Goodbye Barney Frank -- Hello Maxine Waters

That's right. Just when you thought you had something to really celebrate--the retirement of that Great National Impoverisher, Barney Frank, from his 16-term Congressional seat in Massachusetts, comes the gut-wrenching reminder that Maxine Waters is next in line to take over over ol' Barney's enormously powerful ranking Democrat position on the House Committee on Financial Services.

Even though Barney's retirement won't begin until the end of next year, his retirement announcement still sounds like a tune a long-suffering country could dance to. Frank left his thumbprints all over the subprime mortgage crisis that's still reverberating through our suffering economy, and he's remained up to mischief ever since.

But consider a few items on the track record of his presumed successor as lead Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. Maxine Waters, who has had 11 terms in which to sink her tentacles deep into Congress, managed to get one of those tentacles so deeply embedded in the government cookie jar that even Nancy Pelosi felt the need to call for an ethics examination.

Nancy's concern about Maxine's ethics was, of course, mainly (or perhaps solely) for show. The ethics trial of Maxine Waters was set to begin in November of 2010,

But the Democrat leadership has delayed Waters' trial by blocking subpoenas and firing the lead lawyer working on the two-year investigation. Also, the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics panel reportedly is holding up the hiring of a new staff director.

The ever-creative Maxine had pressured bank examiners into bailing out her husband's bank, OneUnited, with $12 million of TARP money and then had gotten OneUnited "a unique exemption from the FDIC's accounting rules." Not so difficult a task, apparently, for a member of House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

OneUnited Bank certainly was in trouble: Its CEO had recently been busted for cocaine possession, and the FDIC had ordered it to cease and desist operations due to its "unsafe banking practices." "Of the 700 banks receiving TARP funds, OneUnited was the weakest."

More to the point, however, is that the $12 million of TARP money saved Maxine's husband, one of the bank's directors, in excess of $350,000: the value of the his OneUnited stocks that, without the bailout using public funds, would have been worthless.

The frosting on Maxine's $12 million cookie was this:

While under investigation, Waters got a provision added to the Dodd-Frank Act exempting minority owned banks [including OneUnited] from the new oversight.

What else would you expect from a legislator sitting on the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee?

Maybe this: giving ACORN oversight of CFPA, Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Agency? Maxine Waters introduced the amendment, and the Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee (including herself and Barney) voted to pass it.

Today, Maxine Waters, who is the House Chief Deputy Whip, also "serves" as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises and on the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity; the Committee on the Judiciary; the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet; the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement; and the Committee on Steering and Policy.

Scared yet?

Whomever Maxine Waters is serving, it's a safe bet that she's not serving you.

Let the ethics trial begin.
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