1 Year Anniversary

Today is the 1-year anniversary of the blog.  Thank you to everyone who reads and contributes to this space.  Have a great week.

Budget Chart

If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.  Below are the actual budget deficits (in gray) amassed by the federal government compared to the projected deficits (in red) should President Obama's current budget be approved by congress.

Wow.

First of all, I don't know how anyone can say "but Republicans did it too".  Yes, that is true (and not something they should be proud of), but those levels of spending do not compare to what is being contemplated now.  Every time someone goes to that excuse, it means they can't justify what they are proposing with actual facts and have to try to shift the focus and blame elsewhere.

How can we possibly recover from such ridiculously high spending levels? 

First NY's "Fat Tax", now this...

Is this the world you want?  Where any decision that might negatively impact someone at sometime will be banned?  I am all for trying to reduce negative externalities, but this is ridiculous...

California to reduce carbon emissions by... banning black cars?!

by Jeremy Korzeniewski on Mar 25th 2009 at 2:58PM

In a move that will likely get California's consumers in a huff, impending legislation may soon restrict the paint color options for Golden State residents looking for their next new vehicle. The specific colors that are currently on the chopping block are all dark hues, with the worst offender seemingly the most innocuous color you could think of: Black. What could California possibly have against these colors, you ask? Apparently, the California Air Resources Board figures that the climate control systems of dark colored cars need to work harder than their lighter siblings – especially after sitting in the sun for a few hours. Anyone living in a hot, sunny climate will tell you that this assumption is accurate, of course. In fact, legislation already exists for buildings that has proven successful at reducing the energy consumption of skyscrapers.

So, what's the crux of the problem... can't paint suppliers just come up with new, less heat-absorbent dark paints? According to Ward's, suppliers have reportedly been testing their pigments and processes to see if it's possible to meet CARB's proposed mandate of 20% solar reflectivity by 2016 with a phase-in period starting in 2012, and things aren't looking good. Apparently, when the proper pigments and chemicals are added to black paint, the resulting color is currently being referred to as "mud-puddle brown." That doesn't sound very attractive, now does it? Windshields, backlights and sunroofs are also slated to get reflective coatings starting in 2012.

When we first heard of this issue, an internal debate immediately began as to whether this might be an elaborate early April Fool's joke, but it isn't. Read through CARB's complete Cool Cars Standards and Test Procedures here for more.

The party of "no"? Um...No

I want you to remember this post the next time you hear the Administration or someone in Congress say "Republicans are the party of No" or "until they come up with an alternative...

Here it is (or at least a 18 page summary of the actual budget proposal, as well as a fact-based argument as to why the administration's current proposal is unacceptable. 

It is actually pretty interesting reading.  I wonder if Republicans will be able to use this as the basis for a new "Contract with America"

ttp://www.gop.gov/solutions/budget/road-to-recovery-

House Republicans Propose Alternative Budget

By Perry Bacon Jr.

House Republicans today outlined how they would write the federal budget if they controlled Congress, looking to rebut criticism from President Obama that the GOP is simply complaining about his blueprint but not offering proposals of its own.

Republican lawmakers refused to offer details of how much their alternative budget proposal would cost or how much it would increase the deficit, saying they would release overall numbers next week. Instead, they provided a general outline of proposals that included cutting overall government spending except for defense, banning any additional spending for bailouts of financial companies and a huge income tax cut that would make the maximum tax rate 25% instead of 36% as under current law.

"Two nights ago, the president said we haven't seen a budget yet of the Republicans," said House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio). "Well, it's not true, because here it is Mr. President." He waved a thin document called "The Republican Road to Recovery" that describes the GOP proposal.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said "while we criticize, we propose."

Senate Republicans have decided not to release an alternative budget, but will offer a series of amendments next week to try to reduce the spending under the Democratic budget proposals. House rules allow Democrats to limit the number of amendments offered, so Republicans there will offer only their complete budget alternative.

"Our economic plan amounts to less government, lower taxes and economic prosperity," the GOP document says.

The proposal continues Republicans' push for lower spending and greater tax cuts in response to Obama's budget proposal, which costs about $3.6 trillion and would increase the deficit by $1.38 trillion next year.

Political Malfeasance and the Financial Meltdown

Political Malfeasance and the Financial Meltdown
George Will
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

WASHINGTON -- With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate legal earnings of a small unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration Monday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."

Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.

From Mexico, America is receiving needed instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law. A leading Democrat trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans.

