Category Archives: Idiocy

The password rant

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Every time I have to come up with a password for a Web site, I end up spending 10 minutes trying to find one that I can remember and that will conform to the rules for that site. You’d think there’d be some kind of standard. But, no … every site has its own bunch of rules.

One site requires the password to be “at least eight characters long.” Others specify a minimum length and require at least one number, one capital letter, and one special character. Others specify an absurdly short maximum length. They’ll limit the characters you can use, make you use at least two numbers, prevent you from using any word that’s in an English dictionary, or for all I know require that you type it with your toes while standing on your head. It’s maddening.

I could understand this idiocy 10 years ago. Today it’s simply unacceptable. The key to a good password is that it be long, unusual, and easy to remember. But the most important point is length. Next most important is easy to remember. And I guarantee that a password like “stupid.password.rules.suck” is easier to remember and harder to break with a brute force attack than something like “Stup1d.pw0rd”.

To make matters worse, sites often don’t tell you what the password rules are. It’ll say, “enter password.” So you enter something like “my.mom’s.maiden.name” and it will say, “Passwords must contain at least one number and one capital letter.” So then you enter “3rd.rock&Roll.act” and it will say, “Passwords may only contain the characters [list of characters that doesn’t include ‘&’]”. So then you type, “Please.save.M3.From.Stupid.Password.Rules” and it will say, “Passwords must be between 8 and 14 characters in length.”

Why can’t they tell me all of the rules up front? Do they think I’m here to play 20 passwords? This evening my hosting provider told me that my password had expired and that I need to create a new one. Fine. I’m now on my fifth attempt at creating a password that I can remember, that others won’t likely guess, and that fits the rules that they’re revealing to me one at a time.

People who create Web sites: please update your password rules. Force me to create a password that’s at least 15 characters long, and let me put whatever characters I want in it! If you really have to put a limit on the length, make it something reasonable like at least 32 characters. Limiting me to 12 (a banking site, no less) or 14 characters and making me choose from three or four different classes of characters to boot just pisses me off and makes me think that I should find some other place to take my business.

Was the ACA designed to fail?

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One of the things that worries me about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is that it depends on a large number of young, healthy people signing up on the exchanges. The idea is that their premiums will more than pay for the care that they use, and the excess will go to pay for the older people who consume more health care dollars. It’s a big Ponzi Scheme. I explained almost four years ago why I think it won’t work. If the young and healthy don’t sign up on the exchanges, or if people consume more health care resources than the planners projected, then the whole scheme falls apart.

There are plenty of other things wrong with the ACA as well. It’s just bad legislation that was pushed through Congress in a hurry and in a somewhat irregular fashion because Democrats knew that they couldn’t get it to pass the normal way and time was running out. The ACA is something like 1,000 pages of text, and it’s doubtful that any one person understands everything in it. It’s a certainty that none of our Representatives or Senators fully understood what they were agreeing to when they voted for the thing.

It’s no secret that many of those who pushed for the ACA are unhappy that they couldn’t push through a single payer system: fully government-paid health care. I’ve heard Democrats say, in private conversations, that when the insurance companies fail to live up to the provisions of the ACA, we can finally move to a single payer system. And I begin to wonder.

I’ve long held that bad government is the result of incompetence and unintended consequences; that nobody could purposely create the inefficient, ineffective, and idiotic government bureaucracies, programs, departments, rules, regulations, commissions, etc. that we see every day. But in my more cynical moments I wonder . . .

Was the ACA crafted to fail? Was the plan all along to create a system that can’t possibly work, knowing that when it does there will be so many people dependent on the health care subsidies that it will be politically impossible to cancel the law and the only way forward will be to go to a single payer system? Because I think that’s what will eventually happen. Perhaps even in my lifetime.

It’s a frightening thought: that inefficient and ineffective government is created on purpose, slowly becoming larger and more intrusive. Much like the metaphorical boiling frog, we wouldn’t stand for the government we have if it had been sprung on us all at once, but we accept (with protest) continually more expensive and intrusive government if our taxes increase and our liberties erode a little at a time.

The problem, though, is that the metaphorical frog eventually dies.

Making me crazy

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I don’t travel as much as I used to, so I’m not up on all the latest changes. The last time I traveled by air was two years ago, and somebody else made the reservations. I don’t remember the last time I booked a flight.

This evening I was making reservations to go to southern California. I typically just go to Southwest Airlines because their rates are competitive if not always the lowest, and I always get good service. But seeing the cost of the flight I thought I’d shop around. Several carriers showed much lower prices for the trip I wanted. Until I took into account restrictions, extra charges, etc. Their Web sites don’t make it easy for me to feel confident that I’m getting what I think I’m getting, and by the time I added everything up it wasn’t a whole lot cheaper than Southwest.

