The current economic crisis that is dominating the news is, of course, directly related to the issues of housing, particularly where it concerns housing prices (which have been plummeting) and foreclosures (which have been on the rise.) Many of the Townhall columns dealing with the crisis have been covering the Government’s promotion of Affirmative Action in home loans; that is: coercing banks, under penalty of government regulations, fines, stalling mergers, etc., to loan money to people who would not normally qualify for those loans, based on race. In other words, blacks and Latinos who make $30,000 a year are supposed to be approved for $300,000 home loans (as was the case in the Washington, DC area) so as to increase minority homeownership. The problem is that it doesn’t matter whether you are black, white, or green, someone making $30 K a year can’t afford a $300K house.

Banks, being businesses, are in the business of making money. They want to have more income than expenditures. That’s the whole point. A bank’s income is primarily through the interest rates on various and sundry credit products, whether loans for capital purchases (homes, automobiles, education, etc), or on revolving debt (credit cards, lines of credit, etc.). To make money, a bank has to get back an amount of money greater than the expenses it took to get the money back. Expenses include the actual amount of the loan, the salaries of the people who process the loan, and the material and administrative costs of administering the loan (payment books, invoices, credit checks, appraisals, etc.). The interest rate the bank sets for the loan drives how much the loan will profit the bank. If someone has a good credit history, sufficient income from a steady source, and sufficiently little other debt that they will be able to make the payments consistently and on time, they will get a lower rate because they are a lower risk to default. The more likely you are to default, the higher the interest rate, because the bank (a) wants to discourage bad loans, and (b) wants to get the most money out of the loan before the borrower defaults. Since excessive interest rates preclude some borrowers from borrowing, banks make loans with unusual terms like Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM) and “interest only” which usually stay at a low payment for a few years and after a fixed term, the payments increase, often dramatically.

In a market economy, knowledgeable consumers will tend to avoid the ARMs and Interest Only loans because of the high chance of a significant increase later in the loan. They who take those loans look to the short term and believe that they can afford the loan over the next few years and be able to sell the house for a profit before the ARM adjusts or the Interest Only term expires. Banks will make those loans to risky borrowers based on the same principle: if the borrower defaults, the bank can make a profit when housing prices go up, which is far more frequent than them going down.

If the banks are “encouraged” by the Government to make more loans to riskier borrowers, they artificially increase the demand for housing. If more people are approved for home loans than the market would normally see, more people are going to demand homes. If the supply of homes in a certain price range (or of a certain style, or in a certain neighborhood, whatever criteria are used in picking a home) remains constant, the price will rise. Add to that the societal increase in short-term investing (day trading, house flipping, etc) and that adds more demand pressure to the already saturated market, increasing prices even more. As this demand comes from people who, under normal market conditions, would not demand homes for purchase, but are encouraged to do so because of a government policy, the increase in demand is artificial. Artificial increases in demand beget artificially high increases in price.

Because the price of housing increased dramatically in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the demand eventually began to slack off, so the increases slowed down in 2005 and 2006. Then people began to default on loans that they couldn’t afford (particularly as the “sub-prime” mortgages (ARMs starting with an interest rate below the “Prime” rate set by the Federal Reserve) hit the adjustment year). As the defaults and foreclosures escalated, the supply of housing began to increase. As the supply increased, and the demand began to decrease, the price dropped. Banks couldn’t sell the houses for enough to cover the amount loaned out, and many of the loans hadn’t been kept out long enough to be profitable. (A foreclosure after 2 years is really bad for the bank, particularly if the value of the house drops.)

The number of risky (read: bad) loans that banks were encouraged (read: forced) to take had a number of artificially bad effects on the housing market, first by making houses too expensive for people getting the bad mortgages to afford even with the favorable early terms, then by causing a dramatic drop in demand (and, thus, price) when the prices got too high, and finally by creating a chilling effect on the housing market with the uncertainty of where housing prices will go in the future.

Continued government interference in the housing market will inevitably artificially affect the markets. The short-term effects will undoubtedly be good (as they often are) but long-term we will continue to suffer through this uncertainty until the markets are allowed to stabilize on their own.

You do not have the right to a job. You must qualify for whatever job you are attempting to get in order to get it. They who do not qualify for a job may be incapable of doing the job properly, requiring more time, more materials, more training, closer supervision, or another employee to fix problems, all of which cost money. In some jobs safety may be a serious concern, and in others customers may be lost if someone incompetent to do a job is in that job. A company hiring someone who has more qualifications than you is not discrimination, it is good business. If you do not qualify for the job you want, you need to take a job for which you are qualified and work toward qualifying for the job you want. Sometimes this is hard, but it’s the only way.

