Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, November 2, 2011


One of my favorite country songs!
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11 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://news.yahoo.com/cannes-sheds-black-tie-image-g20-riot-gear-071529081.html

The glamorous and easy-going Riviera resort of Cannes turns into a fortified camp this week as French police prepare for the arrival of world leaders for a G20 summit...

Thousands of extra police have been deployed along the Mediterranean coast to stop protestors traveling the 19 miles down from Nice...

Police have sealed off Cannes' mythical waterfront drag, set up a second security perimeter around the old town and told 'Cannois' locals aged over 12 they must wear identity badges to move around their own city during the Nov 3-4 summit.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

Hotels usually filled with movie professionals and Hollywood A-listers, such as the Carlton and the Martinez, are behind a police cordon in "Zone 1" -- the inner sanctum of the G20 - and filled exclusively with G20 "professionals" for the week.

* G20 PROFESSIONALS... UH-HUH...

Boating is forbidden throughout the summit in Cannes harbor, where some of the world's largest yachts dock during the festival, and schools in the security zone stay closed for an extra four days after All Saints holidays this week. Most restaurants in the warren of streets behind the Croisette will be closed for lack of customers, as only badged professionals are allowed near.

* WAY TO STIMULATE THE LOCAL ECONOMY! (*SNORT*) (*SNICKER*)

For those inside the G20 world, hotels can provide a list of open restaurants.

(*MORE SARCASTIC APPLAUSE*)

* FOLKS... SERIOUSLY... WE'RE A FEW YEARS BEHIND EUROPE - AT BEST. FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS FOR MAJOR "SOCIAL UNREST" IN OUR LIFETIME.

November 2, 2011 at 9:35 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-11-01/Congress-free-travel/51030508/1

Four years after Congress imposed restrictions on travel funded by outside groups, federal lawmakers are frequent fliers again, taking 415 privately funded trips between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 - a nearly 75% jump in the number of trips they took during the same period in 2010, records show.

Big-ticket items include travel by more than 80 lawmakers to Israel, much of it courtesy of the American Israel Education Foundation, a charity affiliated with the influential pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The average cost: $18,120.

* MY CONGRESSWOMAN, DR. NAN HAYWORTH (R-NY-19) WAS ONE OF THOSE FREELOADERS. I'M NOT SURE HOW MANY STAFFERS - IF ANY - SHE BROUGHT WITH HER OR WHETHER SHE BROUGHT HER HUSBAND AND/OR ONE OR BOTH OF HER CHILDREN.

In August, four lawmakers took a 10-day excursion to South Africa and Botswana, funded by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, a charitable group with ties to several environmental groups.

* NOT SURE WHY THESE FOUR LAWMAKERS AREN'T BEING NAMED... (*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)

Accommodations included two nights at South Africa's Shamwari Game Reserve, described on its website as the "pinnacle of private game reserves," with the chance to view elephants, lions and other wildlife during game drives through its nearly 61,800-acre property. The travel to southern Africa gave Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) the chance to learn more about the economic, political and health conditions of the countries, along with conservation programs to help "future decision making on Capitol Hill," Crenshaw's spokeswoman, Barbara Riley, said in a statement.

(*SNORT*)

Rep. John Carter, (R-TX) "is interested in conservation" and the trip allowed him to see "actual efforts in the field" to protect wildlife and natural resources, his spokesman John Stone said.

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

Carter, Crenshaw and a third lawmaker, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) were accompanied by their wives on the southern Africa trip.

(Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., also joined the trip, but did not travel with a relative, congressional records show.)

(Congressional rules allow other relatives to travel with lawmakers. Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., for instance, was joined by his brother, William, during a August trips to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo funded by the global anti-poverty group CARE.)

* FOLKS... IT'S JUST A HUGE FRIGG'N MONEY LAUNDERING/BRIBERY SCHEME!

Ethics rules approved four years ago bar lawmakers from taking trips longer than two nights at the expense of corporations, unions and others that employ lobbyists. ... However, the House and Senate imposed few limits on travel funded by non-profits, which now are funding dozens of lawmaker trips each month.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... I ASK... IF VIOLENCE ISN'T THE ANSWER... WHAT IS?

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) has the biggest travel tab so far this year for any lawmaker, more than $47,000, according to MoneyLine's data. It includes three trips sponsored by the non-profit Aspen Institute to San Juan, Puerto Rico; Barcelona, Spain; and Banff, Canada. Topics included energy-security issues and "policy challenges in the Muslim world."

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* WE NEED A TOM CLANCY/VINCE FLYNN SCENARIO, FOLKS. IT'S THAT SIMPLE.