Congress, with the approval of a president who has waxed censorious about his predecessor's imperious unilateralism in dealing with other nations, has shredded the North American Free Trade Agreement. Congress used the omnibus spending bill to abolish a program that was created as part of a protracted U.S. stall regarding compliance with its obligation to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S roads. The program, testing the safety of Mexican trucking, became an embarrassment because it found Mexican trucking at least as safe as U.S. trucking. Mexico has resorted to protectionism -- tariffs on many U.S. goods -- in retaliation for Democrats' protection of the Teamsters union.

NAFTA, like all treaties, is the "supreme law of the land." So says the Constitution. It is, however, a cobweb constraint on a Congress that, ignoring the document's unambiguous stipulations that the House shall be composed of members chosen "by the people of the several states," is voting to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state. Hence it supposedly can have a Democratic member of the House and, down the descending road, two Democratic senators. Congress rationalizes this anti-constitutional willfulness by citing the Constitution's language that each house shall be the judge of the "qualifications" of its members and Congress can "exercise exclusive legislation" over the District. What, then, prevents Congress from giving House and Senate seats to Yellowstone National Park, over which Congress exercises exclusive legislation? Only Congress' capacity for embarrassment. So, not much.

The Federal Reserve, by long practice rather than law, has been insulated from politics in performing its fundamental function of preserving the currency as a store of value -- preventing inflation. Now, however, by undertaking hitherto uncontemplated functions, it has become an appendage of the executive branch. The coming costs, in political manipulation of the money supply, of this forfeiture of independence could be steep.

Jefferson warned that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities." But Democrats, who trace their party's pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using "reconciliation" -- a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to severely truncate debate and limit the minority's right to resist -- to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president's budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable -- so rely on ours.

This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it. 

Clearly, we have the right team in Washington

So, add Chris Dodd to the clown circus.  My problem is not with the bonuses (if they were contractual obligations then the blame goes to the company for signing the contracts, not fulfilling them) - my problem is with the disingenuous Senators and Congressmen who (and maybe the Obama Administration) who lie about their actions.  Watch the video first, as it updates some of the information in the article...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/18/campbell.brown.AIG/index.html

Bonuses allowed by stimulus bill
From Dana Bash and Ted Barrett
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic leaders scrambling to strip AIG executives of bonuses are having a hard time answering a key question: Why didn't Congress act to prevent the bonuses in the first place?

"There's always more we can do, and hindsight is 20/20," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Tuesday.

But though some lawmakers did move to prevent bonuses in the stimulus bill last month, the final language actually makes an exception for pre-existing contracts, effectively exempting AIG.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, who originally proposed the executive compensation provision, said he did not include the exemption clause, which said new rules "shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009."

In an interview with CNN, Dodd denied inserting that exemption at the 11th hour, and insisted he doesn't know how it got there.

"When I wrote the language there was no such language like that," Dodd told CNN Tuesday. Who's insured by AIG? »

Multiple Senate Democratic leadership sources also deny knowing how the exemption got into the bill.

The mystery isn't just how what was effectively a protection for AIG was put into the stimulus bill -- it's also how a provision intended to prevent AIG from giving executive bonuses, was taken out. See a snapshot of facts, attitudes and analysis on the recession »

The Senate passed a bipartisan amendment proposed by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R- Maine, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, that would have taxed bonuses on any company getting federal bailout dollars, if the company didn't pay back the bonus money to the government.Watch congressional reaction to AIG bonuses »

But the idea was stripped from the stimulus bill during hurried, closed-door negotiations with the White House and House of Representatives.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, who is now pursing a similar bonus tax idea in the wake of outrage over AIG, said it was a mistake to drop it from the stimulus bill. He made a stunning admission. Watch why Americans are angry »

"Frankly it was such a rush -- we're talking about the stimulus bill now -- to get it passed, I didn't have time and other conferees didn't have time to address many of the provisions that were modified significantly," said Baucus.

"We shouldn't be here. That should have passed, but it didn't," he said.

Snowe chastised colleagues for expressing outrage about AIG's bonuses, when just last month they did away with her amendment intended to prevent it.

"We tried. It simply didn't happen, and that's a tragedy, given what's happened today," Snowe told CNN in an interview.

Majority Leader Reid would not directly answer a question from CNN about whether that was a mistake.

Prosperity...still available

Making It
John Stossel
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I'm sick of hearing that America is no longer a land of opportunity.

Even before the current recession, politicians and pundits were constantly wringing their hands about the "demise of the middle class."