You do not have the right to a loan or other form of credit. You must qualify for a loan to be lent money. You do not have the right not to pay back the loan once you get it, and the bank has the right to take the thing(s) you purchased with the loan if you do not pay it back. You do not have the right to a low interest rate. Again, you must qualify. If you do not qualify for the credit required to purchase a particular product, you must live without that product until you either earn the money to pay for it outright or you improve your credit score sufficiently to qualify for the loan. They who do not qualify for a loan will find it difficult or impossible to pay it back. The bank stands to lose a great deal of money on bad loans, and enough bad loans will sink a bank. It is not discrimination if you are disapproved for a loan, it is good business.

You do not have the right to post-secondary education. You must qualify for your chosen school. If you do not meet the qualifications for your desired institution, you must make other arrangements, either by attending another school or by finding a job that does not require a college degree. It is not discrimination if your preferred school rejects your application; it is for your own good. If you are admitted into a school for which you do not qualify, you will probably be dismissed for failure to maintain grade standards.

You do not have the right to an abortion. Such a right does not exist in any reasonable philosophy. There is scientific evidence that an unborn human is still a living human being from the moment of conception. The state may deny access to abortion if it so chooses, and such laws existed at the time of the Constitution. The Roe v Wade decision was wrong both morally and legally for a great many reasons, and, as such, should be set aside. 

If you are not a citizen of this country, you do not have the right to live in this country. Neither do you have the right to enter this country at will. For the purposes of this discussion “this country” means whatever country you happen to be standing in, not just the United States. You must follow immigration laws regarding documentation and identification, and the enforcement of those laws is not discrimination, it is good governmental practice.

If you (a) are not a citizen of this country, (b) have committed a felony, or (c) have already voted in a given election, you do not have the right to vote. Only those who are citizens, who have not had their rights taken away because of a crime they committed, and who have not already voted have that right. While the requirement of a toll, tax, or fee may not be imposed on the vote, you do not have the right to vote without having identified yourself as eligible to vote in the jurisdiction in which you are attempting to vote. It is not discrimination to deny you a vote if you are not eligible, it is good governmental practice.

You do not have the right to copulate with anyone with whom you wish. Sex within marriage is good, right, and necessary, particularly for the continuation of the species. Sex outside the bounds of marriage tends to cheapen marriage itself (why buy the cow…?) and turn it into a simple contract that can be voided at any time. Homosexual sex is a perversion of sexuality, and celebrating it opens the door to tolerating or celebrating even more perverse acts (as it already has, c.f. Michael Jackson.)   Though it is unlikely to happen in the modern Western World, the state has the right to restrict sexual acts that are morally depraved.

You do not have the right to marry anyone you please. Marriage is an important institution in any society, as it is the formation of a family group, and families are the foundation of society. As such marriage is defined specifically as a union between two consenting adult human beings who are of the opposite sex and unrelated. Consent is necessary for the marriage to be valid (and for the marriage to last a lifetime). Only adults have the maturity to make the marriage decision, and many still make the wrong one. Adults, also, are better able to support themselves and each other financially and emotionally. Only human beings are able to give their consent, and treating other animals as equal to humans is morally, legally, and philosophically wrong.  Only people of the opposite sex can produce children. As the purpose of marriage is to raise a family, it stands to reason that it should be a pair of people able to conceive children. Two people of the same sex cannot produce their own children. Furthermore, close relatives marrying have a far greater risk of producing children with birth defects than unrelated people. Genetic diversity is important for a species to thrive.

So here it is, the Leftist media has finally started preemptively crying racism as the reason for a potential loss by their Presidential candidate, Barack Hus-Change Obama. We’ve seen a couple of columns on Townhall already that detail the claims, but the bottom line is that there are a whole bunch of Leftists – both black and white – who intend to attribute Barack Obama’s  impending loss to white prejudice against blacks. The reasons for this attribution could be one of two mutually exclusive statements. Either (a) the extreme Left is so utterly unaware of the opposition to their positions by the vast majority of Americans that they cannot believe that anyone would vote against Obama on the issues, despite great evidence to the contrary 4 years ago, that racism can truly be the only explanation in their minds, or (b, and more likely) the extreme Left knows full well how poorly their views are received by the general public, and, so, the only way to get a President who buys into their garbage is to put up a black man and prey on everyone’s fears of being called racist.

