Government Archives

Bailout Profits

Yes, there could be profits made with the taxpayer-backed bailout funds for the mortgage-backed securities.  The government would be buying them at a discount, likely, and most folks don’t default on their mortgages. 

So who should get the profits?  How about, oh, the taxpayers?  It’s only fair; they (we) took the risk, they (we) should get the benefits.  But Washington Democrats, true to their view that any money in their vicinity is theirs (not the taxpayers), are already trying to lay dibs on it to fund other government programs.  They can’t even try to help the economy without sneaking in what amounts to a 20% tax.

Thanks, guys.

Palin Rumor Update

Charlie Martin has gone as far as getting the URL http://www.palinrumors.com/ to point to his ever-updated list of rumors about Sarah Palin.  Since last I visited there, there have been new ones added.  Here are a few (and details are on the site):

#72: No, she didn’t try to charge rape victims personally for rape kits.

#76: No she didn’t institute a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies.

#79: No, Palin didn’t eliminate or “void” the Alaskan WIC program as Newsweek claimed.

#83: No, she did not cut the Special Olympics funding in a recent budget, except in the Washington sense of “didn’t increase it as much as someone wanted.”

#84 Yes, she did bill the Alaska State Government for per diem on days when she was “home.”  But that’s the way the law is written, and even doing what other governors did, she still had expenses one-third to one-fifth of the previous governor’s.

Bookmark that page.

Various Quotes on the Current Financial Crisis

From the Patriot Post, a compendium of quotes regarding the current credit & mortgage crisis, and the bailout being debated.  Quite a number of different takes on it, looking at it from different aspects. 

(By the way, the Patriot Post can come to your inbox 3 times a week.  It’s a good read.)

“Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.” —Thomas Sowell

“The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. In fact, what we see now is a market correction to foolhardy government policy. Congress’ move to bail out lenders and borrowers who made poor decisions will simply create incentives for people to make unwise decisions in the future.” —Walter Williams

“[A]s lawmakers debate buying up hundreds of billions in assets, they should realize that the government’s aggressive meddling in financial decision-making is what got our economy into this mess in the first place. The long-term answer isn’t more federal control, it’s a return to free-market principles.” —Ed Feulner

“Crisis is the friend of the State. The politicians are desperate to be seen as ‘showing leadership,’ so we’re surely in for a new round of government interventions.” —John Stossel

“When the Forbidden Fruit was handed to Adam and Eve, they were allowed the moral choice to accept or decline. I know people who have refused to feast on the money tree. They live simply, within their means, and seem far more content than those who are trying to horde their wealth while clinging to the ladder of ‘success,’ terrified to let go. That isn’t real living. The Puritans rightly saw that as covetousness.” —Cal Thomas

The Financial Crisis Explained

…in a single two-panel cartoon at Red Planet Cartoons.  The problem seems to stem from folks defaulting on home loans.  It’s easy to label the lending institution "greedy" and go from there, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that.  One big-government program has spawned this new big-government bailout. 

Those with short attention spans will miss the larger picture.  The larger picture is the more important one.

"Courting" the Latino Vote

Though “stealing” would be more the verb I’d use.  In Obama’s latest ad running in the southwest, with narration in Spanish, he ties McCain to Limbaugh and then quotes Limbaugh on immigration issues.  It calls McCain two-faced and a liar.  But as Jake Tapper of ABC News discovers, the ad itself is where the deceit is.

The Obama camp draws a very tenuous link between Limbaugh and McCain to start the smear.  Essentially, they say, they both supported the Minutemen.  Well, except McCain didn’t, and Limbaugh has openly and loudly disagreed with McCain on immigration for a long time.

And then the two quotes from Limbaugh are out of context, one in the extreme.  They took a quote from Rush’s sense of what American immigration law would be if they were like Mexico’s.  He paraphrased protest laws for foreigners in Mexico by saying, “shut your mouth or get out”, and the ad makes it sound like he’s speaking to immigrants.

Tapper’s article has the full context for the quotes and both sides of the story on the “lies”.  Karl Rove would be proud.

Oh, and someone please tell Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post that his entirely uncritical reporting on this new ad does a disservice to his readers (but a rather nice service to Obama).

The AIG Situation, Explained

…by Francis Cianfrocca, aka "Blackhedd", at Redstate.  His explanation of the situation that the Fed found themselves in with regard to AIG is, for the most part, readable by a non-financier. 

He also addresses the anger some are feeling about the government bailing out another huge firm, and against the top brass of that company.  In addition, he touches on how this affects free-market capitalists and the eggshells the government is now walking on in this regard.

A good read.