November 2, 2011 at 9:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577012013740860768.html

* THE OP-ED's TITLE: "THE BUSH-OBAMA Rx SHORTAGE"

This week President Obama finally confronted a major U.S. health-care disgrace - the growing shortages of lifesaving drugs, especially anticancer therapies.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

Shortages have more than tripled since 2005, according to the University of Utah's Drug Information Service, and by the end of the year more than 300 products are likely to be back-ordered, in short supply or totally unavailable.

* THIS IS AMERICA... IN THE AGE OF OBAMA.

Some are anesthetics and pain therapies, others emergency room "crash cart" drugs. But most - about 70% in 2010 - belong to the class of drugs known as "sterile injectables" that are mainstays of the chemotherapy arsenal, such as paclitaxel or cytarabine. The result is that more and more patients are receiving substandard care - relying on less effective or more expensive substitutes or else forced to postpone treatment.

In oncology, delays of weeks or even days can be fatal.

(*SIGH*)

* AGAIN, FOLKS... AMERICA... YEAR THREE OF THE AGE OF OBAMA.

* To be continued...

November 2, 2011 at 10:14 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Most sterile injectables have been off-patent for decades, but unlike other cheap generic drugs with low profit margins, production is complex and requires special facilities. Nonetheless, George W. Bush and the Republican majority decided that Medicare was "overpaying" for these cancer drugs and included a 6% cap on price increases every six months in the 2003 prescription drug bill. These new price controls (which apply to the providers that purchase the drugs) took effect in 2005, when the shortages began.

* I DO HAVE TO QUESTION WHY PRICE INCREASES OF 12% A YEAR... LET ALONE PRICE INCREASES OF OVER 12% A YEAR... WOULD BE "NECESSARY" OR EVEN SEEN AS "REASONABLE."

* IN OTHER WORDS, YEAH... I GET THAT PRICE CONTROLS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE IN THE LONG TERM... BUT WHY SUCH HUGE PRICE INCREASES...???

In a rational market, sterile injectable prices would now be rising to encourage more supply, since the demand for cancer drugs is inelastic. The old reimbursement system, called "buy and bill," was imperfect, but at least it allowed prices to float and wasn't producing the scarcity that central planning always does. The sterile injectables that are in short supply currently sell for $37.88 a dose on average, and modest price increases could make the market economic.

* I'D BE CURIOUS TO KNOW WHAT SORT OF PROFIT MARGIN ONE ENJOYS (AGAIN... WE'RE TALKING "OFF-PATENT" DRUGS) AT THE $37.88 PRICE POINT.

(*SHRUG*)

* I ALSO WONDER IF ANY OF THESE FOOLS "REGULATING" THE SYSTEM HAVE EVER CONSIDERED THAT IT IS THE REVOCATION OF PATENT PROTECTION THAT SETS THE STAGE FOR ALL OF THIS NONSENSE. IF DRUG ORIGINATORS COULD COUNT ON SAY 50 YEARS OF STEADY AND PREDICTABLE INCOME STREAM THEY COULD AFFORD TO SELL THEIR DRUGS MORE CHEAPLY SINCE THEIR PROFITS WOULD BE MADE OVER THE LONG HAUL AND NOT THE SHORT HAUL.

* IN ANY CASE... (*SIGH*)... DEALING WITH THE PRESENT DYSFUNCTIONAL SYSTEM AS IT IS... (*SIGH*) (READ ON...)

The problem is compounded because Food and Drug Administration rules cause pointless delays. It takes as long as two and a half years to receive FDA manufacturing approval for a generic, so other drug makers can't ramp up production if a company cancels a product line due to these disincentives or even if the fragile supply chain for sterile injectables is contaminated and manufacture is delayed.

Mr. Obama's executive order will do little if any good since it doesn't address or even mention this underlying distortion that Medicare has created. Instead, it merely expands the FDA reporting requirements about production interruptions or terminations. This is supposed to be an early warning system, but the scandal is that the availability of basic medicines could be allowed to become an emergency.

(*NOD*)

The order also tells the Justice Department to crack down on the "grey markets" that have sprung up to deliver supplies to doctors and hospitals, albeit with the inevitable markups. So rather than allow price signals to govern supply and demand, Mr. Obama wants to suppress them further.

(*HEADACHE*)

The larger danger apart from the risks to the patients forced to receive compromised treatment is to the future of cancer progress. The common chemotherapy drugs are critical in clinical trials as the standard regimen or in combination with new options, and the Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups reports that as many as half of all ongoing trials require the drugs that are vanishing. This is a delay that really is killing people.

* FOLKS... DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE JUST READ? RE-READ THAT LAST PARAGRAPH. GOD HELP US.

