Tag Archives: Michael Barone

Refusing To Learn The Lessons Of History

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On Thursday, Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner posted an article about a government move to again encourage subprime lending in the mortgage market.

The article reports:

I have written frequently that I estimate that one-third of the mortgage foreclosures in the 2007-10 period were of Hispanic homebuyers. Very many had been granted mortgages, despite bad or dubious credit, by lenders who then fobbed them off on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or other mortgage securitizers, in the meantime gaining brownie points with regulators for lending to “minorities.” Evidence supporting this comes, inadvertently, from an Urban Institute report spotlighted by the industrious and provocative blogger Steve Sailer. You can see that there was a huge increase in the number of mortgages granted to Hispanics in the years running up to 2006, when housing prices peaked, centered in metro Los Angeles and the adjacent Inland Empire to the east, in California’s Central Valley and in metro Las Vegas and Phoenix. Not coincidentally, these “sand states” (plus Florida) accounted for more than half of mortgage foreclosures when housing prices plummeted and buyers who suddenly found themselves underwater and/or out of work defaulted on their mortgages.

Both President Bush and President Clinton encouraged home buying for Hispanic buyers, which resulted in many of the previous income/mortgage ratio standards for granting mortgages being ignored. This resulted in the housing bubble, the crash that followed, and a tremendous amount of money spent in attempting to avoid disaster.

Well, the government has not learned its lesson. The article reports:

Now the Urban Institute and the Obama administration are pushing for more mortgages for blacks and Hispanics with subpar credit ratings. Haven’t America, the world and the intended beneficiaries already suffered enough from this perhaps well-intentioned but indubitably misguided policy?

How many times do we have to do this before we learn that it is not a good idea to lend large sums of money to people who cannot pay it back?

When Viewing The Statistics, Follow The Money

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On Sunday, Michael Barone posted an article at the Washington Examiner about mass transit in America. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced last week that Americans use of public transportation was at an all-time high.

The chart below tells a different story:

So why would the American Public Transportation Association be telling us that ridership of public transportation is up? Well, it has to do with the way highway funds are distributed.

The article explains:

APTA is promoting the idea of a transit boom because it would like to see lots of federal money continue to be spent on transit. It already is: as King et al. point out, transit receives about 20 percent of federal surface transportation funding while accounting for only 2 to 3 percent of U.S. passenger trips. And as Cox points out, two-thirds of the recent rise in transit commuting occurred in the six “transit legacy cities”–New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington. These six cities have the nation’s six largest concentrations of downtown office employment, and transit routes were designed to funnel people into and out of these concentrated areas. Transit use has languished in other areas with subways or much touted light railway systems like Portland‘s.

Those who complain about the condition of the nation’s highways need to remember that since the 1980’s, money has been taken from highway funding to pay for bike paths and other items that are not related to maintaining highways. The program with our highways is not lack of money–it is how the money is spent. The amount of spending on public transportation in relation to the percentage of the population that uses public transportation is another example of the government trying to force people to do something they are not interested in doing. That is not the government’s job.

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Congress Isn’t The Only Branch Of Government That Has Mastered The Art Of Kicking The Can Down The Road

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As of February 10, 2014, there have been 35 changes to ObamaCare according to the Galen Institute. Those changes include 18 by executive action, 15 by Congress, signed by President Obama, and 2 changes made by the Supreme Court.

The most recent change to ObamaCare is a delay of the employer mandate requiring companies to provide insurance for full-time employees. The Galen Institute reports that the latest change postpones enforcement of the requirement for medium-size employers until 2016 and relaxes some requirements for larger employers. Businesses with 100 or more employees must offer coverage to 70% of their full-time employees in 2015 and 95% in 2016 and beyond.

On Tuesday, The Heritage Foundation posted an article explaining why these changes are important.

The Heritage Foundation explains the problem in one sentence:

Congress included a mandate when it passed the law. Obama signed that law. So (unless lawmakers repeal it, and of course they should) the mandate should take effect, even if that causes the entire law to collapse like a burning firework factory.

Yesterday Michael Barone posted an article at the Washington Examiner which asked two questions about the changes made to ObamaCare.

The two questions are:

The first question is: Are employers’ legal counsel advising that those provisions might be enforced, retroactively, at some later date? After all, the provisions remain on the books. If this administration or a later one decides that, say, the employer mandate should be enforced as written, does the employer have to pay up?

