So I’ve been reading the National Review …
If it’s showing up anyway, I might as well read it.
The National Review makes the Democrat look like Gingrich Fanboys. They absolutely eviscerate Gingrich. It’s pretty hilarious.
Squashed
A blog of politics, law, religion, and the tricky spots where they collide.
une:
A certain someone grabbing a coffee in Ann Arbor. Comet. A former Tragos-haunt.
So there you have it. Obama managed to find one of the best coffee places in a town full of coffee places. (I’m not quite sure how he pulled that off—unless he had an advance team working on where he could get a vacuum brew. The crazy part about this picture is how small Comet Coffee is. The Secret Service guys must literally be stacked just outside the frame.
Today, President Obama Will Travel To Michigan To Announce A Plan Focusing On The Costs Of Higher Education.
Hey Republican National Committee. It’s me again. Because I’ve long bemoaned Tumblr’s failure to harbor a decent crop of conservatives. I have such high hopes … but this last post was a bit discouraging.
Here’s what I gathered from the post.
- College costs are high—and have been climbing for years.
- Republicans want me to blame this on the Obama administration—but don’t feel the need to articulate why I should blame Obama rather than, say, Republican state legislatures who have consistently blocked or reduced funding to higher education, shifting the costs for existing expenses on to already struggling familes.
- The Obama administration is trying to tackle this—but hasn’t really succeeded yet.
- Republicans notice the things I care about—but they would rather see Obama fail to solve problems than see problems solved.
This isn’t exactly a well-thought-out argument. It doesn’t contain alternatives or solutions or even fake solutions.
I’d call this a hatchet piece—but I respect a decent hatchet piece. Hatchets hurt when you hit people with them. This is more of a wet noodle piece. If you go about trying to flay somebody with a wet noodle, they might get moderately irritated. But it’s not a particularly effective mode of attack.
If you’re going to do partisan hackery, I’d advise you to really embrace it. This half-assed wet-noodle stuff is just depressing.
If you *had* to choose one of the (major) remaining Republican candidates as the next President, who would you choose?
Paul? Romney? Santorum? Gingrich? (Assume whomever you choose wins the general.)
And why?
[T]he only way out of … deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP, since the language of victory and defeat seems to be the only thing it understands.
RNC Research: SOTU Just More Words: Wall Street 
Obama said he would not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules or allow financial institutions to make risky bets with customers’ deposits… unless they happen to be your “Wall Street guy” who bundled over $500,000 for your campaign.
Hey Republican National Committee! It’s nice to know that you’re giving the whole Tumblr thing a go—though it doesn’t look like you’re getting much love. I think you may want to work on your brand. Tumblr is full of leftists and libertarians—and if you’re going to reach any of them, you’ll want to make it clear what your selling and why anybody would want to buy it.
You’re on to something with the whole, “Look! Obama’s gotten a lot of support from Wall Street and it sure looks like some of that support has compromised his ability to effectively regulate Wall Street.”
But merely raising questions about whether Obama’s stated desire to regulate Wall Street meshes with the desires of some of his financial backers isn’t enough. The leftists and libertarians do that all the time. The niche is crowded. Set yourself apart. If Obama is a poor choice for those who want to ensure Wall Street plays by the rules, explain why the Republicans are a better option. What safeguards do they support?
When it comes to regulation of financial markets, Obama’s sort of offered us a stale cookie with a bite taken out of it. It wouldn’t be hard to top—so long as you’re in the business of doing something constructive. But “Give us all the cookies!” is not constructive.
I understand that you’re upset that the Republicans aren’t in complete control of the country. But … the country has serious problems—and fiddling gleefully while Rome burns is not patriotic, even if you’re fiddling the National Anthem.
“Ron Paul won’t actually be able to do all the stuff he says he’ll do.”
According to some Paul supporters, this is actually a reason to support Paul. Yeah, some of his idea are out there … but it’s not like he could ever make them reality. So what’s the harm.
The harm is that the President gets to make an awful lot of agency appointments. Who would Paul pick for Secretary of State? Who would he put in charge of the critically important Department of Housing and Urban Development? The Department of Education? He might not be able to kill the programs he hates—but a guy who doesn’t believe competent government is possible could do a lot to make government incompetent.
A 14% tax rate?
I’m not going to ask Mitt Romney to “apologize for his success.” But … I might ask him to act a little sheepish about his remarkably low tax-rate.
Guys like Mitt Romney are the guys who leave dinner early, leave enough cash to cover their tab, but skimp on the tip. It’s legal. But it’s not something to be proud of.
So…
Iowa: Santorum
New Hampshire: Romney
South Carolina: Gingrich
This sort of thing makes me so happy.
“Some people shouldn’t own houses”
This is one of the greatest lies to come out of the foreclosure crisis. It claims not only that under some circumstances homeownership doesn’t make sense,1 but that a certain class of person is somehow unfit for homeownership. Bipartisan efforts to push broader homeownership—and the stabalization of neighborhoods that comes with it—now face bipartisan ridicule.2
The problem is that rental rates—at least in the current climate, are significantly higher than mortgage payments. If you can afford to pay rent every month, you can afford to pay a mortgage on a similarly sized property.3 A rental typically covers the landlord’s costs to pay a mortgage, costs to pay taxes and insurance (likely at a higher rate than homeowners pay), costs for repairs, cost for a property management company, and a bit of extra money for the landlord. A rental payment might be twice the size of a market-rate mortgage payment on the same property. Renters pay more than owners for comparable housing without building home equity or enjoying the sort of stability that creates stable neighborhoods. Renters also aren’t able to enjoy the generous mortgage interest tax subsidy we give to homeowners.
What’s really going on?
When people say that “not everybody should own a house,” either they don’t understand the housing market or they’re suggesting that something other than limited means should keep people from owning houses. Some kinds of people, the imply, are part of a renting class that should pay us noble landowners for the right to peacefully exist. Because feudalism was such a great idea and you can’t have a proper fiefdom without some peasants. Limiting homeownership is simply another way to reduce social mobility.
The problem with the expansion of homeownership wasn’t that some people don’t have what it takes to be homeowners. They did. The problem was that traditional methods of discrimination were replaced by new forms of exploitation. Borrowers in certain neighborhoods were steered toward subprime loans. Appraisals were deliberately inflated. Loans with predatory terms were set up and designed to fail. None of that had to happen. And now, as that house of cards is collapsing, we’re losing decades of progress in integrating and stabilizing neighborhoods.
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Of course renting makes sense in some circumstances. You might be better off renting if you don’t expect to live somewhere long, don’t want to maintain a property, or live in a broken market where the only affordable properties are rentals. The goal of increasing home ownership isn’t about forcing homeownership on people—it is simply about lowering barriers that frequently prevent people who can afford homes to buy them. ↩
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To give credit where it’s due, the Bush administration pushed homeownership as a solution to a variety of problems. While the decision to give an implicit subsidy to some folks who cared a lot more about profit than homeownership had some horrible consequences, the goal remains both a worthy and attainable goal. ↩
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Some rental payments are, of course, subsidized. In those cases, if we can afford to subsidize rent each month, we can afford to pay a mortgage each month. ↩
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