I entered my Rapid Rewards account (Southwest’s frequent flier program) with my flight information so I’d get points for the flight. Why not, right? But then I couldn’t check out. You see, my Rapid Rewards account has my name as Jim Mischel. But new (new to me, at least) government regulations (“Safe Travel” or some such) insist that the name on the ticket match the name on my driver’s license, which is James Mischel. Uff. Southwest’s helpful Web site suggested that I change the name on my Rapid Rewards account.

But the Rapid Rewards account information page says:

For security purposes, we do not allow name changes online. Instead, please forward your Rapid Rewards card, along with photocopies of legal documentation (ex. driver license, marriage certificate, etc.) and an informal letter indicating your legal name, to Rapid Rewards, P.O. Box 36657, Dallas, TX 75235.

Just shoot me.

The only solution I could come up with was to remove the Rapid Rewards number. So I won’t get my points for the flight. Probably wouldn’t matter, anyway; I don’t fly enough for the points to mean anything.

Ain’t technology wonderful?

Tax cut madness

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President Obama today asked Congress to extend the Bush era tax cuts for those who make less than $250,000 per year, but let the cuts expire for those making $250K or more. This is no surprise, but his arguments just don’t bear scrutiny.

A couple of quotes from his speech:

I disagree on extending tax cuts for the wealthy because we just can’t afford them.

The money we are spending on these tax cuts for the wealthy is a major driver of our deficit. We can’t afford to keep that up.

CBO estimates show that the total of all the tax cuts is on the order of about 4.5 trillion dollars over 10 years, or about $450 billion per year. The tax cuts for those evil 2% who make over $250,000 per year amount to about $80 billion per year. The total tax cut package represents 45% of the annual deficit of $1 trillion. The “major driver of our deficit” that the president is talking about represents 8% of the deficit.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the president is full of shit on this issue.

I like how he’s positioning this:

Let’s not hold the vast majority of Americans and our economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy.

And, acknowledging that he and all of Congress agree on extending the tax cuts for “the other 98%,” he says:

Let’s agree to do what we agree on.

He’s trying to come across as a reasonable guy, but even a brief look at the numbers shows that he’s playing the same old game of demonizing the wealthy that’s worked for (and backfired on) politicians for decades.

In discussing the effect of the tax increase on small businesses, he states that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected. He says:

This isn’t about taxing job creators, this is about helping job creators.

He employs a common fallacy here: the idea that by not harming somebody, he’s helping them. It’s like a thug who expects me to thank him for not breaking my arm.

Republicans, too, are full of crap on this issue. They’ll have you believe that raising taxes on the wealthy will result in all manner of financial disasters. That’s just not true. There will be lots of grumbling, and likely a flight to tax-free or tax-sheltered investments the likes of which we saw in the 1980s. People do all manner of stupid things in order to avoid taxes, many of which end up costing more than just paying the tax. Congress and the president make these things possible by passing legislation that provides incentives for certain “investments,” and little industries grow up around those boondoggles. It’s all a huge scam.

The major driver of our deficit, Mr. President, is spending. You and Congress have proven that, given more money, you just spend more. When you and Congress show me that you can get spending under control, I might consider supporting a tax increase. But then, if you could get spending under control you wouldn’t need a tax increase.

A billion dollars that nobody wants

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If you’re looking for examples of Congressional idiocy, it’s hard to beat the story of $1 Billion That Nobody Wants. In short, there are about 1.5 billion one-dollar coins piled in bags in Federal Reserve vaults. Why? Because nobody wants them. Why is the U.S. Mint still making them? Because Congress said so.

Congress has been trying to shove dollar coins down our throats since the introduction of the Susan B. Anthony dollar in 1979. That turned out to be one of the most unpopular coins in U.S. history, and production stopped after 1981. An increase in dollar coin usage (primarily from vending machines) resulted in another 50 million or so coins being minted in 1999.

In 2000, Congress mandated the Sacagawea dollar. About 1.3 billion of them were minted in that year. Not surprisingly, the coin was highly unpopular with most people, and the number of coins minted per year dropped off sharply.

Still undeterred, Congress passed the Presidential $1 Coin Program in late 2005. This program, modeled after the State Quarter program, began in 2007 and will continue until 2016. It directs the U.S. Mint to produce dollar coins with engravings of the presidents on one side. This despite warnings from the Congressional Budget Office that there would be low demand, and the Government Accountability Office warning that unused coin stockpiles and storage costs would increase.