November 2, 2011 at 10:15 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577011721539943012.html

In Greece and elsewhere in the EU, the banks support the government by purchasing its bonds, and the government guarantees the banks.

* AND JUST TO MAKE THIS CLEAR, IN THE AMERICA OF BUSHBAMA... THE SCAM IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME.

It is a Ponzi scheme not even Bernie Madoff could have concocted.

* WELL... UNLESS HE WAS THE FED CHAIRMAN OR PERHAPS U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY...

(*SNICKER*)

The banks can no longer afford to fund budget deficits, yet they cannot afford to see governments default.

Governments cannot make good on their guarantees of the banks.

* EXCEPT... (*DRUM ROLL*)... BY PRINTING MONEY! (IT'S CALLED MONETIZING DEBT.)

Details differ by country. In Ireland, problems began with an overheated property sector that brought down the banks. The economy went into depression, which threw the government's budget into deficit. Further aggravating the deficit was the government's decision to guarantee bank deposits, converting private, financial-sector debt into public-sector debt.

(The details differ from Greece, but the linkage between the government and the banks is the common factor.)

France's growth is weak to nonexistent. Germany's economy has performed well since the recession, but concerns are growing regarding its banks' exposure to greater EU risk. And U.S. banks and financial institutions are exposed to EU banks through funding operations, issuance of credit default swaps and unknown exposure in derivatives markets.

* BUY GUNS. BUY AMMO. LEARN HOW TO CARE FOR AND SHOOT YOUR GUNS... LEARN HOW TO MAKE RELOADS. SOONER OR LATER THE HOUSE OF CARDS HAS TO COLLAPSE.

The Federal Reserve has engaged in currency swaps with the European Central Bank to support the dollar needs of EU banks. The ECB deposits euros (or euro-denominated assets) with the Fed and receives dollars in return. It promises to repay dollars plus interest. The Fed maintains they cannot lose money because the ECB promises to repay the swaps in dollars. And yet, with the world awash in greenbacks, it is unclear why the Fed and the ECB even needed to engage in these transactions - except that it suggests funding problems at some EU banks.

(*SMIRK*)

And if neither EU banks nor the ECB can secure enough needed dollars in global markets, there is a serious counterparty risk to the Fed. The ECB can print euros but not dollars. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, was correct to raise concerns about the Fed's policy last week. Losses on the Fed's balance sheet hit the U.S taxpayer, not EU citizens.

* HERE... BOTTOM LINE... READ ON:

The sad fact is that there is not enough money in the EU to pay off the public debts incurred by the governments.

* AND "GROWING" THEIR WAY OUT OF THE ECONOMIC MESS THEY'RE IN SEEMS UNLIKELY... AN IMPOSSIBLE FANTASY IN FACT WHEN YOU EXAMINE THE DEMOGRAPHICS INVOLVED.

(*SHRUG*)

Greece is the first of other sovereign defaults to come. With last week's bailout, the EU leaders might have bought time, perhaps a year. But at some point, the ECB will cave and monetize the debt, leading to euro-zone inflation.

Americans must not be smug about the suffering of Europeans - our financial system is thoroughly integrated with theirs. Moreover, the International Monetary Fund will most likely be involved in the event of future bailouts and will likely need large funds from its members, which ultimately means the [America] taxpayers.

And, of course, the U.S. has its own large and growing public debt burden. We have not gone as far down the road to entitlements, but we are catching up.

If you want to know how the debt crisis will play out here, watch the downward spiral in the EU.

November 2, 2011 at 10:33 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/11/01/some-15-of-u-s-uses-food-stamps/?mod=wsj_share_twitter

Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million.

* INSANITY. OBAMA IS DELIBERATELY CREATING A WELFARE STATE.

Food stamp rolls have risen 8.1% in the past year...

(*PURSED LIPS*)

* FOLKS... THIS IS DELIBERATE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION POLICY TO ENTRAP MORE AND MORE AMERICANS INTO THE WEB OF GOVERNMENT DEPENDENCY.

Mississippi reported the largest share of its population relying on food stamps, more than 21%. One in five residents in New Mexico, Tennessee, Oregon and Louisiana also were food stamp recipients.

* AND YET WE DON'T HEAR REPUBLICANS CALLING FOR CULLING THE ROLLS.

* FOLKS... CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW MUCH WASTE AND FRAUD IS CONNECTED TO THIS PROGRAM? CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW MANY CHILDREN OF ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE RECEIVING "BENEFITS" (THUS BENEFITING FROM THEIR PARENTS BREAKING THE LAW) WHICH GO TO FEEDING NOT JUST THEM, BUT THEIR ILLEGAL ALIEN PARENTS?

