Is America Ready to Dump the Old Left/Right Paradigm? Maybe

By Grant Davies

If you have even the slightest notion that you have been manipulated by the political system and its operatives at any time in your life, you have.

Do you ever find yourself reflexively opposing some idea or proposal because it is a Republican initiative? Or because it is a Democratic initiative?

Have you ever talked to anyone who was a Republican because they opposed Democrats? Or a Democrat because they opposed Republicans? Or who voted one way or the other because they were Irish, or Jewish, or black, or white, or their parents always voted that way? Or who liked or hated Obama or Bush because it was the default position of the crowd they hang around with?

Have you ever noticed that you are sick of talking heads on Fox News or MSNBC telling you what to think? Or that the talk radio shows you listen to are only an echo chamber for what you already knew?

Maybe it's time to seek out someone you know who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from you and chat about what you agree upon. Maybe you will find someone who is as sick as you are of the old left/right paradigm.

Maybe it's time to look for something different. Maybe it's time for someone to step forward and cut through the BS. Maybe it's time for someone who sees what we agree upon and builds upon it instead of pitting us against each other.

Maybe it's time to consider Rand Paul's ideas. Maybe they were your own ideas all along. Maybe your friends are thinking the same thing. Maybe...

Is Political Correctness a Weapon in the War on Freedom?

By Grant Davies

You may have heard this story recently. It's been floating around the net, but of course it hasn't been covered by the mainstream media. At least I haven't seen it. To be fair, I don't watch very much of the mostly useless drivel they peddle as "news"on those networks, so feel free to correct me if you saw it on one of them.

Since the theme of this blog is freedom and individual rights, it only seems right to bring this to your attention. When someone's rights are violated they lose some of their freedom. It doesn't matter which thugs are doing the violating.

It could be common street thugs who steal the liberty of inner city teenagers by attempting to force them into joining a gang. Losing the right to walk the streets freely unless you comply is no small loss.

It could be union thugs who use their partnership with government thugs to force people into joining their gang. Losing the right to work for whom you choose at a mutually agreed upon wage is no small loss.

Or it could be the thugs in government (at all levels) who steal individual liberty in ways too numerous to count. All the small losses add up to a mostly un-free existence.

In the case below it is university administrators who use political correctness to squash individual liberty. Those in charge at Syracuse University tried their best to destroy the career path and aspirations of the young man below by labeling him as a racist (and other vile things). He dared to make a personal post on his Facebook page questioning the opinion of someone who held that he was somehow unqualified to teach non-white students because he wasn't from a traditionally black college.

His right to work as a teacher may be over because of it. He seems to have "won" round one (or two, depending upon what you count) by exposing the thugs. But it remains to be seen if he will be blacklisted for not being black.

If he is, it will be no small loss for any of us.



Comments are welcome.

Welfare for Terrorists

By Grant Davies

About a week ago I threatened to write about two different things that were pissing me off. I said I would do so in a day or so. But it's not my fault that I didn't deliver, it's yours. That's right, it's yours.

As my old friend "JO" used to say, "You screwed up, you trusted me." (Okay, he didn't say screwed, he used a different word, but then again he's not like me, a famous writer who has a reputation to protect.)

Truth be told, I was too busy to be both pissed off and also write about it. So here I am, a week later, and guess what? I'm still pissed off about those things, so here goes.

The first item was a slam dunk for any thinking person to be indignant about. It was the news that one of the Boston bombers was collecting welfare transfer payments from the government while he was plotting to kill and maim innocent people at a public event. That's bad enough because this imbecile and his nitwit brother were killers, but odd as it seems, that wasn't the worst part.

Heck, a huge number of the criminals in this country are getting some form of government transfer payment.  I'd say (without actually knowing) that the vast majority of gang-bangers in any larger city are getting some "free" money while they go about their business of killing, robbing, dope dealing, and impregnating multiple women. And that's just one criminal class. So, it's nothing novel, that's for certain.

The problem is that he was getting any government money at all. Not because he was a murderous scum bag, but because he isn't a citizen of this country. He's here as a guest. He came here voluntarily. We allowed him to talk us into letting him into this country. And it's a fair bet that if it turns out that there are more people involved in the Boston Marathon murders they will be getting some form of government handout as well.

We don't owe the rest of the people in the world a check just because they breathe. If we did, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble by just sending them a check where ever they live. They could stay home and save the transportation costs and it would have the added benefit for us that it's hard to throw a pressure cooker bomb across the ocean.

Most people just know instinctively that when you allow someone to come into the country as a guest, they are expected to provide themselves with their own food and pay for their own lodging and clothing. Or perhaps they have a sponsor to provide it for them. If they run out of any of those things, or their sponsor no longer is able or willing to provide them, it's time to go home. Simple, right? Apparently nothing is simple in an upside down Utopia like the current USA.

Therefore I propose a new law. It's something I seldom, if ever, do. The law would be simple. "No person residing in, or visiting the US, shall be the beneficiary of any government program or payment of any kind unless they are a citizen."

So there is my rant about the first issue. I'll write about the second one soon. But if I don't, just remember, it's your fault for trusting me.