That Was Then, This Is Now

First, the New York Times, from July 3, 1984, on Geraldine Ferraro and the question of experience.

Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President? Surely Ronald Reagan does not subscribe to that maxim. Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens? Representative Morris Udall, who lost New Hampshire to Jimmy Carter by a hair in 1976, must surely disagree. So must a longtime Michigan Congressman named Gerald Ford. Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial? That didn’t stop Richard Nixon from picking Spiro Agnew, a suburban politician who became Governor of Maryland. Remember the main foreign affairs credential of Georgia’s Governor Carter: He was a member of the Trilateral Commission. Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy. One might even say demography is destiny: this candidate was chosen because he could deliver Texas, that one because he personified rectitude, that one because he appealed to the other wing of the party. On occasion, Americans find it necessary to rationalize this rough-and-ready process. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. This rationale may even be right, but then let it also be fair. Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow? We may even be gradually elevating our standards for choosing Vice Presidential candidates. But that should be done fairly, also. Meanwhile, the indispensable credential for a Woman Who is the same as for a Man Who – one who helps the ticket.

(Emphasis added by NewsBusters.org.) 

And now, the New York Times, from September 11, 2008, on Sarah Palin and the question of experience.

It is well past time for Sarah Palin, Republican running mate, governor of Alaska and self-proclaimed reformer, to fill in for the voting public the gaping blanks about her record and qualifications to be vice president.

[…]

Voters have a right to hear Ms. Palin explain in detail her qualifications to be standby president with no national or foreign policy experience. More is required of any serious candidate for such a high office than one interview with questions put by one selected source.

The paper of record can’t seem to get its story straight.  Any wonder the old media is losing its credibility?

From Bruce McQuain at Q&O, comes a quiz:

1.  Who identified and tried to fix what presently ails Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae 5 years ago?

2.  Who opposed the plan, saying they were not in any kind of financial crisis?

McQuain gives a hint as to what the answer to #2 is; the same folks who say Social Security is just fine, and Medicare is doing well, too.  Bruce has a link to a contemporaneous New York Times article that explains the proposal and the smack down. 

Remember this when Dem…er, certain politicians try to place blame for this and try to use it as a campaign gimmick.

True Bipartisanship

Everybody says they want more politicians in office that fight corruption, wasteful spending, and are willing to go after their own party to do it.  Yet Sarah Palin is continually talked down by Democrats, who’s concerns about corruption seem to have taken a holiday.

Now comes word that their concerns about bipartisanship — about both parties working together — is also on vacation.

Sen. John McCain’s record of working with Democrats easily outstrips Sen. Barack Obama’s efforts with Republicans, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of their legislative records.

Whether looking at bills they have led on or bills they have signed onto, Mr. McCain has reached across the aisle far more frequently and with more members than Mr. Obama since the latter came to the Senate in 2005.

In fact, by several measures, Mr. McCain has been more likely to team up with Democrats than with members of his own party. Democrats made up 55 percent of his political partners over the last two Congresses, including on the tough issues of campaign finance and global warming. For Mr. Obama, Republicans were only 13 percent of his co-sponsors during his time in the Senate, and he had his biggest bipartisan successes on noncontroversial measures, such as issuing a postage stamp in honor of civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Democrats say that they want bipartisanship, and indeed have praised McCain’s overtures to them in the past.  But all of a sudden, that seems to be ancient history.

Now, I will say that I’m not entirely a big fan of some of McCain’s bipartisanship. McCain-Feingold “First Amendment Abridgement Act” (my name for it, not theirs) is a prime example.  But outside the campaign season, politician and voter alike keep complaining about how all this bickering in Washington keeps them from doing “the people’s business”.  But here we are, with the most bipartisan politician for President I think we may have ever seen, and suddenly Democrats have lost all interest in it.

Oh, and Sarah Palin is also quite adept with respect to bipartisanship, getting a 75% job approval rating from Alaska Democrats.  Congress can only dream of such high numbers.
Guess “bipartisanship” just means “doing what I want you to do”.

The Nuts at ACORN

Barack Obama’s former employer as a community organizer is at it again, trying to elect their favorite son by any means necessary.

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has a large voter registration program among its many social service programs. ACORN’s Michigan branch, based in Detroit, has enrolled 200,000 voters statewide in recent months, mostly with the use of paid, part-time employees.

"There appears to be a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications," said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. "And it appears to be widespread."

But ACORN is an equal-opportunity defrauder.  Michigan isn’t singled out.

In recent years, ACORN’s voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Missouri and Washington, with some employees convicted of voter fraud.

ACORN officials said they were looking into the problem.

Indeed, with conclusions, no doubt, some time after election day.

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