I got this by email and I have been saying almost the exact same thing that this guy says. Read and let me know what you think. I checked on snopes.com and they say this is a real article.

Orson Scott Card identifies himself as a Democrat and writes commentaries for the Rhinoceros Times in Greensboro, NC.  According to Wikipedia he is an English professor and a very well known Sci-Fi writer.  He is especially known for the Endersgame series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Scott_Card

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
by Orson Scott Card

October 20, 2008
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”

Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled “Do Facts Matter?” (http://snipurl.com/457to): “Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.”

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was … the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was … the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It’s not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame.

Now let’s follow the money … right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that’s what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don’t like the probable consequences. That’s what honesty means. That’s how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’ own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That’s where you are right now.

It’s not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

So I was thinking that it had probably been a few days since I lasted posted and when I logged in to write tonight I was surprised to see that it was getting close to a month since my last post. Sorry to those few that do read my blog on a regular basis.

So anyway hubby and I both have jobs. That is a HUGE praise for us. I have actually worked two days as a temporary receptionist for our local NBA team (if you know where I live I think you can figure out which team). It was fun to work there. All of the people were really nice. No, I did not see any players. I did see some of the dancers for the team yesterday. I start my long term assignment tomorrow. Hubby starts his job on Monday. He will be working 10-7 so he will still be able to get the kids off to school each day. So God is good even when it seems as if things are not on the right track.

We have really enjoyed getting to know people at our new church. I helped with MOPS a couple of weeks ago. For most of the time I was watching the two babies that were there. One of the babies was our pastor’s granddaughter. She is so very sweet and fun to watch as she explores the world. We have been enjoying our Life Group (Sunday School for you old school people…lol). We had an impromptu fellowship this past Sunday night at one couple’s house. There was lots of gaming going on in the house, with a Playstation going upstsirs, XBOX in the living room and Wii in the family room. The husbands were playing Madden ‘09 on the XBOX and let me tell you they were louder than the kids at some points…lol. Hubby and I are both attending a Bible Study on Sunday evenings. I am doing Beth Moore’s Stepping Up. It is a study of the Psalms of Ascent. Really good study so far. Hubby is doing a study by Tony Dungy that I can never remember the name of.

Now that we have jobs we have really started to look around at housing options. We knew that there were several houses for rent in the neighborhood next to the kid’s school. But today hubby and I stopped in at the brand new apartment complex across the street from the school. WOW!! Is all that I can say. We feel pretty sure that this is where we will go. For what you get in amenities the price is well worth it. There is a fitness center, spa, tanning bed, kids corner and business center in the clubhouse. Also they have a huge pool, a playground, a dog park (how many people can say they have a dog park???), a nature trail and an outdoor kitchen by the pool that you can rent for parties. That is all what is available on the outside. In the units they have Whirlpool appliances including a microwave over the smooth top range. The washer and dryer is included. They also have intrusion alarms and lots of closets. And the one we are looking at is 1737 sq ft. That is huge for an apartment. Yes, we could get a house that size for the same price but then we would have to take care of the yard and buy a new washer and dryer. So I think we are going to go the apartment route. We are praying about it of course.
My grandmother had her hip replaced last week. She is doing much better than the doctors thought she would. She probably will not have to stay in rehab for as long as they thought. That is a good thing. I am so glad that she is doing so well.

Well we are going out of town for two nights. After I get off work tomorrow (I love saying that) we are driving down to my best friend’s house. We will be celebrating her son’s birthday. It will be nice to get away for a few days. And I always enjoy spending time with my best friend.

Well as I am typing, the Vice Presidential debate is on. I guess I should watch at least a little of it. I can hear my brother giving his commentary from my room.

So for now I shall say good night!