FreedomTalks

It seems as though Senators Dodd and Conrad aren’t the only politicians that take advantage of their status to secure sweetheart mortgages.

The Washington Post reports that Senator Barack Obama got a nice deal, likely unavailable to your average Joe, from Northern Trust.

Driving the recent debate is concern that public officials, knowingly or unknowingly, may receive special treatment from lenders and that the discounts could constitute gifts that are prohibited by law.

Indeed. Perhaps there is more to this story. Kudos to the Post reporter who penned the article.

Since 1990, Northern Trust employees have donated more than $739,000 to federal campaigns, including $71,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

As Jon Henke and Rob Bluey have pointed out, Alaska porker Rep. Don Young received a “hero of the American Taxpayer” award from Americans for Tax Reform, 60 Plus and other organizations. But as Henke and Bluey point out, Rep. Young is far from a friend of the taxpayers, much less a hero.

From The Next Right’s Henke:

What the hell is wrong with the Right? Don Young…..

* …is responsible for the Bridge To Nowhere earmark

* …shouted “my money, my money!” when he was criticized for the Bridge to Nowhere.

* …is under FBI investigation for potentially taking bribes.

* …is also under investigation for altering an earmark (after the bill had passed the House and Senate) to benefit a campaign contributor.

* …is the politician who said “I’d like to be a little oinker, myself”.

* …is the politician who said of the highway bill, “It’s not a good way to legislate, although I got a lot of stuff in it … I mean I stuffed it like a turkey.”

* …is the politician who said he is “not [frustrated in] the minority because I took care of the minority when I was in the majority; they are taking care of me now.”

Being from Texas, it made me happy to see that Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) was among the 16 heroes who stood up to oppose a portion of the Dodd/Frank Mortgage Bailout bill that was before the Senate today. Senator Cornyn and the 15 other Senators who voted “No” should be commended for their commitment to limited and responsible government. They are:

Unfortunately, the other Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison, chose to make a political decision and ended up on the wrong side of this issue. Hopefully, she and a number of the other Senators who voted with her will do the right thing and oppose the remainder of the bailout.

I am probably less sanguine about gun ownership than most folks on the right, but I’m firmly convinced that today’s Supreme Court ruling, which strikes down DC’s long-standing ban on handgun ownership, is the correct one.  Cato’s done some very good work on this, and they’ve got more information at their place.

CQ on the trouble with earmark reform:

A second GOP aide suggested it may have more to do with some discomfort in the conference over changes being proposed.

“Earmark reform has not been popular with either party,” the aide said.

In other news, reports indicate middle school students  overwhelmingly oppose doing homework.

Of course politicians have been reluctant to take serious steps towards doing away with the political favor racket.  But politicians respond to incentives just like everyone else: the trick is to make earmarks enough of a liability that playing the game the old way just isn’t an option anymore.

From the New York Times piece today on the mortgage bailout:

Skeptics say the plan is a handout for irresponsible borrowers and lenders, who would be able to get rid of their worst-performing mortgages, putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in risky loans.

But in a contested election year, with Americans losing billions of dollars in home equity, officials in both parties seem reluctant to be seen as sitting on their hands.

And then there’s this:

“There’s a great desire to act,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the bill’s main author in the House.

This, I think, cuts to the core of the political problem with the bill: So much of it is spurred by the desire to appear to be doing something rather than the desire to do something that’s actually sensible.  So the crafters of the legislation seem to have taken some, ah, helpful suggestions from Bank of America (see this document posting and report) and then decided, “Hey, this will make us look like we’re doing something!”

Megan McArdle likes to refer to Bryan Caplan’s blog-famous explanation of the logic behind this kind of thing like this:

1. Something must be done
2. This is something
3. Therefore, this must be done

It’s the “look busy” approach to work; when your boss shows up near your cubicle, you’d better pull up a spreadsheet and start filling in those fields. In this case, the public showed up and a bunch of legislators wanted to look busy.

Unfortunately, doing something doesn’t always mean doing something effective.

Rich Lowry, today:

As an indirect tax on carbon, cap-and-trade would increase energy prices when people are already straining under $4-a-gallon gas. Even a political naif — which McConnell assuredly is not — would realize the benefit of hanging the proposal around its supporters’ necks. Lately, we’ve seen the tech and housing bubbles burst, and now — at least as an urgent political issue — the global-warming bubble is getting pricked.

Is the tide turning in the global warming debate?  Jim Manzi points out a series of Andrew Sullivan posts and suggests that maybe it is.  Here’s the takeaway:

Given current projections, the costs of restricting emissions just can’t be justified based on the benefits that it is projected to provide.

As far as I can see, proponents of emissions reductions will respond with four arguments: (1) inflate the analyzed costs of global warming by claiming the science actually now says things will be even worse than we previously thought, (2) inflate the analyzed costs of global warming by embedding indefensible discount rate assumptions in the black box of econometric calculations used by economists to conduct the cost-benefit analysis, (3) deflate the analyzed costs of emissions mitigation by claiming a free lunch – that there is a cost-free or low-cost way to radically reduce emissions, and/or (4) turn this into a moral crusade asserting that we have a moral duty to the poor of the world because of our past sins of emission. I have laid out responses to each of these objections: 1, 2, 3 and 4. When considered carefully, emissions mitigation proponents have no persuasive arguments.

I’m not entirely convinced that the debate is shifting outside of an influential but still small subset of the blogosphere.  But the potential for a shift is clearly there, and the politics of the recent debate over Lieberman-Warner do suggest a future in which cap-and-trade just isn’t on the table.

The RSC pushes an earmark moratorium, and, not surprisingly, there’s pushback.  CongressDaily has the goods:

The idea has drawn opposition from within the Republican Conference and from K Street.

“I just don’t think it is helpful right now,” said one top GOP fundraiser. “People that are ordinary Republicans are looking at this discussion of earmarks and saying ‘enough already.’ K Street is pissed off about this earmark discussion.”

What a perfect illustration of all that’s wrong with earmark politics.  K Street is unhappy? Of course it’s unhappy! That’s the whole point — to stop the favor-trading and the legislative dealmaking.  If anything, this shows that something’s going right.

It’s not just Countrywide that would benefit from the Dodd bailout.  Its suitor, Bank of America, would also love to see the bill pass.  As Tim Carney reports in the Examiner, the bill is referred to on Capitol Hill as “the Bank of America bill on steroids.”  Carney’s got the whole story behind BoA’s love for the bill in his column today.

You just saved $75,000 through Countrywide’s VIP lending program!