Republicans Who Skipped Black Debate Took Money From Allegedly Racist Firms

This news is from a blog over at "Off The Bus", a Hull Post section devoted to news from non-journalist sources. Here's most of the post:

While the four top Republican presidential contenders missed the Sept 27 debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore organized to address minority issues, they were busy raking in cash from dozens of business and professional elites, including a top Wall Street banking firm that was sued that same week for racial discrimination.

All in all, it was a grand and enriching week for the four white males most likely to represent the Republicans in the 2008 presidential race. Among them, they amassed over $9 million while they were too "busy" to attend the debate at Morgan State.

The most egregious case is that of the banking house of Morgan Stanley that gave money to the three top Republican contenders during the same week of the minority debate. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) filed a civil rights complaint against Morgan Stanley and its mortgage lender subsidiary Saxon Capital three days before the debate. It was the first challenge against a Wall Street mortgage bundler that alleges redlining in minority communities throughout the United States under the Federal Fair Housing Act.

But Romney, McCain, Thompson and Giuliani weren't a bit inhibited from passing the hat at a company that saddled the gullible with sure-fail housing loans while bypassing qualified minority borrowers. While they didn't feel up to engaging black and Latino questioners at the debate, all but McCain eagerly vacuumed up a total of at least $40,000 that week from Morgan Stanley employees, according to campaign finance reports filed with the FEC (Morgan Stanley executives have given to McCain on other occasions.)

Meanwhile, those succulent sums came from an entity charged in the complaint with having "intentionally structured underwriting to deny homeownership to qualified African American, Latino, Pan-Pacific and Native American communities across the country," according to according to NCRC President & CEO John Taylor.