guns they found inside.
When he ran for President, he never intended to win, he was only running to siphon off votes from the far right candidates, so that McCain could win a plurality in enough states to win the nomination.
I wondered about his “intent” at the time, myself. I seem to recall that his mother was in bad health or had just died, in which case I would have been unable to fault his decision not to run.
A Presidential campsign likely requires a lot of mental stamina, which might not be in abundance if your mother is dying or has just died.
His new wife wanted him to be president much more than he wanted to be president.
Bullshit product? A reverse mortgage can be a useful tool for seniors who are house rich and cash poor, are looking to purchase a home, or have a need to pay special life expenses. A study of the high default rate found major problems with the underwriting process. From the study conclusions:
The challenge for policymakers in this area is that neither FHA nor any other HUD program office has collected information about the financial condition of HECM borrowers because HECM has not had any underwriting requirements other than a minimum age for the borrower.
Dan, I though better of you.
Dan?
BTW, What is Trang Bang? Special Vietnamese currency used for buying weapons and hookers?
Vietnamese currency was piasters and dong.
I thought dong was what we stuck in a hooker.
:-D
A few things to consider – when can a homeowner keep a house without paying taxes, if he/she doesn’t pay taxes they’ll lose it anyway. Most responsible people will also maintain insurance on their home as well. Upkeep,again, most responsible people will keep up one of their largest investments. Granted, however, that it wouldn’t cause them to lose the home if they didn’t have a mortgage on the home.
Lenders are in business, as are 98% of all other companies, to make a profit. If they risked losing money on every transaction, they wouldn’t enter the transaction.
The FHA mortgage insurance also serves to protect the homeowner and their heirs from ever owing more on their home than the house is worth. In essence, it protects the lender and the homeowner.
The product isn’t right for everyone but it isn’t a scam or scheme to take advantage of people. Please go into the transaction with eyes wide open.
Every single person in here shilling for reverse mortgages is one of the crooks profiting from selling them. They are are a predatory product sold by crooks. No gray area.
I’m not shilling for them. I do work in the industry. Educate yourself about the product.
The lender is making a loan to a homeowner for a percentage of the home’s value. Payments aren’t required until the first of five events. The last homeowner passes, the house is sold, if the home is no longer the primary residence of any homeowner, if no homeowner resides in the home for 12 consecutive months or if taxes, insurance, homeowner’s association fees (if any) aren’t paid or if upkeep is neglected.
At the time the loan is due, the homeowner, or their heirs, can pay it off, sell it, refinance it but will in no event ever owe more on the house than the house is worth.
“…or if upkeep is neglected”
Please provide us with a list of what, under that event, triggers it — from the least to most critical ……
If memory serves, when this website had been seduced into running Google Ads (which don’t pay off worth a dump), reverse mortgage ads appeared. Regardless, if you’re broke and all you have is your house, a reverse mortgage can, at least, keep you from having to make payments. What it doesn’t do is guarantee an inheritance to the worthless scum of your loins. Every day, I thank God that I had a child who had the presence of mind and skills to earn a good living in a wicked economy filled with gimmes and communists.
“Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?”
The only thing Fred Dalton Thompson will be remembered for.
I wonder what kind of disturbed twatwaffle goes to such lengths to insult the memory of the recently departed? In any event, I’d be inclined to rely on an Economics Nobel Laureate than some random blogger when forming my opinions on the utility of Reverse Mortgages. http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/robert-merton-on-the-promise-of-reverse-mortgages-and-the-peril-of-target-date-funds/
Its an option presented to people who want to stay in their homes in their old age or believe they can supplement their income based on their home equity. Sometimes it might be best if they would just sell their home and pay the capital gains tax when buying a smaller home or deciding to rent, but nobody knows what the future will bring. Ultimately, it is their decision to make at the time. Going to a nursing home using Medicaid also results in the loss of assets and wealth for seniors.
Gotta find those photo of Fred and when he signed my Yankee shirt. The faces that he made let me know that they were not his favorite team …