Liberal Compassion

Liberals love to claim the moral high ground when it comes to caring for the poor, minorities, stray animals and tortured terrorists. But when push comes to shove the money flows back to the people who financed their political victories. Many examples could be given such as bailouts for AIG (check out campaign contributions to Chris Dodd and Barack Obama) and car manufacturers (the UAW has the Democrats in their pocket). So what happens when they have a chance to help poor minorities in Washington, D.C. receive a better education? The plan gets scrapped under pressure from teachers' unions. To summarize, there was a federally funded scholarship for low income children in D.C. where they could apply for vouchers to attend the private school of their choice. Almost 2,000 children were chosen out of 7,000 applications. The research (which the Dept of Education kept under wraps until the stimulus bill with this oblation to teachers was passed) has shown that children in the program were averaging an increase of one to two years of reading ability compared to the children who did not get the scholarship. In an education system where minority test scores have brought the average US grade well below other developed countries, it would seem like any program with proven effectiveness would be worth keeping. That is where the teachers, who have obviously not been too terribly successfull with minorities in D.C., have put their foot down. All of the money they have given Democratic politicians must be good for something as they got this scholarship cut, which if taken nationally would threaten their jobs in the public school system. So despite all of the rhetoric about standing up for the poor minorities who have been victimized by a racist America, Democrats simply help out the groups who are paying their bills.

Check out this site and decide what the compassionate choice would be:

VoicesOfSchoolChoice.org

Tuesday Press Conference and Sub-Prime Mortgages

President Obama was thrown softballs tonight from his predetermined list of questioners that included Politico, Ebony, and the French Press Association, but excluded such prominent papers as the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post as well as all other economic journals or newspapers. Do you think he was afraid of a question from the experts? He also compared peace in Ireland to hope for the Middle East and in my estimation is no better a speaker than President Bush was in an unscripted setting.

I also promised a description of how we got into our present problem. In our complex society their is no simple answer to the whole question. But one very large chunk of the mess came from sub-prime mortgages, which were handed out to unqualified individuals so that they could own homes for the sake of fairness. The federal governmnet forced mortgage companies to dispense these loans and now is using taxpayer money to attempt to fix the problem. They are also wagering that these bad mortgages will go up in value, but if not then it will the taxpayer that will have lost out by having their money spent in vain. Nor does it solve the basic problem of the government being the cause of the present recession. Government officials need to learn that they have more often then not been the cause of economic disaster, while in times when cooler heads prevailed, such as 1921, the government left a recession alone and the result was a decade of some of the greatest prosperity in American history.

The $1,000,000,000,000 solution

Alright, so the news today is that the Obama administration has decided to spend another trillion dollars basically fulfilling the purpose of the original TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money. It was originally created under the Bush administration to buy up the toxic foreclosure mortgages that have been clogging up the credit market, thus supposedly freeing up banks to continue to lend money. The money was never used for its original purpose, but now as the markets have shot up as a result one must wonder why the Bush administration never followed through with their plan and why the Obama administration took so long to unveil the details of their plan (and when they did so it was not really theirs). Even so, the long term impact of the most recent injection of taxpayer money is yet to be seen. How will it impact the economy alongside the $20 trillion in debt the US will have in about 10 years? Only time will tell.

Maybe next I'll try to answer the question of why we are even in this position in the first place...stay tuned!

Greetings!

Welcome to my new blog! What will follow is a very random assortment of my thoughts on various and sundry topics including, but not limited to: religion, politics, education, philosophy, and economics. Some of the topics I will be better versed on, while some may delve into the speculative. Comments are welcome, but please keep them civil and appropriate to a wide viewing audience. I look forward to the chance to broadcast my thoughts and ideas and to receive constructive criticism from whoever may wander across this page.