* ENOUGH, FOLKS! WE SIMPLY CAN'T AFFORD TO BEAR THIS BURDEN! THE ROLLS MUST BE CULLED! PAYMENTS MUST BE LESSENED! COSTS MUST BE CONTROLLED!

November 2, 2011 at 1:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/11/02/occupy-oaklands-dangerous-strike-follies-plus-capitalism-bashing-cop-hating-rapper-boots-riley-is-back/

* FOLLOW THE LINK TO SEE THE POSTERS. UNFRIGG'NBELIEVABLE!

The next stage of the Aimless "Occupation" of America is upon us:

Today, rabble-rousers in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk off jobs they don’t have and encourage everyone else around the country to abandon work to protest high unemployment.

(*CHUCKLE*)

The "Occupiers" are calling their organized day of inaction a “Mass Day of Action.”

* OK, FOLKS... READ ON - HERE'S WHERE THINGS GET SERIOUS:

The Carpenters Local 713, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and the Industrial Workers of the World have all endorsed the “general strike.”

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Longshoremen and their union agitators are rooting for the shutdown of the Port of Oakland.

Teachers’ unions will push students and educators to play hooky. Their posters urge: “No Work. No School. Occupy Everywhere.”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit, and a 15% unemployment rate (nearly 50% for Oakland’s youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what’s left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

* To be continued...

November 2, 2011 at 5:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Instead of unequivocally condemning efforts to paralyze downtown commerce, Oakland city officials have all expressed sympathy for the protesters.

* THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM. (INTO THE GROUND!)

City leaders...have informed public employees they can use vacation or other paid time to ditch their offices and raise their fists in solidarity with the Occupiers.

Instead of targeting local bank branch managers and private-sector entrepreneurs, the protesters should be camping out at government offices asking where all the tens of millions in federal Obama stimulus funding for Oakland went over the past two years - including $40 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly $30 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $26 million from the Department of Justice, $24 million from the Transportation Department, $15 million from the Department of Education, and $5.3 million from the Environmental Protection Agency. One local analysis found last year that the Oakland Housing Authority squandered nearly $11 million in federal project renovation and clean-up stimulus grants to create a measly 10.7 jobs.

* FOLKS... YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!

It would all be an amusing object lesson on the impotence of the welfare state, if not for the looming shadow of violence that hangs like stubborn Bay Area fog over the movement.

In 2003, a like-minded mob of police-provoking anarchists, anti-war organizers, and progressive activists descended on the Port of Oakland to coordinate a “Day of Action.” They hurled concrete, wood, and iron bolts at cops while attempting to block military shipments... Fast-forward eight years. This week’s “Day of Action” is spearheaded by the likes of Oakland rapper Boots Riley, a militant, self-declared “communist” who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO” (“Toss a dollar in the river and when he jump in/If you find he can swim, put lead boots on him and do it again”) and “Lazy Muthaf**kas” (“You ain’t never learned to drive or tie your shoe/I got my ear to the street and my eye on you/… You’re a lazy ********** ! Lazy **********!).

After the 9/11 attacks, I reported on Riley’s appalling album cover depicting him partying in front of a doctored image of the World Trade Center being blown up.

* AGAIN... FOLLOW THE LINK PROVIDED AND YOU CAN SEE FOR YOURSELVES.

Like fellow Occupier, 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and Oakland community organizer Van Jones, Boots Riley has long stoked anti-police grievances. In “Pork and Beef,” he rapped: “If you got beef with c-o-p’s/Throw a Molotov at the p-i-g’s.”

Add to this toxic mix the thugs of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The planned march on Oakland’s port is being billed as an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT.

In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions.

The unapologetic local union president vowed: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Mark those words.

November 2, 2011 at 5:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.opoa.org/uncategorized/an-open-letter-to-the-citizens-of-oakland-from-the-oakland-police-officers%E2%80%99-association/

An Open Letter to the Citizens of Oakland from the Oakland Police Officers’ Association

November 1, 2011 –

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.

Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.

That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?

It is all very confusing to us.

Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.

The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.

All of these mixed messages are confusing.

We love Oakland and just want to do our jobs to protect Oakland residents. We respectfully ask the citizens of Oakland to join us in demanding that our City officials, including Mayor Quan, make sound decisions and take responsibility for these decisions. Oakland is struggling – we need real leaders NOW who will step up and lead – not send mixed messages. Thank you for listening.

November 2, 2011 at 5:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/281889/gop-wastes-obamacare-opportunity-michael-tanner

Insurance premiums are rising.

