Category: national politics & policies

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics property rights responsibility too much government

Déjà vu All Over Again

housing, bust, financial, meltdown, Government-Backed Mortgages, jail, punishment, cause

One of the stand-bys of the post-2008 mortgage finance bust, at least from left-of-center policy mavens, has been to ask: why has no banker gone to prison? They played a game of fraud and got rich. What a protected class — Cronyism! Plutocracy! Capitalism!

The why is much easier to understand if you read up on Round Two of the aughts’ boom-bust scenario, as in Prashant Gopal’s coverage in Bloomberg, “Getting Rich on Government-Backed Mortgages.” Gopal spotlights a non-bank mortgage broker, Angelo Christian, who is making a killing selling houses to people with horrible credit, just as happened before 2008.

“Christian can do this kind of deal because he is, in effect, making the loan on behalf of the federal government through its most important affordable housing program,” Gopal writes. “It’s a sweet deal: He gets his nearly risk-free commission. [His client] puts no money down. If things go south, the government ultimately bears the risk.”

So, should he go to jail?

Not really. He’s merely doing Congress’s bidding.

Gopal notes that it is not banks that dominate this round. They are under too much scrutiny. But non-banking loan intermediaries like Mr. Christian are swarming like flies on a cow’s behind.

There’s a problem in Gopal’s account though. “No one is saying the system is close to another collapse.”

Well, plenty of people are saying that.

The Cassandras are just not being heeded.

Of course, they don’t know when the bust will happen.

They just know it will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by Images Money on Flickr.

 

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government

Good Men With Guns

guns, gun control, school shootings, 2nd Amendment, good men, self defense

We hear too much about “successful” mass murderers — from news readers, journalists, and so-called experts.

And it is hard not to think about the disturbed gunmen who kill as a way to feel powerful for a few seconds as they seek revenge for whatever they hate about their lives.

Now families in Sante Fe must deal with the horror.

We don’t hear as much about the good men who interrupt such rampages.

A report about how a killer was stopped on May 24 begins with these matter-of-fact words: “A gunman who opened fire at an Oklahoma restaurant Thursday evening was confronted by two people who saw what was happening, got their guns and shot him dead, police said.”

The gunman was able to wound three people. But before he could hurt others, Carlos Nazario and Bryan Wittle, outside the building as the shooting began, quickly grabbed firearms from the trunks of their vehicles and ended the threat.

A week earlier, Mark Dallas, a police officer on duty in Dixon High School in Dixon, Illinois, had exchanged gunfire with a recently expelled student, stopping him before anyone else could be shot. The attack took place in a gym where many students were gathered for a graduation rehearsal.

Mark Dallas happened to be an officer of the law. But you don’t need to be a policeman to use a gun justly and well in a bad situation. What you need is training and presence of mind — the willingness and ability to protect yourself and others.

And you need the gun.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by Ken on Flickr

 

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Accountability folly general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

The Ex-Explosion

Margaret Sanger, population, progressivism, panic, birth rate,

When I was a kid, the trendy worry was “the population bomb.” Now we are supposed to worry about a population . . . fizzle?

“The U.S. birth rate has hit a new record low,” writes Peter Dockrill in Science Alert, “with women in nearly every age group giving birth to fewer babies than a year ago.” Titled “U.S. Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why,” Dockrill’s article fails to mention that diminishing population by reduced reproduction is an old worry.

It fanned the flames of eugenics and racism in Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century. Progressivism was full of this concern, in its heyday.*

As societies get wealthier, reproduction rates decrease. Economist Theodore W. Schultz called it the swapping of “quantity of children” for “quality of children.” This appears to be a natural, voluntary sort of eugenics — which scares actual eugenicists.

The study that Science Alert focused on fingered a different cause: lead in the environment. Over at Reason, Ronald Bailey sees some plausibility in this Lead Poison Theory. But mostly, Bailey writes, population rates in America (and elsewhere) are declining “largely because Americans are choosing to have fewer children.”

Is this really a problem?

Well, for Big Government it is.** German’s demographic collapse appears to have been one factor prodding Angela Merkel to open the doors to millions of refugees — whom Europe seems to have more trouble assimilating than does America.

I like kids — both making and rearing them. But to each his or her own, of course. Still, maybe if people freaked out less about population explosions, the implosion would prove less serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Before progressivism changed its name to “liberalism.” And now back. Oh, and note that the Nazis’ more famous eugenic programs were not identical to progressives.

** Ponzi-based safety-net pension systems worldwide were designed for growing populations. Oops!

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(Illustration from Margaret Sanger’s “Birth Control Review” from 1918.)

