Why The Political Class Ticks Me Off - Past and Present

A couple of new articles came across the desk today that just set me off again on today's American politicians. They reminded of information we posted in two previous discussions:

Ticking Me Off - Past

• In August we reviewed how Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite, who was a member of the House committee responsible for overseeing the banking industry, was making personal bank stock trades in the midst of Congress and the Obama administration offering billion dollar bailouts to the very banks Brown-Waite was investing in. In the real world, this is called insider trading and all of us probably would have went to jail for this kind of behavior. In the political world it is not even called conflict of interest. No investigation, no House reprimand, just a politician trading on their position to the detriment of the rest of us. Ticks me off.
• In a Washington Post article in May, 2007 and discussed in the book,"Love My Country, Loathe My Government", it was reported that while many of the political class were getting on the global warming bandwagon, the United States government continued to sponsor a program, left over from the Depression, that uses billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to subsidize the construction of coal burning power plants throughout the rural parts of the country. In fact, according to the article, the current plan is to spend $35 billion over the next ten years to build conventional coal burning, CO2 spewing power plants. Think about how stupid this is: Obama wants to implement plans to tax power usage of regular Americans for the global warming cabal while funding coal power plants. Ticks me off.

Ticking Me Off - Present

• According to the September/October CATO Policy Report, www.cato.org, Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye's staff asked Federal regulators about a bailout of an ailing Hawaiian bank. It seems that Senator Inouye had helped established the bank and had invested the bulk of his personal wealth. To make a long story short, the bank was in the tank and the FDIC had already recommended that it was not worth saving and should not receive a bailout. However, two weeks after the staff's inquiry, the bank received $138 million of taxpayer money from the Treasury Department. As with the Congresswoman above, this is tantamount to insider trading and is definitely a conflict of interest in my eyes. Ticks me off.
• As everyone knows, a major, major cause of the deep recession and housing industry implosion was that many people getting a mortgages over the past years did not have to have any down payment or prove what their real income was. With no down payment, homeowners had less of a vested interest in keeping up their mortgage payments and lenders did not care since many of the mortgages were insured by the Federal government, i.e. taxpayer money. After all of the destruction this type of behavior has cost the country, one would think that this is a mistake we would never make again. But no! According to an article in the September 28, 2009 issue of business week, "USDA Home Loans - Subprime Redux", the Agriculture Department is running a home loan program where applicants can get a home mortgage and not have to put any down payment forward. Think about how stupid this is. We just learned about how no down payment mortgages helped screw up the economy and the government is now doing it again. And, it is being run out of the Department of Agriculture! What's next, is the SEC going to run NASA? Of course, the government guarantees all of the lending so potential homeowners and builders alike love it since their risk is greatly reduced. And the Obama administration supports the program, having just upped its budget to $10.5 billion. Ticks me off.

The Brown-Waite and Inouye examples just prove again that these people in the political class have no pride or loyalty to the American taxpayer. They are only in it for themselves. The coal power plants and USDA examples prove that we have allowed government to get so big that no one is in charge and we very often get programs that are at odds with themselves and reality, which always costs the American taxpayer. Smaller, leaner government and some sense of conflict of interest compliance have to come about or the insanity will never end and I will continue to be ticked off.