My second question is: What would stop a future administration from following Obama’s precedent and declaring that it would not enforce other provisions in tax laws?

Those members of Congress who are not speaking out against the executive overreach that is currently happening might want to consider how they would react if it were being done by an administration they did not agree with.

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Some Observations On This Week’s Election

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This article is based on three articles, the first posted at Politico yesterday, the second posted at bizpacreview yesterday, and the third posted by Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner yesterday. My focus is on the election in Virginia. Bill Bolling was the preferred candidate for governor of Virginia by many Republicans. A technicality in the way the candidate was chosen resulted in the selection of Ken Cuccinelli. Ken Cuccinelli is a good man, but he was not an ideal candidate.

Politico reported:

The main news stories of the last two weeks of the race were about the botched rollout of the health exchanges and troubling revelations about people getting kicked off their health plans.

Cuccinelli called the off-year election a referendum on Obamacare at every stop during the final days.

“Despite being outspent by an unprecedented $15 million, this race came down to the wire because of Obamacare,” Cuccinelli said in his concession speech Tuesday night.

Bizpacreview reported:

As close as the race was, a report out Tuesday by The Blaze indicates that there were shenanigans at play:

“A major Democratic Party benefactor and Obama campaign bundler helped pay for professional petition circulators responsible for getting Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert C. Sarvis on the ballot.”

According to the report, campaign finance records show that the Libertarian Booster PAC made the largest independent contribution to Sarvis’ campaign.

The Blaze identified Austin, Texas, software billionaire Joe Liemandt as the Libertarian Booster PAC’s major benefactor. He also happens to be a top bundler for President Barack Obama.

Michael Barone observes:

1. The Obamacare rollout fiasco and Obama’s lies hurt Democrats.

2. The government shutdown didn’t much hurt Republicans.

3. Millennials are souring on Democrats.

Some conservative pundits have cited the lack of funding given to Ken Cuccinelli by the Republican party as a problem for conservative candidates. I am not sure whether or not these complaints are valid, but the Democrats outspent the Republicans by almost $15 million. One of the major problems with the election of Terry McAuliffe is what it will mean for the 2016 Presidential election. Terry McAuliffe is a very strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and will be an asset for her in the state of Virginia. However, the good news is that ObamaCare will be a problem for the Democrats in 2014 and possibly in 2016.
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Should The President Be Allowed To Ignore The Constitution ?

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Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted an article by Michael Barone on President Obama’s tendency to ignore the law when he decides he wants to do something. The article cites a number of examples.

In January 2012 President Obama made some recess appointments–three members of the National Labor Relations Board and the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Unfortunately the Senate did not happen to be recess at the time.

The article reports:

Last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that the NLRB recess appointments were unconstitutional.

…decisions of the NLRB are the CFPB are in legal limbo, pending a Supreme Court decision. Hundreds of thousands of people and are affected and millions of dollars are at stake. There is a price for not observing the rule of law.

The article goes on to list a few more examples:

For several years the Obama administration has refused to obey a law requiring the president’s budget to be submitted on a certain date. As budget director, Treasury nominee Jack Lew refused to obey the law requiring him to issue a report in response to the trustees’ report on Medicare.

During the 2012 campaign the Pentagon told defense contractors not to inform employees that they may be laid off if the sequester took effect as required by the WARN Act.

They were even told that the government would pay any fines for not complying. What law authorizes that?

…In spring 2009 we got our first glimmers of this modus operandi. In arranging the Chrysler bankruptcy administration, officials brushed aside the rights of secured creditors in order to pay off the United Auto Workers.

This represents a pattern–there are no isolated incidents here. Unfortunately we have almost four more years to get through before we can get back to the Constitution.Enhanced by Zemanta

The Coming Age Of Fiscal Sanity

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Michael Barone posted an article in the Washington Examiner on Saturday entitled, “History suggests that era of entitlements is nearly over.” Wow. Is that a promise? Mr. Barone points out that you can actually divide American history in 76-year periods.

The article points out:

It was 76 years from Washington’s First Inaugural in 1789 to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural in 1865. It was 76 years from the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 to the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Going backward, it was 76 years from the First Inaugural in 1789 to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which settled one of the British-French colonial wars. And going 76 years back from Utrecht takes you to 1637, when the Virginia and Massachusetts Bay colonies were just getting organized.