To assert that an Obama loss (or probably even a close Obama win) is iron-clad proof of the inherent racism in white America is to gloss over Obama’s out-of-step opinions on abortion, the War in Iraq, taxes, spending, healthcare, affirmative action, patriotism, guns, religion (secularism in particular), racism, immigration, gay privileges, labor unions, the UN, America’s place in the world, the military, military R&D, the accuracy of “Black Liberation Theology,” the effectiveness of Chamberlainian diplomacy vis à vis evil dictatorships, and global warming. It fails to account for his complete lack of executive experience and incredibly thin legislative experience (allegedly he has spent 6 months actually in the Senate debating and voting on laws, the rest of his ½ term has been spent gearing up for this election). It does not consider the numbers of Leftists, both black and white, who will vote for Obama precisely because he is black. It completely ignores the fact that he has associated with criminals (Rezko), thugs (the ACORN bunch), terrorists (Ayers), and seditionists (Rev. Wright) throughout his life, and that he represents what is historically one of the most corrupt political arenas in the United States, Chicago, IL. Race is the least of Obama’s worries, because if he was white he’d have the same problem. In fact it would probably be even worse because he couldn’t put on his messianic persona and capitalize on the cult of personality being built for him precisely because of his race. 

Voting based on race or religion is about the dumbest thing the average Joe can do. If you are voting for or against someone solely because of race and you haven’t taken the time to figure out the issues, don’t vote. Please. The same goes for charisma and party affiliation. For me, there’s plenty about Obama that is sufficiently distasteful that I don’t care whether he’s black, white, yellow, brown, red, purple, blue, green with yellow stripes and pink and purple polka dots, or whatever color he may be. It doesn’t matter if he’s Catholic, Coptic, Quaker, Congregationalist, Church of Christ, Charismatic, Christian Scientist, Scientologist, Sephardic, Sikh, Sunni, Zoroastrian, Snake Handler, Shi’ite, Shinto, Shaolin, Falun Gong, Eastern Orthodox, Western Orthodox, Baptist, Buddhist, Branch Davidian, Bahá’i, Jewish, Jainist, Taoist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Puritan, Pagan, People’s Temple, Muslim, Methodist, Maronite, Mormon, Lutheran, Unitarian, Agnostic, Atheist, Hasidic, Heaven’s Gate, Hindu, Voodoo, Raelian, or Rastafarian. The bottom line is that his expressed views, his record, his lack of experience, and his associations with particularly unsavory characters are more than enough reason to vote for someone else.

Author’s note: The following article is based solely and expressly on an unsubstantiated rumor. The author is merely expressing an opinion based on the theoretical circumstances posited by the rumor, and does not claim any piece of this article to be based in fact. Further the author disclaims himself, Happy Jake Media, Townhall.com, and any associated persons or organizations from any responsibility for any story reporting as fact the assertions contained herein based solely on those assertions. The author also does not take credit for originating the story, having heard it from someone else.

If you report this as fact and get sued, it’s your own darned fault.

I heard an interesting political rumor last week. I cannot vouch for its veracity, but it would make sense as a possibility, even if it would be an epically stupid move.

The rumor goes something like this (and, perhaps you’ve heard it elsewhere): The first Presidential and Vice Presidential debates will go on as scheduled. In the days immediately following the debate, Senator Biden will pull out of the race due to “health reasons” which reasons will probably remain unspecified. Obama will then pick, as Biden’s replacement, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY).  

This is an interesting rumor because it seems plausible, and here’s how: Obama realizes, belatedly, that picking Biden, a man almost as far to the political Left as Obama himself, was a mistake. He will realize that his own Leftist, elitist views don’t jive with the vast majority of Americans and he will need to move his ticket toward the center to have a chance. Furthermore, McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin and Obama’s rejection of Hillary Clinton will show Obama to not be as sensitive to Women’s Rights as McCain (as ludicrous a statement as that may seem, it’s how the Left thinks the electorate thinks.) Add to that the legions of Hillary voters who will vote against Obama so that “their” candidate will be able to run in 2012, and you have a pretty good incentive for Obama to do precisely that.

As with any important decisions, this one has pros and cons. On the pros side are the following:

1. As I mentioned earlier, Hillary Clinton is a “name” in politics, and she has the backing of her popular (on the Democratic side) husband. It is conceivable that her being Vice President could affect the outcome in Obama’s favor.
2. She can point to executive experience by having spent 8 years in the White House and, probably, being the driving force behind some of her husband’s policies. 
3. Adding her can counter some of the “Women’s Rights” criticism aimed at Obama since he didn’t pick her initially, and his opponent picked a woman.
4. It would (theoretically) take her out of contention for running against him in the 2012 Primaries. Theoretically.

