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Category Archives: Political Commentary
A “Criminal Enterprise”
Is that what TARP is? Looks like it to me. Of course, government can do lots of things that you and I would go to jail for (including the way they keep their books). But this looks even worse, and an actual violation of the law.
It’s easy to guess that Barofsky is looking into the possibility that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson coerced the CEOs of the nine largest banks to accept capital investments from TARP, even though several of them didn’t want the government as a stakeholder. Wells Fargo chairman Richard Kovacevich, for example, says that he was “forced to take the TARP money.” Philip Swagel, who served at the time as assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury, admits that “there is no authority in the United States to force a private institution to accept government capital. This is a hard legal constraint.”
Is that the “public corruption” Barofsky is talking about?
But then again, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the statute that authorizes TARP, doesn’t give the Treasury the power to make direct investments in banks at all. It gives the Treasury the power to buy troubled assets and to write insurance against losses in troubled assets. But there’s not one single solitary word in the act that authorizes the Treasury to buy stock in banks.
And there’s not one single solitary word in the act that authorizes the Treasury to do anything at all for auto companies like General Motors and Chrysler. The act only authorizes helping “financial institutions.” Yet billions of TARP dollars have gone to the two automakers.
I think these people have simply gone mad with power. Acton had it right.
MADDness
Radley Balko has more thoughts on Obama’s disastrous choice for heading the NHTSA.
Looking Ahead
What crimes should the Obama administration be prosecuted for?
[Early afternoon update]
On the other hand, here is some criminal activity on the part of the Bush administration that should be prosecuted — securities fraud by the Secretary of the Treasury.
Schadenfreude
Ted Rall has been laid off. It’s actually a sign of how good the economy has been for the last several years that a talentless hack like him could make a living in it.
Barney Frank
Liar.
Who in the press will call him on it?
[Mid-afternoon update]
Nick Gillespie has more thoughts:
Frank is nothing less than a trickster figure in American politics, especially for us libertarians who believe that economic and civil liberties are conjoined at the hip, the Chang and Eng of what makes this miserable world worth suffering through. As the comment above suggests, Frank is as good as it gets on most lifestyle issues (indeed, he even had Reason’s Radley Balko testify about repealing online gambling bans) and yet he’s a real lummox when it comes to economic freedom. His role in the banking and housing crisis is genuinely godawful. Not only did he strongarm mortgage companies to extend more and more credit to shakier and shakier customers, he did so all while denying anything was amiss at the government-sponsored behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that literally underwrote the mortgage mess.
And Frank’s at his worst again, now pushing The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009, which critics charge would vastly increase the level of complexity in lending and make it more difficult for low-income borrowers and others to get access to credit.
As a commenter notes, being a lummox on economic freedom is a problem of the Dems in general.
Another Disastrous Appointment
Picking the head of MADD for the NHTSA?
The position of NHTSA chief requires an administrator of sound judgment, not a zealot beholden to special interests. Mr. Hurley’s associations and background raise the specter that he could use NHTSA regulations and safety grants to benefit his friends and coerce states into adopting his overbearing pet policies.
And the idiot wants to bring back the double nickel, too.
NASA Administrator Update
Jeff Foust has a good roundup of the critical issues that are becoming more urgent (what to do about Shuttle and Constellation) and the current rumors.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s a lot more from Chris Bergin. This seems like great news, if true:
General Peter Worden, Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center (ARC), will also spearhead a NASA review, which is deemed to have “wide scope” – likely to include shuttle extension – while a main body “Blue Ribbon Panel” will work with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in Washington, possibly overseeing all of the studies.
Jim Muncy was hinting at this a couple weeks ago at Space Access. What I don’t understand is what’s been taking them so long to get this under way. It could have happened back in February, and they’d be done by now.
The Problem With The ACLU
I’ve been pretty disappointed with it for decades, but it seems much worse than I thought. Apparently, a new organization is needed to protect civil liberties (including the Second Amendment, though the NRA has been doing the heavy lifting there, anyway).
Was Janeane Garafolo Right?
Little Miss Attila thinks so (sorta):
Janeane Garofalo is absolutely right: the tea parties are racism straight up. Because if it had been racism on the rocks, PJM would have gotten someone else to do interviews that day, instead of asking Zo to do two jobs. And if it had been racism-and-water, the organizers of the event wouldn’t have imposed upon Alfonzo by asking him to the podium. If it were racism-and-soda, they wouldn’t have recruited Zo to work for PJTV at all, but would have allowed him to continue commenting on events from his living room in the SoCal desert.
But don’t you see, this just proves Janeane’s point, because as all the bien pensant know, Zo (who I had the pleasure to briefly meet at Bill Whittle’s birthday party a couple weeks ago) is obviously a Tom.
Glad I’m not bien pensant.