FreedomTalks

The Boston Globe (news section — not editorial) on the housing bailout:

The mortgage legislation would help lenders like Countrywide, which was acquired by Bank of America last week, by allowing them to transfer their distressed loans to the federal government, avoiding potentially huge losses if borrowers continue to default on their mortgages.

The bill also raises the size of loans that can be purchased by the government-backed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, funds a program for cities to buy foreclosed properties, and increases federal support for consumer credit counseling programs.

That’s all true. What it doesn’t mention is the effect of the program on the stability of Fannie and Freddie, both of which took major dives yesterday as the bill moved forward.  Ostensibly, the bill was designed to help homeowners. But what sort of help is it if Fannie and Freddie are unable to perform their jobs?

Two Rasmussen Reports surveys released today cause me to wonder (as I often do) why so many people believe that government is the solution rather than the problem.

First, as TKeeley mentioned in an earlier posting on these pages, the Congressional Performance survey in which “Congressional approval fell to single digits for the first time ever.

“This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.”

Positive ratings for Congress were given by 13% of Democrats, 8% of Republicans, and just 3% of unaffiliated voters.

55% said it was unlikely that “Congress will address important problems facing our nation in the near future”, with 72% saying that “most members of Congress are more interested in furthering their own political careers” than in helping people.

While the only surprising thing to me is that we haven’t seen numbers like this earlier in our history, another survey (from July 4th) is more disturbing: Half of voters surveyed believe that America’s best days are behind us, with men more optimistic than women and Republicans more optimistic than Democrats. The only glimmer of light is that “82% say the U.S.A. is the best place in the world to live.”

The second Rasmussen survey released today shows that Americans’ pessimism isn’t limited to their perception of government:

At the same time, the Rasmussen Investors Investor Index fell to a new all-time low. Consumer confidence in the United States fell for the ninth consecutive month and set an all-time low for the fourth consecutive month. At 79.5, the Index is down four points over the last week, eight points over the past month, and thirty-three points since the beginning of 2008. The previous low—79.7—was established less than a month ago on June 12. Prior to this calendar year, the Investor Index had never fallen below 91.1 and it had not been below 100 since early in 2003.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, “For the first time ever, Rasmussen Employment Index data shows more workers report their firms are laying people off than hiring. As a result of these changes, the Rasmussen Employment Index fell six full points to another all-time low at 78.6. This is the third all-time low for the Employment Index in four months.”

Although things are clearly not great in our economy, they’re also not as bad as mainstream media would have us believe (maybe in their quest to prevent the election of John McCain). But when it comes to politics, perception is more important than reality and the party in power is blamed for circumstances which are generally (and should be) out of government’s control, such as a business cycle.

While it’s obvious to me that people should rely on government less, it’s possible to imagine a thought process from these surveys which lead to a different conclusion, and it goes something like this: If things get bad when government does a bad job, then wouldn’t things be great if government just did things better?

What people who think that way don’t understand is that from an economic point of view, “better” in most situations simply means doing less. So the better government does, the less need we have for it to intrude other than in areas such as regulating true monopolies and punishing fraud and other criminal activities. Surely, given poll results which show that Americans understand politicians’ true motivations, nobody expects government to will itself to a position of less influence. And that means government will never get “better” (namely smaller) without a fight.

It is certainly true that the government is best which governs least, but despite surveys like those released by Rasmussen today, enough Americans continue to live with a naive hope that “change” is all we need.

Rasmussen Reports released a new survey today that showed Congress has reached an all time low, receiving a dismal 9% approval rating. This is the first survey in Rasmussen’s history where Congressional rating has dropped below 10%.

Even when broken down by party affiliation, only 13% of Democrats and 8% of Republicans gave Congress positive marks.

While there are a lot of things that could be attributed to this continuing downward spiral, here is a list of 5 Congressional activities (covered by FreedomTalks) from the last six months that might have played a role.

1.) Failed Earmark Reform: Despite efforts by Senator Jim DeMint, Congress was unwilling to pass a bill that would place a one year moratorium on earmark spending.

2.) Attempts to Pass Cap and Trade: Even though gas prices were looming at $4 per gallon, the Senate still tried to push a bill that had the potential to raise the price of gas by $.50 per gallon. Luckily, this was blocked and removed from the floor.

3.) Federal Reserve/JP Morgan Chase Bear Stearns Bailout: Bear Stearns was clearly bankrupt, but the Federal Reserve’s loan allowed J.P. Morgan Chase to eventually offer $10 a share for the firm.  That represents about a $1 billion windfall to Bear Stearns shareholders, who should have been wiped out completely for owning an insolvent investment bank.

4.) Dodd/Countrywide Housing Bailout with Hidden Grassley Provision: Despite having received two VIP loans from Countrywide Financial, Senator Chris Dodd is still pushing a bill that would essentially bail them out. On top of that, buried deep inside this bill was a provision from Senator Charles Grassley that requires companies like PayPal, Amazon, etc., to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

5.) Bloated Farm Bill: Billions in subsidies that hurt taxpayers and play a role in the increasing price of food is only one of the many problems with the 2008 Farm Bill.

I’m sure there are many more that could be listed, so if you have something you would like to ad, please don’t hesitate to mention it in the comments section below.

