Blaming “greedy lenders” or even foolish borrowers begs the question. What institutional factors gave rise to all the foolish lending and borrowing in the first place? Why did the banks have so much money available to lend in the mortgage market — so much indeed that they could throw it even at applicants who lacked jobs, income, down payment money, and good credit?
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Dixy Lee Ray
Beware of averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle.
There’s a man behind a curtain somewhere doing whatever one does to a teleprompter.
Load? Arm? Detonate?
Last week, in Tampa, a Republican teleprompter put words into the mouth of Speaker of the House John Boehner, then chairing the convention, specifically these words: “In the opinion of the chair, the ‘ayes’ have it and the resolution is adopted.”
The resolution concerned whether a number of Ron Paul delegates would be seated. The vote was awfully close. How the actual voice vote turned out was supposed to be for Boehner to judge, not an anonymous guy (or gal) behind the curtain, ghost-writing democracy.
Yesterday, while the Democrats gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, were busy tucking God and Jerusalem back into their platform, Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa held the gavel. But not control of his own teleprompter.
The resolution restoring those elements to the party’s platform, coming after the platform committee had already completed its work, required a two-thirds vote. When the votes were heard . . . well, Mayor Villaraigosa wasn’t sure. He had the convention vote again. And then again.
Finally, perhaps after seeing the teleprompter, which read, “In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds having voted in the affirmative . . .” he decided, to loud booing, that the resolution had received two-thirds.
As the country prepares (cringes) for the fall campaign, we’ll hear plenty from President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney and about both men. But who cares? The real power in our system of governance, as these conventions make clear, are the guys running the teleprompters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Dutch Treat
As long as there are taxes, there will be tax avoidance. This turns out to even be true of at least one government operation:
The state-owned Dutch railway company NS has managed to cut its Dutch tax bill by at least €250m since 1999 by routing the cost of new trains through Ireland, the Volkskrant reported at the weekend.
The tax dodge means the treasury has lost out on income generated by a company it owns, the paper points out. The finance ministry, meanwhile, is said to be ‘unhappy’ about the arrangement, which it has been aware of from the beginning.
Through some tricky maneuvering, the NS’s Irish financial wing 
bought trains in Ireland, where taxes are lower, and then rented the new trains to the Dutch public railway. Even though the trains had never run in Ireland.
Ah, the advantages of globalism!
Political posturing then ensued, with talk of “lack of morals” rampant. An economist touted for his expertise on railways charged that the “NS is busy ‘playing at being a company.’ But the NS is not a company but a government service, he said.”
Government service or no, the players at the NS had a very businesslike response, claiming (quite plausibly) that the “tax route” allowed it to “better compete in the market.”
The lesson I draw from this is one some politicians won’t want to hear: High taxes are bad. They cripple enterprise, including government enterprise. When your government operations turn to elaborate tax-avoidance schemes, you should be planning tax decreases. And accompanying decreases in spending.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot, 1910
A law of spoliation may be passed and carried into effect, but in the event of its results becoming permanent, it runs the risk of destroying the government which has assumed the responsibility for it.
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Look in the Backyard
“Social scientists have long tried to determine why some children grow up to be successful adults and others don’t,” fatherhood blogger Kevin Hartnett wrote in the Washington Post. “The causes are hard to untangle.”
Really? I think the causes are pretty obvious. Number one being parents.
Hartnett’s opinion piece was entitled, “What matters more to my kids’ future: Their school or quality time with their parents?” Frustratingly, Hartnett’s not sure, though he “intuitively” feels his two very young sons would gain more benefit from additional time with their parents than a better school.
Harnett and his wife are beginning careers, concerned about the trade-offs between earning higher income to afford the best schools versus providing more parental time at home.
So he turned to several researchers:
- Susan Mayer, author of the book, What Money Can’t Buy: Family Income and Children’s Life Chances, and a professor at the University of Chicago, believes that inexpensive trips to the museum or books in the home are often more important than expensive tutoring or schools.
- “I think it’s very reasonable for parents to choose to work less in order to have more face time with their children,” Professor Annette Lareau of the University of Pennsylvania told Hartnett, “even if that means their children attend a school where they’re not challenged as much as the parents might like.”
- University of California at Irvine Professor Greg Duncan looked at the impact of non-parents on children and concluded, “Schools and neighborhoods might have some effect, but I think it’s pretty clear that a lot more of the action around child development takes place at home.”
The future will be shaped at home, more than at school.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot, 1910
There are three words which Socialism must erase from the facades of our public buildings—the three words of the Republican motto:—
Liberty, because Socialism is a rule of tyranny and of police.
Equality, because it is a rule of class.
Fraternity, because its policy is that of the class war.
Clint Eastwood, crazy? Like a fox.
Last Thursday, at the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, he spoke to a primetime television audience of millions in the type of direct language politicians never utter. The movie star’s message was simple, but his presentation was more acting routine than speech, using an empty chair as a prop and pretending President Obama was sitting next to him. His delivery came in stops and starts, seemingly ad-libbed with the 82-year old no quicker or more nimble of thought and word than other octogenarians I know.
Much of the mainstream media pounced, diagnosed Eastwood as nearly insane, and noted that the actor’s 12-minute talk upstaged presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Funny, I think Eastwood’s words touched many regular folks — and perhaps a raw nerve for those favoring the president.
While celebrities have every right to speak, I’m tired of the usual sophomoric spewing of famously uninformed opinion — “hot-dogging it,” as Eastwood put it. But we didn’t watch movie star Clint Eastwood last week; we saw businessman Clint Eastwood.
In 1967, early in his Hollywood career, Eastwood created his own production company, Malpaso, which has handled virtually all of his American films. Eastwood knows firsthand the demands of running a business. In fact, he enjoys a reputation for finishing his films on time and on budget and making profits.
When someone doesn’t do the job, Eastwood signs the proverbial pink slip. He thinks voters should do likewise. After all, “we own this country,” Eastwood reminded us. “Politicians are employees of ours.
“When somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Yves Guyot, 1910
Proudhon was nothing but a “petit bourgeois” as Karl Marx said. There is but one true socialism, the socialism of Germany, whose formula was propounded by Karl Marx and Engels in the “Communistic Manifesto” of 1848.
They chose “communism” because the word “socialism” had been too much discredited at the time, but they subsequently resumed it, for the logical conclusion of all socialism is communism. The word “collectivism,” says Paul Lafargue, was only invented in order to spare the susceptibilities of some of the more timorous. It is synonymous with the word “communism.” Every socialistic programme, be it the programme of St. Mandé, published in 1896 by M. Millerand, which lays down that “collectivism is the secretion of the capitalist régime,” or that of the Havre Congress, drawn up by Karl Marx, and carried on the motion of Jules Guesde, concludes with “the political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to collective ownership of all the means of production.”
But is this conclusion really so very different from that of their predecessors whom they treat with such scorn?
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Video: The Simulacrum of Democracy
How the Ron Paul delegates at the Big Show, er, Republican National Convention, were routed.
Go to 1:21 on this and watch to the end. The teleprompter tells the speaker how the RNC delegates are “going to vote” on changing the rules to knock out the Ron Paul delegates. Something ain’t quite kosher about this.