The article points out that the reason for change in each 76-year cycle was that the original arrangement became unworkable. We are now more than 76 years away from the passage of the Social Security in 1935. The entitlement society is in the process of going broke, and people are beginning to look for alternatives to big government programs. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

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The Impact Of President Obama’s Policies On Young Voters

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On Tuesday, Michael Barone posted an article at the Washington Examiner explaining the impact of President Obama’s policies on young voters.

One area that will be a problem for young voters in the future is the rapid expansion of college loans. The government policies in regard to college loans are creating a debt bubble not unlike the housing bubble of recent years.

The article lists some of the ways government policies impact the young. Mr. Barone concludes:

Obama’s policies, from Obamacare to high-speed rail, treat people as identical cogs in a very large machine, part of a mindless mass who would not be able to get along without government guidance.

In the information age, these industrial-age policies have prevented the vibrant economic growth, which gives young people the opportunity to find work and community service that maximizes their own special talents and interests — to shape their own world and choose their own future.

It remains to be seen if the young voters in America have the wisdom to vote in their own interests (and the interests of the rest of us).

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Can Cold Hard Facts Beat Out Name Calling ?

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This week on Fox News Sunday DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz provided a preview of the attack aimed at the Romney-Ryan ticket. She repeatedly called Paul Ryan‘s budget proposals extreme (while conveniently not mentioning that it has been more than three years since the Democrats made a serious budget proposal) and stated that reducing spending by any significant amount would harm the fragile recovery. (Recovery???)That is the preview of what is to come.

Michael Barone posted an article at the Washington Examiner today explaining that the choice of Paul Ryan as the Vice Presidential candidate puts the entitlement crisis at the center of the presidential campaign. At this point I would like to state that Social Security is not an entitlement–the people who will be collecting Social Security from this point on have paid more into the program than they will get out. The problem is not Social Security–it is the fact that since the mid 1960’s, Congress has spent the money that was supposed to be set aside for Social Security on other things. However, Medicaid and Medicare spending has increased so dramatically above what was originally projected, that there is no way to cover the rising costs without major modifications to the programs. Social Security also needs to be modified, but again, I resent calling it an entitlement when I was forced to pay into it my entire working life.

Michael Barone’s article concludes:

For Ryan and Romney can make the point — lost in the shuffle when this is a low-visibility issue — that their plan leaves the current Medicare system in place for current recipients and those over 55. Those who have made plans based on the present program can continue to rely on it.

But they can also make the point that their reforms are necessary in order to make sure Medicare is sustainable in the long run. Polls show that many voters under 55 doubt that they’ll ever get the Medicare and Social Security benefits they’ve been promised.

One more thing about Ryan, I think, appealed to Romney. He has already shown he cannot be intimidated by the most eminent opponent. Watch the video of Ryan’s five-minute evisceration of Obamacare at the president’s Blair House meeting. You can tell that Obama didn’t like it one bit.

He better get used to it. Obama’s side is relying on trash-talking ads. Romney’s selection of Ryan shows he wants a debate on whether America should follow Obama on the road to a European-style welfare state.

Make up some popcorn, there is going to be a show!

 

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Economic Woes Affect Population Movement

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Michael Barone posted an article at Townhall.com today explaining how the current economic recession is affecting population trends in America. One example cited is the migration to California which began during World War II and ended during the 1980’s. Since 1990, Americans have been leaving California. The only thing that has kept the state’s population growing at the national average has been Mexican and Asian immigration.

Mr. Barone reports in the article:

My prediction is that we won’t ever again see the heavy Latin immigration we saw between 1983 and 2007, which averaged 300,000 legal immigrants and perhaps as many illegals annually.

Mexican and other Latin birthrates fell more than two decades ago. And Mexico, source of 60 percent of Latin immigrants, is now a majority-middle-class country.

Asian immigration may continue, primarily from China and India, especially if we have the good sense to change our laws to let in more high-skill immigrants.

But the next big immigration source, I think, will be sub-Saharan Africa. We may end up with prominent politicians who actually were born in Kenya.

The state that is currently growing is Texas. One in twelve Americans now live in Texas. Texas has taken steps to attract businesses and people–it has enacted tax and tort policies to make the state business friendly. If the state governments are the laboratories for the federal government, we can learn a lot from Texas.