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Hooray for Congress!

right to try, treatment, healthcare, Rights, FDA, democrats, Congress, medicine, experimental,

When Congress behaves badly, I criticize. When it works well, I applaud.

I’ve waited a long, long, long time to put my hands together in polite applause.

It happened yesterday.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Senate bill, largely along party lines, to give those facing a terminal illness the “right to try.” That is, the right to try experimental drugs and treatments that haven’t yet been approved by the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA). 

Of course, Congress doesn’t actually give us rights. We have always had the common law right — indeed, the human right — to freely seek a path to wellness when we are ill.

From time immemorial. Even before the FDA.

So, this legislation was, more correctly put, a way to announce that the congressionally-created FDA would stop blocking our freedom . . . provided we are dying and the government-approved medical establishment has no more licensed hope to offer.

The bill now goes to President Trump. “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure,” he declared in his last State of the Union, “I want to give them a chance right here at home.”

Democrats overwhelmingly disagreed. 

“This will provide fly-by-night physicians and clinics the opportunity to peddle false hope and ineffective drugs to desperate patients,” argued Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.).

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) likewise charged that the legislation “puts patients at risk by allowing the sale of snake oil.”

But of course these patients are dying. That’s already as “at risk” as it gets. Our right to live includes a right to try to live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Working for Whom?

Rand Paul, John McCain, Vladimir Putin, balanced budget, spending cap

Two articles on Sen. Rand Paul appeared in my Reason feed the other day. Up top.

So it was hard not to look.

They were “John McCain: It ‘Wasn’t Incorrect’ to Say Rand Paul Was ‘Working for Vladimir Putin’” and “Rand Paul’s Plan to Balance the Budget by 2023 Will Get a Senate Vote This Week.”

The latter story is the bigger one, of course. In it, Eric Boehm asked, “Do Republicans have the guts to impose strict spending caps?”

His answer was “probably not.” Good guess.

“Passing the Kentucky Republican’s so-called ‘Penny Plan’ would be a dramatic reversal for Congress,” Boehm wrote, “which earlier this year approved enormous spending hikes that busted Obama-era spending caps and threaten to put the country on pace for a $1 trillion annual deficits. . . . Paul tells Politico that it will be a ‘litmus test for Republicans who claim to be conservative, but are only too happy to grow the federal government and increase our debt.’”

I am afraid the litmus paper has turned . . . red. As in red ink. As in accumulating debt till we drop.

Yesterday Paul’s plan was voted down, 21-76.

In the other Reason piece, Matt Welch noted that Arizona’s senior senator stands by his calumny, last year, against Kentucky’s junior senator. Paul had delayed “ratification of Montenegro’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).” McCain, a gung-ho NATO expansion proponent, accused Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.”

If Putin really seethes with ill will towards America, wouldn’t he want to see the country burdened with debt?

So, on this vote, those 76 senators who didn’t “stand with Rand” are undoubtedly working for Putin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo of Rand Paul by Gage Skidmore | Photo of John McCain from Wikimedia Commons

 

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Cowards All Around

Scot Peterson, Parkland, police, pension, Broward County, Florida, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, guns, gun control, second amendment

Just-retired Scot Peterson is a millionaire, thanks to the generous taxpayers of Broward County, Florida.

You know Peterson as the sheriff’s deputy assigned to protect students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, who, instead of entering the building where the shooter was mowing down 17 unarmed students and teachers, protected himself by waiting outside.

Peterson claimed “he remained outside the school because he didn’t know where the gunfire was coming from,” noted BuzzFeed. But “[r]adio transmissions from the day of the shooting have since contradicted Peterson’s defense . . .”

Following the cowardly non-performance of his duty, Peterson promptly retired and began drawing his pension. As the Sun Sentinel newspaper reported Tuesday, his monthly check is for $8,702.35 — an annual salary of $104,428.20.

Should the 55-year-old live to the age of 75, he’ll draw more than $2 million.

In fact, the cowardly Peterson is being further rewarded with a $2,550 annual raise — earning more in retirement than he was earning while actually working.

I use the word “earning” and the phrase “actually working” loosely.

Reacting to the news, the father of one of the murdered students called Peterson’s lavish pension “disgusting” and “outrageous.”

Recoil at the thought of this derelict policeman raking in such mega-moolah during decades of retirement — but that isn’t the only outrage.

How can Broward County afford to pay even their bravest police officers millions of dollars in retirement?

They can’t . . . for much longer.

Regardless, elected officials dare not do anything about it. They fear incurring the wrath of public employee unions . . . and risking their own pension windfalls.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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