The New York Times informs us that people are still fretting over the upcoming DTV transition.  Will everyone be aware? Will they know what to do? This is a TV emergency!

As I’ve noted before, there’s already plenty of money being spent to fund education efforts. Here’s what I wrote back in March in response to a similar story in the Post:

Now, I tend to think that there’s no reason to subsidize access to broadcast TV in the first place. But setting that aside, maybe it would be fair to complain about the switch — except that there’s already a billion-dollar plus federal subsidy already in place (and one that’s hugely wasteful in who it subsidizes at that). And I might be more sympathetic to worries about confusion amongst the elderly—the story reports that 73 percent of older consumers aren’t aware of the subsidy—if the transition weren’t still almost a year away, and broadcasters and cable companies hadn’t committed roughly $1.2 billion to explaining the transition to customers, and the FCC hadn’t already set aside $2.5 million to start their education efforts and requested $20 million more.

It’s not like there’s not a substantial amount of money, taxpayer and private, being spent to make sure that a relatively small number of people keep receiving a few channels on their aging TV sets. It’s irritating, but probably politically necessary, that much of this money had to be spent at all, but the benefits from the spectrum it releases are almost certainly worth it. But as it stands, I’m not really sure what else anyone thinks ought to be done.

And, as Tim Lee notes over at TLF, “going for a few days with no television just isn’t an emergency.” Quite so.

Indur Goklany’s got a lengthy but sharp post up about various climate-change mitigation schemes.  The gist is that even the plan proposed by Yale environmental economist William Nordhaus — probably the most sensible and rational of the major climate-change response plans — fails to take human adaptation into account.  More broadly, however, I think the takeaway from Goklany’s post is this line:

Humility isn’t an offense, and it ought to be acceptable for economists and policy analysts—even those whose stock in trade is climate change—to admit that they haven’t a clue what the world will look like beyond 2050 (if then).

There’s a tendency for academics of all sorts, but especially scientists and economists who work in fields which aspire to predictive capacities, to make the boldest, broadest, most sweeping claims possible.  Why? Well, a couple of reasons come to mind. The first is sheer curiosity: Why not extrapolate a given model as far as it will go? The second is self-interest: The bigger and more ecompassing the claim, the more likely it is to draw attention. In other words, it’s an incentive issue — think of it as public choice theory for academics.

Now, it’s also true that most responsible scientists (which is to say most scientists) hedge these claims by speaking in terms of potentiality rather than certainty.  But thanks to the summary-compression-soundbyte system that gets used to deliver most news, it doesn’t take long before predictions become certainties.  That makes for great headlines, but not for terribly useful or accurate science.  Science is a useful guide, of course, but rarely serves as a crystal ball.

As The New York Times reports, a new ad by Republicans targets Senator Barack Obama’s positions on energy prices.

Obama’s team responds: “What we need to solve our energy crisis is an honest debate about the choices before us, not more attack ads that mislead voters about the facts.”

It seems as though Senators Dodd and Conrad aren’t the only politicians that take advantage of their status to secure sweetheart mortgages.

The Washington Post reports that Senator Barack Obama got a nice deal, likely unavailable to your average Joe, from Northern Trust.

Driving the recent debate is concern that public officials, knowingly or unknowingly, may receive special treatment from lenders and that the discounts could constitute gifts that are prohibited by law.

Indeed. Perhaps there is more to this story. Kudos to the Post reporter who penned the article.

Since 1990, Northern Trust employees have donated more than $739,000 to federal campaigns, including $71,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

As Jon Henke and Rob Bluey have pointed out, Alaska porker Rep. Don Young received a “hero of the American Taxpayer” award from Americans for Tax Reform, 60 Plus and other organizations. But as Henke and Bluey point out, Rep. Young is far from a friend of the taxpayers, much less a hero.

From The Next Right’s Henke:

What the hell is wrong with the Right? Don Young…..

* …is responsible for the Bridge To Nowhere earmark

* …shouted “my money, my money!” when he was criticized for the Bridge to Nowhere.

* …is under FBI investigation for potentially taking bribes.

* …is also under investigation for altering an earmark (after the bill had passed the House and Senate) to benefit a campaign contributor.

* …is the politician who said “I’d like to be a little oinker, myself”.

* …is the politician who said of the highway bill, “It’s not a good way to legislate, although I got a lot of stuff in it … I mean I stuffed it like a turkey.”

* …is the politician who said he is “not [frustrated in] the minority because I took care of the minority when I was in the majority; they are taking care of me now.”

Being from Texas, it made me happy to see that Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) was among the 16 heroes who stood up to oppose a portion of the Dodd/Frank Mortgage Bailout bill that was before the Senate today. Senator Cornyn and the 15 other Senators who voted “No” should be commended for their commitment to limited and responsible government. They are:

Unfortunately, the other Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison, chose to make a political decision and ended up on the wrong side of this issue. Hopefully, she and a number of the other Senators who voted with her will do the right thing and oppose the remainder of the bailout.

I am probably less sanguine about gun ownership than most folks on the right, but I’m firmly convinced that today’s Supreme Court ruling, which strikes down DC’s long-standing ban on handgun ownership, is the correct one.  Cato’s done some very good work on this, and they’ve got more information at their place.