 

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America’s Political Sage Sums Up The Debate

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Late last night, Michael Barone posted an article at the Washington Examiner analyzing the night’s debate in New Hampshire. Michael Barone is the main author of The Almanac of American Politics, which is published every two years. He a very knowledgeable political observer and very accurate predictor of future political events.

Mr. Barone states in the article:

At about 10:28pm tonight, as Mitt Romney pivoted from a question on tax loopholes and started in with, “the real issue is vision,” I had recorded this thought in my notes, “He just clinched the nomination.”

Romney said, as he often has, that Barack Obama has put America on the road to decline and is trying to make America more like Europe. He made reference to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as he often has—which helps to explain why he polls about as well with supporters of the tea party movement, who revered and often reference the Founding documents, as with non-supporters—and proclaimed that the question in this election was whether America was going to remain “a unique nation”and whether it would “return to the principles on which it was founded.” To which Newt Gingrich then meekly concurred, adding some caveats.

The article goes on to detail the performance of each of the candidates in the debate. According to Mr. Barone, Mitt Romney moved forward in the debate, and Rick Perry positioned himself for the race in South Carolina. The other candidates pretty much stayed where they were before the debate.

I live in Massachusetts. I lived here when Mitt Romney was Governor. He did a good job considering the legislature he had to work with. I think Romneycare would have been a lot worse without Romney as Governor. I could easily vote for him in the 2012 election, although frankly he is not my first choice. I think his success in running against Barack Obama will largely depend on his choice of a running mate. There are a lot of very good options for him out there.

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The Politics Of Scheduling

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The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

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I haven’t mentioned the dust-up about the scheduling of the President’s speech on the economy because I really wasn’t too impressed by all the ruckus. Frankly I thought the whole discussion was dumb. However, Michael Barone, who is considerably smarter than I am, posted a very interesting article about the kerfuffle at the Washington Examiner website tonight.

It is naive (at best) to believe that President Obama was unaware that the Republican presidential candidates were having a debate on the night that he first suggested making a speech about the economy to a joint session of Congress. I think it is also a safe guess that he knew this would be Rick Perry’s first appearance as a candidate and that Rick Perry is a definite threat to President Obama’s desire to serve two terms. I also expect that President Obama also assumed that someone would actually watch his speech (or the Republican debate).

Michael Barone points out that the request to give a speech before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday showed a lack of respect for the Constitution. Congress is a separate branch of government and is not subject to Presidential dictates. Mr. Barone points out that in the past when a joint session of Congress was requested by the President, the arrangements were made privately, then announced.

The original plan of a Wednesday night debate also showed a contempt for public opinion.

The article reports:

White House press secretary Jay Carney said it was just “coincidental” that the president wanted to speak at the same time as the Reagan Library debate. It was just “one debate that’s one of many on one channel.”

Wow. The article points out that in the past President Obama has tried to upstage opposition with scheduling.

The article lists some other weaknesses of the Obama Presidency that are becoming very apparent. I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article. This is a difficult time for the President–the economy is not doing well and his poll numbers are falling–I expect we will see him play some serious hardball in the coming months.

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The Attack On Clarence Thomas Begins

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Clarence Thomas, an alumnus of Holy Cross, for...

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Today’s New York Post posted an article by Michael Barone about the attack piece on Clarence Thomas  written by Jeffrey Toobin and publiished in the New Yorker Magazine.  Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court since 1991, so why the sudden attack? Simple–Obamacare.

The interesting part of the article in the New Yorker Magazine is the fact that Jeffrey Toobin, while criticizing Justice Thomas, seems to have a lot of respect for him as a judge. The problem is simple–Justice Thomas believes in the Constitution as it was written. He makes his decisions based on the Constitution. There is no way that the idea of requiring American citizens to buy a product is in the Constitution.

The article in the New York Post concludes:

Congress has never before passed and the court has never upheld a law requiring individuals to buy a commercial product, as ObamaCare does. On this, the Obama Democrats, not Clarence Thomas or judges following his lead, are the ones sweeping aside precedent.

And that is why, as the date for the Supreme Court to begin its next session nears, the attacks on Clarence Thomas will continue and increase. If Justice Thomas cannot be forced to recuse himself from the case on Obamacare, there is a good chance that Obamacare will be overturned. If Obamacare is not overturned, the nightmare for American healthcare is only beginning.

 

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