"Middle class families are struggling," President Barack Obama kept saying on the campaign trail.

Lou Dobbs hammers away at this night after night: "What's left of our middle class may be on the verge of collapse."

And author Barbara Ehrenreich won fame by claiming that it's almost impossible for an entry-level worker to make it in America. She wrote "Nickel and Dimed," a book that describes her failure to "make it" working in entry-level jobs. Her book is now required reading in thousands of high schools and colleges. I spoke to her for my ABC special "Bailouts, Big Spending and Bull".

"I worked as a waitress and an aide in a nursing home and a cleaning lady and a Wal-Mart associate. And that didn't do it."

If you do a good job, can't you move up?

"That's not easy. Wal-Mart capped the maximum you can ever make."

But if you do a good job, you could be promoted to assistant manager, store manager.

"Well, I suppose."

I pointed out that the new CEO of Wal-Mart, Mike Duke, started out as an hourly worker.

"There are always exceptions," she said. "My father worked his way up and became a corporate executive. But that was a one-in-a-million situation."

Oh, yeah?

"I read 'Nickel and Dimed,'" Adam Shepard told me. He was assigned her book in college and decided to test Ehrenreich's claim.

He picked a city out of a hat, Charleston, S.C., and showed up there with $25. He didn't tell anyone about his college degree. He soon got an $8/hour job working for a moving company. He kept at it. Within a year, he told me, "I have got $5,500 and a car. I have got a furnished apartment."

Adam writes about his search for the American Dream in "Scratch Beginnings". It's a very different book from "Nickel and Dimed."

"If you want to fail, go for it, " he said.

Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to fail?

"Absolutely, I think she wanted to fail -- and write the book about it.

I asked him for evidence.

"She is spending $40 on pants. She is staying in hotels. I made sacrifices so that I could succeed. She didn't make any sacrifices."

I asked Ehrenreich: Why can he do it, when you couldn't?

"I know, it's embarrassing."

Were you trying to fail?

"I think that is so unfair. The $40 pants, that was a big mistake, and that was one mistake I made early on. The motels, that's not a rich person option."

You could have succeeded if you'd gotten a roommate.

"In time, yes, I could have gotten roommates."

You're saying you can't make it in America in these jobs. And you can.

"I said, here's what my experience was."

Her account of her experience is a very misleading portrait of opportunity in America. American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks points out, "From 1950 to 2007, middle-class family income went up, in real dollars, adjusted for inflation, from $29,000 a year to $75,000."

Of course now we're in the midst of a recession. Millions have lost jobs.

"We can't make light of that. But we have to keep this in perspective. We've had worse recessions."

Perspective is right.

"Middle-class people today live like rich people lived in the 1950s."

"We've always said, 'But in the old days things were better,'" Brooks notes. "They said that in the 1920s. They said that in the 1950s, and we say it again today. It's not that we have less money. It's that our expectations have risen."

Lately, fear has risen, as the economy has fallen. But economies do recover.

"We have a society that rewards hard work and merit," Brooks adds. "Half of the poor actually are not poor 10 years later. Nobody is stuck where they start out." 

Representative Barney Frank

Quote today from Barney Frank:

He (AIG CEO) noted that he believed the retention bonuses at the financial products unit were necessary, so that competition would not take AIG's best minds away.But lawmakers disagreed, arguing that AIG was fighting to retain the wrong people.  "These are not the people you want to retain -- you need to get people who understand the mistakes and undo them," said committee chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Let's repeat that - "These are not the people you want to retain -- you need to get people who understand the mistakes and undo them".  Look in the mirror, Barney.

Quote by Barney Frank...

House Financial Services Committee hearing, Sept. 25, 2003:

Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . .

Article outlining how Barney Frank pushed houses for people who could not afford them and fought regulatory reform at every turn...

Barney's Rubble

Barney Frank didn't like our recent editorial taking him to task for his longtime defense of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Congressional baron defends himself in his signature style here. We'd let him have his say without comment except that his "whole story" is, well, far from the whole truth.

Mr. Frank contends that he favored "very strong reform" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even before Democrats took over Congress after the 2006 elections. To adapt a famous phrase, this depends on what the meaning of "reform" is. Mr. Frank did support a bill that he and others on Capitol Hill described as reform. But on the threshold reform issue -- limiting the size of the portfolios of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that the two companies could hold -- Mr. Frank was a stalwart opponent.