Okay, I'm Pissed Off Again

By Grant Davies

The other day a reader asked me if I was still writing for this blog. It was a fair question since I hadn't posted (much less personally written) anything here for twenty-two days. In fact, there has only been one post here in the month of April and only four in March. In the "blogosphere" that's forever. Over the last few years I've learned a few things about blogging. One of them is that you start to lose readers when you don't post regularly.

But I have some good news on that score. Since the regular readership of this blog falls a tad short of  the hits that The Drudge Report gets, there aren't that many to lose. And truth be told, almost all of the regular readers here know that I have continued to write (albeit somewhat less often) for my other blog, Cheeky History. So everyone knew I didn't croak and start writing opinion pieces in heaven about how God ought to run things differently up there.

Anyway, I apologize to those few (if any) who have missed the posts here. I'm also sure there are some people whose hope that I had stopped pontificating online are now dashed, but oh well.

Candidly, most of the time I write on this site when something that's happening pisses me off. And while there are still plenty of things happening that piss me off, I just got tired of being pissed. It's bad for your health and your attitude. All things considered, I'm happier when I'm not pissed, and I want to be happy as much as possible in this unhappy world. But in the last day or so, my "pissed off meter" went into the red zone again when I read about two items.

The first was when I discovered that the evil imbecile who decided to enlist his equally evil kid brother in a scheme to kill people at the Boston Marathon was on welfare.

The second was this morning when I read that the somewhat less evil imbeciles in the US Congress are secretly working behind the scenes to come up with a "Bi-partisan" agreement on how to exempt themselves and their employees from the Obamacare nightmare that is descending on the rest of us.

There is much to be said about both items but this post is starting to to violate my "KISS" (keep it short, stupid) rule, so I promise to work on these two "pissers" tonight. If I can put two readable essays together soon I'll publish them tomorrow or the next day so you can give them all the attention they don't deserve.

Let's Party Like It's 2006

Editors note: The following post is republished here with the express permission of the author, Dan Mitchell, who blogs at the excellent site "International Liberty" and who is featured here on a regular basis. People who do not follow his blog on a regular basis are missing out.

Apparently Learning Nothing from the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac Disaster, the Obama Administration Wants to Subsidize Banks to Make More Dodgy Loans

“Let’s party like it’s 2006!”

 by Dan Mitchell

Let’s assume you didn’t understand how a garbage disposal worked and, for whatever reason, you decided to stick your arm in one and turn it on. You would do some serious injury to your hand.

The rest of us would wonder what motivated you to stick your arm down the drain in the first place, but we would feel sympathy because you didn’t realize bad things would happen. But if you then told us that you were planning to do the same thing tomorrow, we would think you were crazy. Didn’t you learn anything, we would ask?

Seems like a preposterous scenario, but something very similar is now happening in Washington. The Obama Administration is proposing to once again put the economy at risk by subsidizing banks to give mortgages to people with poor credit.

Even though we’re still dealing with the economic and fiscal damage caused by the last episode of government housing subsidies!

Here are some of the unbelievable details from a report in the Washington Post.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit…officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default. Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Brings to mind the famous saying from George Santayana that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

But what’s especially amazing – and distressing – about this latest scheme is that “the past” was only a couple of years ago. Or, to recall my odd analogy, one of our hands is still mangled and bleeding and we’re thinking about putting our other hand in the disposal.

Some people understand this is a nutty idea.

…critics say encouraging banks to lend as broadly as the administration hopes will sow the seeds of another housing disaster and endanger taxpayer dollars. “If that were to come to pass, that would open the floodgates to highly excessive risk and would send us right back on the same path we were just trying to recover from,” said Ed Pinto, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

What’s also discouraging is that the government already is deeply involved in the housing market – even though this is an area where there is no legitimate role for the federal intervention.

Deciding which borrowers get loans might seem like something that should be left up to the private market. But since the financial crisis in 2008, the government has shaped most of the housing market, insuring between 80 percent and 90 percent of all new loans, according to the industry publication Inside Mortgage Finance. It has done so primarily through the Federal Housing Administration, which is part of the executive branch, and taxpayer-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, run by an independent regulator.

So I guess the goal is to have taxpayers on the hook for 100 percent of loans. “Don’t worry, it’s not our money”
Anybody want to guess whether this will end well?

By the way, this is bad policy even if we somehow avoid a new bubble and big taxpayer losses. Even in a”best case” scenario, the federal government will be distorting the allocation of capital by discouraging business investment and subsidizing residential real estate.

And as shown in this powerful chart, that will have adverse consequences for wages and living standards.
The part of the article that most nauseated me was a quote from the head bureaucrat at the Federal Housing Administration.

“My view is that there are lots of creditworthy borrowers that are below 720 or 700 — all the way down the credit-score spectrum,” Galante said. “It’s important you look at the totality of that borrower’s ability to pay.”

Gee, isn’t that nice that Ms. Galante thinks there are lots of borrowers with good “totality” measures? But here’s an interesting concept. Why doesn’t she put her money at risk instead of making me the involuntary guarantor on these dodgy loans?

I’ve already said on TV that we should dump Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the Potomac River. And I’ve argued that the entire Department of Housing and Urban Development should be razed to the ground. But perhaps this cartoon best shows the consequences of the Obama Administration’s new subsidy scheme.

P.S. We also should get rid of housing preference in the tax code. Our economy should cater to the underlying preferences of consumers, not the electoral interests of politicians.