On the other hand, there are some cons that I would hope that a man running for President would be smart enough to consider. Chief among these is the simple, inescapable fact that Hillary Clinton plays second fiddle to no one. If an “Obama/Clinton” ticket were to win, President Obama (shudder) would lose control of his presidency within 3 months. Hillary would be doing as Vice President the same thing she was accused (credibly) of doing as First Lady – taking over and deciding on policy behind closed doors that the President declares to be his own in public. Initially, it will appear that Obama is running the show, but as time goes on, his policies will start to look more and more like Bill Clinton’s (who would also be directly involved). When they start nominating people like Janet Reno and Joycelyn Elders to high office, we’ll know who’s really running the show. As the power struggle becomes more pronounced and plain, with Obama wanting to exert his authority and Clinton trying to use her influence, the Obama administration will fall apart, and the country will suffer mightily, precipitating an epic landslide of Mondale-esque proportions in 2012. Obama will easily secure his place as the worst President since 1900, finally relieving Jimmy Carter of that ignoble distinction. 

And that’s presuming the “Obama/Clinton” ticket would win. The other problem with nominating Hillary Clinton as Vice President would be that she probably wouldn’t help Obama win the election in the first place. There are a lot of people who like Hillary Clinton. There are also a great many who do not. And for various and sundry reasons: her politics, her personality, her husband, her condescending, elitist attitude, Hillary-Care, the Department of Poverty (one of her brilliant ideas from early in this year’s campaign), and her megalomania. It’s a tossup as to whether her popularity on the Left would help more than her unpopularity on the Right would hurt. It would certainly give us another reason to vote for John McCain aside from Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.

‘Course, I could be wrong.

Beware the politician who promotes “change” without saying what, why, or how. Change is neither necessarily bad nor necessarily good. Well thought-out, necessary change – i.e. implementing a well-planned change to a situation that is definitely bad – probably improves the situation about 50% of the time. The other 50% are split between maintaining the status quo ante and the more common making it worse. Some change is definitely good. The election of Ronald Reagan was a change over the increasing failure that was the Carter administration. World War II brought about massive changes both in this country and world-wide that opened a time of prosperity and increased liberty in a global sense. Lincoln, realizing that slavery itself would continue to divide the Union even if the North won the Civil War, made a major change by abolishing slavery within the United States. 

Change brought about solely for the sake of change is never good. Ever. In the best possible scenario, unnecessary change merely maintains the status quo. Far more often, though, making a change solely to make a change produces profound negative results. Germans felt – reasonably – that they needed a change in the early 1930s. The economy was a mess, they had been embarrassed at the end of the War to End All Wars about 15 years prior by a treaty that held them responsible for the war and damages, cost them territory, and put draconian limits on their military. For all of that they elected a “change” platform… headed by Adolph Hitler.

Fixing that which is not broken is always bad, because it never works as well again. Fixing that which is broken only works when (a) the fix is planned and implemented by someone who knows what he’s doing, (b) the fix is applied to the part that is broken, not just the part showing the symptoms, and (c) the fix itself doesn’t break something else even worse.

Barack Obama’s advertisements have included the proposition that Obama, as President, would institute a “windfall profits” tax on the oil companies. The purpose of such tax – so as not to make it appear merely punitive – is to provide every family with “up to” $1,000 in rebates to compensate for rising energy costs. Given that there are something like 100,000,000 families in the US, that would translate to one hundred billion dollars, or so (to use round numbers and rough estimates). To accomplish this, one would expect a fair amount of administrative costs, particularly from a tax-and-spend liberal like Obama. In fact, I would expect a whole new bureaucracy for just that purpose. Solely because of the bureaucracy, the cost of remitting that $100 billion will be more than simply the $100 billion. Additionally, we can expect a tax-and-spend liberal like Obama to want to use the money to beef up other social programs like affirmative action, the United Negro College Fund, debt forgiveness for African countries, and supporting black “faith based institutions” to promote outreach to the inner city communities. Therefore, the taxes collected for the stated purpose of distributing $100 billion to the ignorant, bitter, gun-clinging masses will greatly exceed $100 billion.

I know that this is old news, but I don’t care. On Barack Obama’s comment to Rick Warren at the Saddleback church open forum (or whatever it was called) about the decision of when a person gets human rights is “above [Obama’s] paygrade:” That was probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard come out of a politician. I’m not going to get on the “if there’s a chance that an unborn child is alive, why err on the side of murder?” argument. It’s been said before. There is no one who confuses Barack Obama with a pro-life politician. The (D) after his name is a clue, even if you don’t know about his record. His voting record indicates that he doesn’t believe humans have rights even after they are born, preferring, instead, to allow doctors to neglect live-born failed abortion victims and leave them to die in a broom closet. I would have had more respect for Barack Obama if he had come out and said, “Rick, I honestly believe, with all my heart, that life begins at birth and that fetuses do not have human rights,” rather than equivocating and pontificating and saying absolutely nothing. At least, then, we could have the expectation that we could believe what we hear. Since he was equivocal, and he did give the “I don’t have an opinion” answer, all we can see is that he lacks the leadership ability to make, and stand by a decision even if it is an unpopular one.