Shockingly, demand for the coins is almost non-existent. Collectors want them. Nobody else cares.

It gets even sillier. Proponents of the Sacagawea dollar were reluncant to sign on to the Presidential coin program until some genius added a provision saying that the Sacagawea dollar must account for at one of every three dollar coins minted in any year.

A couple of quotes from the NPR article struck me as especially funny.

Members of Congress reasoned that a coin series that changed frequently and had educational appeal would make dollar coins more popular. The idea came from the successful program that put each of the 50 states on the backs of quarters.

This is a perfect example of Congressional reasoning. They failed to grasp the most important point. The State Quarter program didn’t magically make people like quarters. People already used quarters. A lot. On the other hand, 30 years of experience show us that people in general just don’t like the dollar coin. One has to think that, after a few major redesigns and a few minor redesigns, the design isn’t the problem. The American public doesn’t want a dollar coin! Stop wasting time and money trying to force one on us.

Here’s the other quote that I found especially amusing. Or frightening, I suppose.

Leslie Paige, who represents watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, says the government should withdraw the dollar bill from the market and force Americans to use the coins.

“I think Americans will definitely embrace the dollar coin if they’re just given the opportunity,” she says.

There is a difference, Ms. Paige, between giving me an opportunity and forcing me to use the coin. Please consult your dictionary. And by the way, the most optimistic projections of cost savings by switching from the dollar bill to the dollar coin are about $5 billion over 30 years. That works out to $166 million per year, or less than 5% of what it costs to run Congress for a single year. Just cut the staff of every Senator and Representative by one person, and we’d make up the difference.

But has Congress passed a bill to stop the insanity? Of course not. That would make too much sense. Instead, the Obama Administration has announced that minting of the coins for circulation will be suspended. They’ll still make some for collectors, but that’s about it.

I’ll grant that the amount of money we’re talking about is small. But the reasoning behind the dollar coin idiocy is exactly the same as the reasoning behind everything Congress does. They invent problems and then invent solutions that wouldn’t solve the problems, even if the problems really existed. And yet we continue to choose to pay these people and give them power over us.

We really need to wake up.

You mean that didn’t fix anything?

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 512 points today, down 4.31%. The S&P 500 is down 4.78%. NASDAQ down over 5%. That’s on top of a 2+ percent loss on Tuesday. I can’t blame it all on the debt ceiling deal, but that’s a major contributor. Let me explain why.

Investors hate uncertainty. When they don’t don’t know what Congress is going to do, investors get nervous and they tend to flee from stocks like rats deserting a sinking ship. During the run-up to Tuesday’s historically idiotic culmination of the most recent tempest in a teapot, investors believed that Congress would do something to resolve the issue. Instead, Congress passed and the President signed a bill that just kicks the can down the road a bit, which is what they’re best at. They’ve put the whole thing off until November. Investors, now with no idea of what train wreck Congress is going to perpetrate next, are pulling their money out of the market. They’re going to sit on it for a while (a week, a few months, a year or two, who knows) until they can figure out what the new rules are.

It’s fitting that the new legislation was called the Debt Control Act of 2011. Congress excels at passing legislation that does exactly the opposite of what one would expect, based on the bill’s title.

The stock market is not the national economy. Often it’s not even a good indicator of the national economy. But it acts like the national economy in many ways. In particular, the primary driver of the stock market is investor sentiment, much as the primary driver of the national economy is consumer (and, to some extent, producer) sentiment. If people think that things are getting better, they spend money much more freely. When people think things are getting worse or not going to change, they tend to sit on their money and only let go of it when absolutely necessary.

Recent polls show that most people believe that things aren’t getting better. That’s due in large part to their belief that government drives the economy–a belief reinforced by the mainstream media, either on purpose or as a side effect of superficial reporting. Both major political parties, and most of the smaller parties count on that belief and do everything in their power to reinforce it. It’s wrong, but it’s beneficial for some that most believe it to be true. And it’s convenient for the masses, because it relieves them from any responsibility.

When people armed with that belief see Congress wasting months on a spending bill that ultimately amounts to more of the same, they are not going to be filled with confidence. A poll taken yesterday shows that of the people polled, 41% believe that the new Debt Control Act will make the economy worse. 17% believe it will make it better. And almost one-third of respondents said that it won’t make a difference.

It looks to me like 83% of people are going to sit on their money until they see what Congress does next.

It’s kind of funny that back when things were going well, people were spending money they didn’t have on things they didn’t need, because they thought they could make it up in the future. Now, many of them are reluctant to buy things they really need with money they already have because they’re unsure of how long their money will last. This probably points to a basic flaw in the way that most people see the world.