In fact, Mr. Frank was publicly arguing for an increase in the size of their combined $1.4 trillion portfolios right up to the day they were bailed out. Even now, after he's been proven wrong about a taxpayer guarantee, he opposes Treasury's planned reduction in the size of the portfolios starting in 2010, according to a quote attributed to him in this newspaper last week. "Good luck on that," he reportedly said. Mr. Frank's spokeswoman hung up the phone when we sought confirmation Tuesday.

The MBS portfolios have long been both the chief source of the systemic risk posed by the two mortgage giants and of the profits that so handsomely enriched shareholders and officers alike for decades. Without the extreme leverage inherent in those portfolios -- which the companies borrowed heavily, at taxpayer-subsidized rates, to accumulate -- their federal takeover might never have become necessary.

For years, Mr. Frank and other friends of Fan and Fred opposed not only bills written to limit the size of their portfolios, but any bill that in their view gave an independent regulator too much discretion to order a reduction. This was true of the reform that his House committee passed last year. Only when the White House caved to Mr. Frank and dropped its earlier insistence that a reform bill rein in the portfolios did Mr. Frank move his bill.

In his letter, Mr. Frank also repeats his familiar claim that Fannie and Freddie are vital because they support "affordable housing." This is political smoke. The awful irony of Fan and Fred is that they have done very little to assist affordable housing. Most of the taxpayer subsidy has gone to enrich shareholders and Fannie managers, as a 2003 study by the Federal Reserve shows.

Mr. Frank says he favored the disclosure of Fannie and Freddie compensation -- which is nice, but beside the point. The source of the rich pay packages was the Fannie business model that Mr. Frank fought so hard to protect. Instead of helping the poor, Mr. Frank was enriching Jim Johnson, Frank Raines, Angelo Mozilo and Wall Street.

If Mr. Frank thinks his "affordable housing" goals are so popular, he can always ask Congress to appropriate money for any housing subsidy he desires. But he knows those votes are hard to come by. It's much easier to have Fannie and Freddie take inordinate risks, even at taxpayer expense, so they can pay a political dividend called an "affordable housing trust fund" that politicians will disperse. In opposing genuine reform of Fan and Fred, Mr. Frank wasn't acting like a principled liberal. He was protecting corporate giants while hiding their risks from taxpayers until the middle class got stuck with the bill.

More info and quotes from those who in Washington who ignored this problem...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122290574391296381.html

Why wouldn't they renew this program?

A Sellout of Our Unemployed
Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday, March 13, 2009

By the choices we make we define ourselves. We reveal our biases and beliefs. And so, too, do our institutions.

In writing the $789 billion stimulus bill, Congress revealed that, for all its "Buy American" blather, it does not truly put America first. It does not believe that 10 million jobless Americans, in the country their fathers built, should receive any preference in hiring 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens who broke into this country and owe her no loyalty, allegiance or love.

Is this a slur on the patriotism of some of our congressmen? You betcha.

What other conclusion can one reach after Congress refused to require that employers on construction projects, paid for by U.S. tax dollars in the stimulus bill, verify that their workers are Americans?

For that is precisely what Congress did.

The first paragraph of the front-page story in USA Today says it all. "Los Angeles -- Tens of thousands of jobs created by the economic stimulus law could end up filled by illegal immigrants, particularly in big states like California where undocumented workers are heavily represented in construction, experts on both sides of the issue say."

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, illegal aliens will take 300,000 of the 2 million construction jobs to be created by the stimulus bill. The CIS figure is based on Census Bureau estimates that 15 percent of all construction workers are illegal aliens or immigrants who are not authorized to work in the United States.

Robert Rector of Heritage Foundation concurs with the figures on the number of jobs Congress just voted to give to non-Americans.

"Without specific mechanisms to ensure that workers are U.S. citizens or legally authorized to work, it is likely that 15 percent of these workers, or 300,000, would be illegal immigrants."

Other experts put the figure far higher than 15 percent, and certainly higher in California and other Southwestern states, where illegals tend to congregate.

In taking these jobs, illegals will be shouldering aside unemployed Americans. Yet Congress could have, with one vote, guaranteed that virtually every job paid for by U.S. taxpayers would go to U.S. workers.

How? By mandating that all beneficiaries of stimulus money use the E-Verify program of the Department of Homeland Security, which lets employers check the validity of the Social Security number of all new hires. E-Verify is available on a voluntary basis. It is simple, swift and easy to use.