So, John McCain has chosen as his running mate a young (44) woman, Sarah Palin, who is the incumbent governor of Alaska. I won’t claim to know much about her, having not done much research, yet, but the little I’ve seen makes me cautiously optimistic. She’s been described as religious, conservative, and anti-abortion, all characteristics that are desirable in a Republican candidate for major office, and a nice balance against the “moderate,” less religious McCain. I’m sure more will come out that I’ll have to write on over the next 2 months.

I’m actually not here to comment on Sarah Palin, lest you think you misread the title of my post. I’m commenting on her daughter Bristol, 17, who is five months pregnant.

Barack Hus-Change Obama has apparently, in what is clearly calculated to appear as a magnanimous gesture, decided to declare Bristol Palin’s condition (or “punishment” as Obama would call it, one such punishment that he would not inflict on his own daughter) off limits to his campaign hacks. This in response to rumors circulated by the leftist press that the youngest Palin (4-month-old Trig, who has Down Syndrome, a condition normally associated with women giving birth in their 40s) was actually the son of Bristol, not Sarah.

Obama’s warning that the family is off limits might, at first glance, seem a bit unusual for an extreme leftist Democrat running for major office (for which character assassination, particularly with the goal of obscuring or minimizing their own character flaws, is usually par for the course), but with Obama, everything is calculated in advance and with a reason.

Obama, as we should all remember, is particularly thin-skinned when it comes to criticism of either himself or his wife. Barack Obama started complaining early and often that Michelle Obama was “off limits” to criticism in the right-wing press. This outburst has probably prompted someone in his campaign to tell him “if you go after the pregnant girl, it’ll be open season on your wife” hence the statement about family being off limits.

There are a few minor differences when it comes to family and what is and is not private, off-limits-to-political-campaigns, behavior. Bristol Palin’s misbehavior involved what millions of teenagers do, much to their unfortunate detriment, around the Western World. She let her hormones get the better of her and had the “It (pregnancy) will never happen to me” attitude about protection. That much is plain without any knowledge of the issue. I’m certainly not condoning it, and I certainly don’t think it’s right, but that’s how things go. Bristol’s misadventure occurred long before her mother was in the national spotlight (I challenge anyone outside Alaska, Washington, and Idaho to say that you’d even heard of Sarah Palin before this weekend) and will have absolutely no effect on Sarah Palin’s ability to execute the office of Vice President, or even President, should that become necessary. It’s a private, family matter having nothing whatsoever to do with the character or ability of the principal.

Criticism of Michelle Obama, on the other hand, is of a far different character. Barack Obama has, for years, been a nationally known figure for being a black man in the Senate. His presidential aspirations were known from the beginning, and his Senatorial half-term has pretty much been one, long campaign for the White House, much as we expected of Madame Hillary, hence his avoidance of sponsoring any meaningful legislation that some voter might not like. Michelle Obama has been criticized for her lack of patriotism and black chauvinism primarily because of speeches she has made in public. 

And therein lies the rub. Bristol Palin is off limits (and should be) because her act was (a) in the past, and (b) totally private.  Michelle Obama is (and should be) in bounds precisely because her acts were (a) during her husband’s campaign and (b) absolutely public. Public remarks made by anyone are open to criticism from they who disagree. And if you make remarks like “for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country” because we nominated a black man for President, you’re going to be disagreed with.

Put another way, Bill Clinton’s numerous infidelities should have little effect on Hillary Clinton’s political aspirations. Her husband’s incontinence has little bearing on her ability to do the job, and should be left out of any future attempt that Hillary Clinton has in getting back into the White House. At the same time, public remarks by the former President (and his policies and actions in the White House) can and will be used against his wife, and that’s fair.

Here’s what I predict: Michelle Obama will say something stupid (by which I mean something that betrays her true feelings for whites or America) and will be called out for it by the McCain campaign (which is reasonable.) The Obama campaign will, then, declaring the gloves to be off, declare criticism of Bristol Palin to be within the bounds of reasonable political discourse and an all out assault on a 17-year-old girl will commence with the intent to take the focus off Barack’s own failings, flaws and delusions.