Repentant Sinners

If Barney Frank doesn't waffle, his recent statement that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "should be abolished" may be the best thing a Democrat has said in a long time.

If Canada can have home ownership rates above those of the U.S. without their equivalent of a Fannie Mae or tax subsidies for mortgage interest, so can we.

And then we can avoid a housing-led financial crisis in the future.

An "Honest" Politician

New York City councilman Jumaane Williams made an interesting admission the other day: he said he favors allowing elected officials in New York City to serve three four year terms, instead of two under term limit restrictions, so they could receive a pension - which requires 10 years of service.

Of course, Williams' admission is a damning indictment of a political class that seeks money through the political system - and speaks to a significant motivation behind many people's interest in politics: the hope to secure money for oneself through the political system.

In the late 1990's, a former Democrat from Oklahoma said that what many people don't realize is that a critical motivator behind many Democratic politicians' support of further government spending is the desire for them personally to benefit from that spending - in the form of more jobs for elected and appointed officials.

Councilman Williams makes that point crystal clear.

Misplaced Priorities

A federal judge ruled that six Somali pirates can't be charged with piracy under U.S. law. The six are accused of attacking a U.S. Navy ship off the Somali coast.

While it may seem like a bizarre ruling, the judge appears to have made the correct legal ruling. The controlling case is a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1820 that defined piracy as "robbery at sea". Prosecutors tried to expand this definition of piracy to includes any violent acts at sea, since the pirates were thwarted in completing their attack so no robbery occurred.

But the judge didn't bend to political expediency or use today's norms to decide the case: his decision rests on the law as it stands.

The pirates do face other charges with lesser penalties, but what this case illustrates is the need for a new, revised law to govern piracy in the U.S.

So while the Obama administration has been in extremely active in promoting legislation to reorder our economy, they have dropped the ball on promoting new laws to protect us from modern threats.

The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored entities that were designed to promote home ownership, have been the biggest drain on the government's coffers by far in the TARP bailout. The government has poured $148 billion into them so far, on top of guaranteeing trillions of dollars of their debt.

These staggering losses are a manifestation of their seminal role in fueling the housing bubble and ensuing financial crisis. The government used them to subsidize housing, and in Democratic Congressman Barney Frank's words, he wanted to "roll the dice" with Fannie and Freddie to promote home ownership among low income people.

That "role of the dice" led to our catastrophic financial crisis.

So you might think, in a rational world where the Obama Administration claims it wants to prevent future financial crises, that the government would recognize that subsidizing the housing industry and mortgages should end, so bubbles are less likely to develop and so taxpayers are no longer on the hook for bad mortgage loans.

But the power to influence and control the housing industry, and to direct subsidies to favored constituents, is to tempting to the Obama crowd. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has kicked off the administration's discussions of "housing reform" by saying that ther government should retain a role in the the mortgage finance business. Moreover, Geithner says one reason for this need for a government role is that 90% of new mortgage loans made over the past three years have had government support - suggesting that the private market can't provide sufficient mortgage lending.

What it really means is that it is hard for private mortgage lending to compete with government subsidized lending. Canada, which despite its left-oriented government policies has no equivalent to Fannie and Freddie, has no problem providing private mortgages with home ownership rates at or above those of the United States.

The government needs to end its myriad of subsidies for housing: it needs to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other government-sponsored mortgage supporters; it needs to repeal the Community Reinvestment Act which promotes non-economic lending; it needs to end the mortgage interest deduction to reduce the incentives to borrow; and it needs to end the favored tax treatment of capital gains on housing vs. other investments.

Stolen Election, Stolen Future

The Wall Street Journal reports that Minnesota Majority, a conservative watch dog group, has found in the two counties checked so far 341 illegal votes by felons in Democrat Al Franken's defeat of Republican Norm Coleman in the 2008 U.S. Senate election.

Since Franken won by 312 votes, and there 85 additional counties in Minnesota not checked, it looks like Franken won the race with illegal votes by criminals.

As the 60th Democratic, Franken's vote was able to overcome a Republican filibuster on healthcare.

Now you know why Democrats oppose using identification such as drivers' licenses to confirm the eligibility of voters. They benefit from fraudulent votes.

And our future has been changed accordingly.

Now They Tell Us

The U.S. Department of Transportation analyzed data recorders from Toyota vehicles in accidents they have been blamed on sudden acceleration. The result? The accelerator was engaged while they brakes were not.

In other words, the drivers mistakenly pressed the accelerator and not the brake - or at least claimed so in the accident investigation to deflect blame from themselves.

This is consistent with the government's investigation of supposed "unexplained" acceleration of Audi cars in 1989.

Out of 3,000 sudden acceleration complaints involving Toyotas and Lexuses, only one was confirmed as a problem with the vehicle, due to a floor mat issue.

Toyota, which built a highly profitable auto company without government subsidies or bailouts because it made cars people want to buy with a market cost structure, deserved better than the assault politicians and the media unleashed on the company earlier this year.

In a world where the U.S. government is a large shareholder in GM and Chrysler, it makes one wonder how much of the Toyota-bashing was driven by a desire to help the government-owned auto companies and the UAW.