Indeed, E-Verify is becoming standard operating procedure for U.S. businesses that wish to obey the law. According to NumbersUSA, U.S. businesses have used E-Verify in 3 million inquiries this year alone. That is almost half the total of 6.6 million inquiries for all of 2008 and five times the rate of use in 2007.

E-Verify is a smashing success with an accuracy rate of over 99 percent that holds out promise of a day when every employer in America will be able to ensure that every employee is an American or someone authorized to work here. At its rising rate of use, one-fourth to one-third of all new hires could soon be checked by E-Verify.

Isn't this what we all want, what we have all sought -- an easy, verifiable, non-intrusive, inexpensive way for businesses to assure that those they hire are in our country legally?

No, it is not. For Tuesday night, the Senate voted to strip away this protection of American workers from the unfair competition of illegal aliens.

The Senate voted 50 to 47 to end E-Verify in six months, when current funding runs out. Sen. Jeff Sessions' proposal to give this successful program five more years was rejected 50 to 47.

Republicans and seven Democrats voted to save E-Verify. But only Democrats voted to kill it.

How did Harry Reid kill the E-Verify provision that was in the House version of the stimulus package? The Senate was not even allowed to vote on it. And when the two bills were reconciled in the Pelosi-Reid conference, E-Verify disappeared.

This was a huge victory for La Raza and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose lobbyists have labored long to ensure that their member companies pay no price for dumping U.S. workers and hiring illegal aliens.

Yet, this battle is not over. If Americans understand that the Pelosi-Reid Democrats have no problem with illegal aliens taking jobs from unemployed Americans, that party can be made to pay a price in 2010.

As of today, there exists a Republican-Blue Dog Democrat coalition in both houses that is serious about putting our country and countrymen first, be it on spending bills or trade measures. This is a foundation to build on.

E-Verify is not dead. For the Reid-Pelosi-Obama Left cannot survive the perception that it is aiding and abetting illegal aliens in taking the jobs of unemployed Americans. 

Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved. 

Sent to my Congressman

Feel free to use my text if you wish to contact your elected officials.

To know how your representative/Senator voted:

House Voting

Senate Voting (voice vote - no record)

Dear Congressman ______, Thank you for voting against the 2009 Budget. I know it would have been easy to follow the party and the President and vote for this bill.  

President Obama's promise to cut the deficit in the future does not do enough to stem the tide of our country's debt. Why is he not talking about reducing our total national debt? Reducing the deficit means we continue to add to our obligations. It is time for the "tough decisions" we were promised.  

Thank you again for your vote, ______

David Brooks

---

February 24, 2009

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Big Test

By DAVID BROOKS

“We cannot successfully address any of our problems without addressing all of them.”

Barack Obama, Feb. 21, 2009

When I was a freshman in college, I was assigned “Reflections on the Revolution in France” by Edmund Burke. I loathed the book. Burke argued that each individual’s private stock of reason is small and that political decisions should be guided by the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Change is necessary, Burke continued, but it should be gradual, not disruptive. For a young democratic socialist, hoping to help begin the world anew, this seemed like a reactionary retreat into passivity.

Over the years, I have come to see that Burke had a point. The political history of the 20th century is the history of social-engineering projects executed by well-intentioned people that began well and ended badly. There were big errors like communism, but also lesser ones, like a Vietnam War designed by the best and the brightest, urban renewal efforts that decimated neighborhoods, welfare policies that had the unintended effect of weakening families and development programs that left a string of white elephant projects across the world.

These experiences drove me toward the crooked timber school of public philosophy: Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Edward Banfield, Reinhold Niebuhr, Friedrich Hayek, Clinton Rossiter and George Orwell. These writers — some left, some right — had a sense of epistemological modesty. They knew how little we can know. They understood that we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism. They tended to be skeptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down.

Before long, I was no longer a liberal. Liberals are more optimistic about the capacity of individual reason and the government’s ability to execute transformational change. They have more faith in the power of social science, macroeconomic models and 10-point programs.

Readers of this column know that I am a great admirer of Barack Obama and those around him. And yet the gap between my epistemological modesty and their liberal worldviews has been evident over the past few weeks. The people in the administration are surrounded by a galaxy of unknowns, and yet they see this economic crisis as an opportunity to expand their reach, to take bigger risks and, as Obama said on Saturday, to tackle every major problem at once.

President Obama has concentrated enormous power on a few aides in the West Wing of the White House. These aides are unrolling a rapid string of plans: to create three million jobs, to redesign the health care system, to save the auto industry, to revive the housing industry, to reinvent the energy sector, to revitalize the banks, to reform the schools — and to do it all while cutting the deficit in half.