President Obama once promised that the health-care bill would save each of us as much as $2,500 annually on our premiums but a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows family premiums increasing by a whopping 9% this year, three times more than the previous year’s increase. The average family policy now costs more than $15,000 per year.

Not only has ObamaCare failed to slow premium growth, but at least two percentage points of that increase is directly attributable to the health-care law’s provisions.

Consumers have fewer choices.

ObamaCare is driving insurance companies out of the market, meaning there will be less competition and fewer choices. Just last month, two health-insurance companies announced that they were leaving Florida’s individual-insurance market because of provisions in the law, most notably the medical-loss-ratio requirement that insurers must spend at least 80% of premiums on medical care or give customers rebates. And in Iowa, Des Moines–based American Enterprise Group announced last week that it will also pull out of the individual major-medical-insurance market, making it the 13th company to pull out of some portion of Iowa’s health-insurance business since June 2010.

* THEN THERE'S... (READ ON...)

More debt, fewer taxpayers.

A new study from the CBO concluded that the subsidies in the bill will add $1.36 trillion to the national debt over the first seven years after the bill is fully implemented.

* BUT, OH... THERE'S MORE!

At a time when 47% of Americans already pay no income tax, the bill’s tax credits will remove as many as 8.1 million more Americans from the tax rolls.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

And how can we forget that the administration itself had to announce it was pulling the plug on the CLASS Act, the bill’s Ponzi-like long-term-care program? At the same time, however, the administration came out against any effort to actually repeal the program that they believe is actuarially unsound.

(*HEADACHE*)

Yet Republicans have seemed strangely quiet about the issue of late. So much so, in fact, that the Washington Times was led to wonder if Republicans have “given up” on repeal.

There certainly does not appear to be much evidence that Republicans are still making repeal a top priority. The House hasn’t taken a vote on ObamaCare since trying to change the bill’s graduate-medical-education funding back in May. There isn’t even an all-out effort to get behind a repeal of the CLASS Act, despite Democratic defections on the issue.

Republican presidential candidates have relatively little to say as well. This seems especially odd, given that any Republican not named Mitt Romney should be hammering on the issue almost daily. But lately there seems to be more attention paid to the nationality of Romney’s gardener than to his continued defense of RomneyCare.

This is one of those times when good policy makes good politics. But Republicans seem content to blow this golden opportunity.

November 2, 2011 at 5:47 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/281821/will-house-republicans-break-their-pledge-christopher-papagianis

Soon, we may know if House Republicans are planning to break their pledge to start paring back the government’s control of the housing market.

During the 2010 elections, House Republicans published their “Pledge to America.” With regards to housing policy, [they] further clarified what they committed to do on housing: “Republicans will deliver by ending taxpayer support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that triggered the financial crisis.”

* CUT AND DRY.

Since this pledge was drafted, taxpayers have actually sent $169 billion to Fannie and Freddie to keep them solvent.

Today, the government - principally through Fannie, Freddie, and FHA - takes responsibility for 97% of all new mortgages originated.

* SO... WHERE'S THE "PARING BACK?"

As of October 1 of this year, these three government agencies are no longer allowed to guarantee loans with balances in excess of $625,000.

(As set most recently by the Obama stimulus in 2009, the ceiling on loans that would qualify for taxpayer support was $729,000, but the elevated level was always set to expire at the end of September.)

* $625,000 IS LESS THAN $729,000 - A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION... A STEP TOWARDS THE REPUBLICANS KEEPING THEIR PLEDGE.

* AH... BUT THERE'S A WRINKLE IN THIS UNRAVELING TALE OF REPUBLICAN "HEROISM" - READ ON...

The [GOP-controlled] House is considering a new law that would keep Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA as the dominant providers of mortgage credit in this country. This would be accomplished through the appropriations process - specifically, negotiations on the minibus that covers housing programs.)

The specific policy change has to do with the loan amount, or ceiling, that these three entities are allowed to insure, which is the same thing in this case as a full taxpayer-provided guarantee.

So [in short], what the House is contemplating now is going back to the $729,000 level!

The importance of this decision in the House can’t really be overstated. If House members conclude that the loan limits should go back to the $729,000 level, they are in effect voting for the Obama ’09 stimulus and undermining their pledge to Americans at the same time.

Put simply, if House Republicans do not trust the private market to set the terms and conditions on mortgage loans for high-income households, how can anybody reasonably believe that they will take subsequent steps - next year, or the year after even - to shrink, if not fully wind-down, taxpayer support for Fannie and Freddie?

* FOLKS... IF BOEHNER BETRAYS US ON THIS ONE... IT'S OVER.

November 2, 2011 at 6:11 PM

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