If ever this kind of domestic revolution were possible, this is the time and these are the people to do it. The crisis demands a large response. The people around Obama are smart and sober. Their plans are bold but seem supple and chastened by a realistic sensibility.

Yet they set off my Burkean alarm bells. I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well. I fear that we have a group of people who haven’t even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S. economy. I fear they are going to try to undertake the biggest administrative challenge in American history while refusing to hire the people who can help the most: agency veterans who are registered lobbyists.

I worry that we’re operating far beyond our economic knowledge. Every time the administration releases an initiative, I read 20 different economists with 20 different opinions. I worry that we lack the political structures to regain fiscal control. Deficits are exploding, and the president clearly wants to restrain them. But there’s no evidence that Democrats and Republicans in Congress have the courage or the mutual trust required to share the blame when taxes have to rise and benefits have to be cut.

All in all, I can see why the markets are nervous and dropping. And it’s also clear that we’re on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited. We will know that highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change. If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity.

It’ll be interesting to see who’s right. But I can’t even root for my own vindication. The costs are too high. I have to go to the keyboard each morning hoping Barack Obama is going to prove me wrong.

Cramdown Mortgage Modification

Wow, could we please come up with some more bad ideas?  Today's latest is a proposal to allow judges to forcibly restructure mortgage contracts for those who are having trouble paying.  There are numerous problems with this plan:

• A mortgage contract is just that - a contract.  As long as the signing and original agreement of that contract was legal, the only parties who should have the ability to adjust the terms are the signers of the document.  Allowing a 3rd party (the government) to adjust the terms to whatever they deem reasonable makes contracts temporary and unreliable rather than their original intention: a dependable, legally binding basis for a business transaction

• Why should the lending party (in this case the bank) be forced to suffer hardship due to the  borrower's inability to pay?  As long as the bank did not commit fraud in presenting the terms to the borrower, the borrower has a legal responsibility to pay.  If the borrower does not pay, the lender has the legal authority to recover the collateral on the loan (the house). Now, if the bank feels it is in their best interest to renegotiate the terms of the loan, that is THEIR BUSINESS, but they should not be forced to do so against their will.

•  How did we reach the point where the government has decided that everyone has a right to maintain their current standard of living indefinitely?  If you can't afford the house you are in, feel free to move to a more affordable abode.

• This system is even worse than the government paying off loans (although I oppose that too).  If the government pays the loans, at least the costs are spread across all taxpayers who can share their opinion through their representatives and through their votes.  This plan forces a small group (banks and their shareholders) without direct representation to take the losses for which they did nothing to contribute (once again, with the caveat that the loans were made in good faith and with full disclosure).

I understand that some people have recently lost their jobs.  I have many friends who have already lost their jobs or are in danger of losing their jobs.  I do not begrudge homeowners facing hardship for asking for help.  It is only natural.  But it is the job of society and the government to uphold the law (the contract), because once you treat contracts as temporary, flexible documents, they lose all authority, further eroding the confidence that is so sorely needed by this economy.

House to vote on bankruptcy mortgage rewrites

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 59 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Debt-strapped homeowners unable to afford their mortgages could get their monthly payments lowered in bankruptcy court under a controversial element of President Barack Obama's housing rescue plan.

The legislation is part of a broader housing package scheduled for a House vote Thursday. It's the toughest piece of Obama's efforts to prevent foreclosures — a stick to go with the many carrots he is offering the mortgage industry to help borrowers afford their home loans.

On Wednesday, Obama's team announced details of his broader $75 billion housing plan, which features cash incentives for mortgage holders — known as loan servicers — who cut deals with borrowers for new, more affordable terms.

The legislation has been the subject of an intense lobbying campaign by the financial services industry, which has worked hard to kill it. It has exposed rifts among liberal Democrats who regard it as the only real way to help debt-strapped homeowners avoid foreclosures and moderates who want to give voluntary efforts a chance to work before resorting to the courts.

The same divisions are at work in the Senate, which is expected to consider its own version of the legislation in the coming weeks.

The industry already won several concessions from Democrats in the House, who agreed to limit the measure to existing loans, to homeowners who sought a loan modification from their lenders before filing for bankruptcy, and to people who can no longer afford to pay their mortgages.

Democrats were forced to put off action on the measure when moderates voiced concerns last week that the bill was still overly broad. They wrote a compromise that requires bankruptcy judges to consider whether banks offered homeowners reasonable loan restructuring deals before they weigh in with their own rewrites.

Borrowers also would have a responsibility to prove that they tried to modify their mortgages with their lenders before seeking help in bankruptcy court.

The deal would require judges to consider whether homeowners were offered a "qualified" loan workout consistent with Obama's plan. That program would let eligible homeowners rework their mortgages to bring their monthly payments down to no more than about one-third of their incomes.

The mortgage industry has argued that unfettered access to bankruptcy court mortgage modifications would impose steep and unpredictable costs on its companies that would be passed along to borrowers as higher fees and interest rates.

Although it calls the new compromise a good step, the industry is still opposed to the measure it brands the "cramdown." Lobbyists pressed lawmakers to limit the measure to subprime mortgages and to block homeowners who had been offered a mortgage workout by their lenders from getting one through a bankruptcy judge.

Backers and a wide range of economists say that because the measure is limited to existing loans, banks would have no reason to raise future rates to factor in the cost of forced loan rewrites.

The measure is part of a broader housing package that would raise the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's borrowing authority and boost incentives for lenders to rework mortgages. The legislation takes $2 billion out of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout fund to bolster an existing program to allow homeowners rework or refinance their mortgages.

The bill is H.R. 1106.

What might have been...

Remember the promise to "Make them famous"?  I do. Does anyone doubt this process would have gone differently under a McCain administration?

Maureen Dowd: This great stage of fools

By Maureen Dowd

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

WASHINGTON: If only Shakespeare had known how to Twitter.

There was a bit of King Lear in the scene on the Senate floor, a stormy, solitary John McCain on "this great stage of fools," as the Bard wrote, railing against both parties and the president in fiery speeches and rapid-fire tweets.

"He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath," the Fool told Lear.

And he's truly mad that trusts in the promise of a presidential candidate to quell earmarks.

The 72-year-old senator who seemed hopelessly 20th century when he confessed during the campaign that he didn't know how to use a computer or send an e-mail has now mastered the latest technology fad, twittering up a twizzard to tweak his former rival.

Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:

- $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. "quick peel me a grape," McCain twittered.

- $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Texas.

- $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

- $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. "Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?" McCain tweeted.

- $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.

- $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.

- $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn't want to "sustain" Vegas.)

- $2 million "for the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, "because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy."

- $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. "Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit," McCain tweeted sarcastically.

- $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. "During these tough economic times with Americans out of work," McCain twittered.

- $200,000 for tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. "REALLY?" McCain twittered.

-$209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.

"When do we turn off the spigots?" McCain said in his cri de coeur on the Senate floor. "Haven't we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future."

In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Barack Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign.

He's been lecturing us on the need to prune away frills while the economy fizzles. He was slated to make a speech on "wasteful spending" on Wednesday.

"You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation," he said recently about the "hard choices" we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget.

He reckons he'll need Congress for more ambitious projects, like health care, and when he goes back to wheedle more bailout billions, given that AIG and GM and our other corporate protectorates are burning through our money faster than we can print it and borrow it from the ever-more-alarmed Chinese.

Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that "the status quo is not acceptable," even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork.

Obama spinners insist it was "a leftover budget." But Iraq was leftover, too, and the president's trying to end that. This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget "line by line" and cut pork.

On "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed the bill as "last year's business," because most of it was written last year.

But given how angry Americans are, watching their future go up in smoke, the bloated bill counts as this year's business.

It includes $38.4 million of earmarks sponsored or co-sponsored by Obama's labor secretary, Hilda Solis; $109 million Hillary Clinton signed on to; and $31.2 million in earmarks sought by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with colleagues.

(Even Barack Obama was listed as one of the co-sponsors of a $7.7 million pet project for Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions until he got his name taken off last week.)

And then there are the 16 earmarks worth $8.5 million that Emanuel put into the bill when he was a congressman, including money for streets in Chicago suburbs and a Chicago planetarium.

Blame it on the stars, Rahm, or on old business. But as Shakespeare wrote in "Lear": "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeits of our own behavior - we make guilty of our own disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars."

The news is a lot more interesting when you know the tricks...

You know, one of the best things about watching watchdog shows like the "O'Reilly Factor" is that you finally get a view into how media shapes this country.  While I don't always agree with O'Reilly or appreciate his aggressive tone, I do appreciate it when he reveals to me how manipulated I am.  Watch the clip of O'Reilly on Feb 23 below for context (sorry, I wasn't able to embed it), then scroll down to see a mainstream news source (CNN) do exactly what O'Reilly describes.  It is really quite amazing when you know the tricks...

Link to Video

Prosecutor: Levy 'random victim' of Salvadoran laborer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly seven years after the remains of federal intern Chandra Levy were found in a Washington park, a jailed laborer from El Salvador faces a murder charge in her death, authorities said Tuesday.

A judge on Tuesday signed an arrest warrant for Ingmar Guandique, 27, who is serving a 10-year sentence for two assaults in Rock Creek Park that occurred around the time of Levy's disappearance.

Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park about a year after she was reported missing.

"We believe Levy was a random victim of Guandique, who attacked and killed her as she jogged in Rock Creek Park," said Jeffrey Taylor, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Guandique's public defenders said the case was far from over, and urged the public not to jump to conclusions.

"This flawed investigation, characterized by the many mistakes and missteps of the Metropolitan Police Department and every federal agency that has attempted to solve this case, will not end with the simple issuance of an arrest warrant against Mr. Guandique," the federal public defender's office said in a statement ... We look forward to trying this case before unbiased jurors who will not rush to judgment."

Guandique faces a first-degree murder charge. A conviction on the charge would bring a mandatory sentence of 30 to 60 years in prison, Taylor said.

The massive publicity surrounding the Levy case was largely a result of her romantic affair to then-Rep. Gary Condit, a California Democrat. Police questioned Condit many times in connection with the slaying, but the congressman was never considered a suspect. 

A California native working as an intern for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Levy, 24, disappeared May 1, 2001. Her remains were found in May 2002 by a man walking his dog in a remote area of the park.

Guandique has been imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution-Victorville, a medium-security facility northeast of Los Angeles, California. Officials hope to transfer him from California to the nation's capital in 45 to 60 days.

He's serving his sentence on the two assault convictions in California because there are no federal prisons in the District of Columbia. Those convicted of federal crimes in the capital are sent to various federal prisons across the country.

Guandique was considered a person of interest in 2002 in connection with Levy's death, authorities said Tuesday. Before the new charges, his projected release date from prison was October 5, 2011.

According to officials at Tuesday's news conference -- and the affidavit supporting the arrest warrant for Guandique -- circumstantial evidence played a large role in the case. Authorities presented no evidence Tuesday of anyone seeing Guandique and Levy together. 

But the affidavit said a witness reported seeing and running from a man in the park, and she said she believed that occurred on the same day as Levy disappeared. Upon seeing a photograph of Guandique in the interim, the woman thought he looked like the man who followed her in the park, the affidavit said.

Another witness reported seeing Guandique with "a fat lip and scratches on his face" about the time of Levy's disappearance, the affidavit said. The witness added that Guandique said he was injured by his girlfriend during an argument.

Interviewed by police, Guandique's girlfriend at the time said that while he was violent with her on occasion, "at no time during any of the arguments or fights did [she] ever strike Guandique or cause any injuries to his face or neck."

Two other witnesses reported that Guandique told them he committed crimes against women, including rape and murder, according to the affidavit. And another witness last month told police Guandique admitted his involvement in Levy's killing, as well as that he tried to rape two other women in the park at knifepoint, the affidavit said.

When news emerged last month that Guandique's arrest was imminent in the Levy case, the same witness told police Guandique "became very anxious and said something to the effect of, '[Expletive], it's over. They got me now. What am I gonna do?' "

Authorities searching Guandique's cell in California in September found a photograph of Levy that apparently had been taken from a magazine, the affidavit said.

Speaking last month as news emerged that an arrest in the case was imminent, Levy's mother, Susan, said, "It's a bittersweet situation for me as the mother of a daughter who is no longer here. I want justice. I want to know that the person who did it is in jail and will not do it to anybody else."

She added, "Every day the elephant is there. Every day you get a knot in your stomach. It doesn't go away. It's a life sentence for the families and relatives that miss their loved ones. We have a life sentence of hurt."

Finally

Finally, something upon which President Obama and I can agree...

President Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, recently mentioned that the administration wishes to reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004.  (Click here to learn more about the ban).  Assault weapons have no private legitimate purpose.  They are not used for hunting, and are not practical for personal defense.  They do, however, represent a significant threat to citizens and police officers.  While I generally oppose the government selecting what items I can and cannot own, I believe the freedom lost in this case is far outweighed by the increased in general safety.  I was disappointed when the Republican led congress allowed this clause to expire - kudos to the President for looking to take action on this matter.