As long as the American people believe that government controls the economy, we’re going to see longer periods of contraction or stagnation, and fewer and shorter periods of growth. My conclusion, based on 30+ years observing Congress in real time, and my reading of history from prior years, is that government can create short-term bubbles at the cost of long-term problems. Government policies that use borrowed money to target certain industries or certain groups of people usually result in short-term gains for those affected areas. But those policies almost invariably lead to unintended negative consequences, particularly when the temporary programs end and the industries that were built up to take advantage of those programs fail.

“Government money” in the economy, either through higher taxes or borrowed money, is like taking amphetamines. It’s go, go, go until the drugs wear off, followed by a crash. Our economy is now suffering from the equivalant of amphetamine dependence, where it takes larger and more frequent doses to get any kind of reaction.

As with amphetamine dependence, whereas decreasing or eliminating government’s role in the economy would be a Good Thing, doing so will involve some very painful withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, I doubt that we have the national will to suffer through that pain, even though the result would be a much more stable and robust economy.

Hoodwinked again

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You’ve probably heard by now that President Obama and House Speaker Boehner have agreed on a plan that will allow an increase in the debt ceiling. We’re being told that the agreement is a great achievement. One news report, for example, says:

The White House and congressional leaders worked Monday to align lawmakers from both parties behind their formula for averting a financial meltdown and halting the government’s prolific spending habits.

President Obama said in a tweet: “The debt agreement makes a significant down payment to reduce the deficit– finding savings in both defense and domestic spending.”

Senator Reid’s comment sums up the agreement very well, at least in terms of how members of Congress view the plan: “People on the right are upset, people on the left are upset, people in the middle are upset. It was a compromise.”

The American people should be disgusted.

Understand that in the discussion below, the figures are projected decrease in deficit over 10 years.

The full agreement is H.R. 2693 — Budget Control Act of 2011, but you likely won’t be able to get much in the way of useful information from that. The relevant portions of the bill include absolute spending limits for different programs. There’s no comparison of previous figures. In order to estimate savings, you need to know what they’re comparing against.

The Congressional Budget Office did the comparisons against the March 2011 “baseline” figures and came up with a savings estimate. The overview of their analysis projects:

  • $912 billion reduction based on explicit spending limits outlined in the bill.
  • Up to $1.5 trillion reduction to be determined later by a bipartisan committee.
  • $1.2 trillion “automatic” reduction if the committee doesn’t come to an agreement.
  • Total of at least $2.1 trillion reduction, and potentially up to $2.4 trillion.

Before you celebrate, you should read the full report from the CBO.

If appropriations in the next 10 years are equal to the caps on discretionary spending and the maximum amount of funding is provided for the program integrity initiatives, CBO estimates that the legislation–apart from the provisions related to the joint select committee–would reduce budget deficits by $917 billion between 2012 and 2021. In addition, legislation originating with the joint select committee, or the automatic reductions in spending that would occur in the absence of such legislation, would reduce deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over the 10-year period. Therefore, the deficit reduction stemming from this legislation would total at least $2.1 trillion over the 2012-2021 period.

In other words, if nothing changes between now and then, we can expect the total amount that government overspends in the next 10 years to reduce from $15 trillion to $12.9 trillion.

This is what the President calls “a significant down payment to reduce the deficit?” I want some of what he’s smoking.

It’s interesting to note that the majority of the $912 billion is achieved by limiting discretionary spending. There’s some reduction in Pell grants and farm programs, and a few other things. However, discretionary spending (including the Department of Defense) makes up only about forty percent of the entire annual budget. If you eliminate all discretionary spending, we’d still run a deficit. And yet there is no discussion of reduction in non-discretionary programs. It’s possible we’ll see some of that from the “joint select committee,” but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Whereas it’s very likely that this agreement will pass in the Senate, there’s still some question in the House. I suspect that it will pass, over some very vocal objections by members on all sides who have to look good for their constituents. And all sides will declare “victory.”

So Congress has spent two or three months wrangling over an agreement that reduces deficits by at best 15 percent over the next 10 years. They have not done a thing to address the cause of government overspending, nor have they provided anything like a realistic framework for doing so. But that won’t stop either side from claiming victory over the other.

Perhaps the strangest part of the whole thing is that President Obama is being hailed by some as “fiscally conservative.” It boggles the mind.

Oh, and the new debt ceiling? $16,994,000,000,000.

Keep on digging!

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Last month the Congressional Budget Office released their 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook. Unsurprisingly, this was not reported by the media or mentioned by any of the players in the fiscal tug-of-war that’s currently occupying our elected parasites. It’s likely that most of them haven’t even read the report.

They should, and the the media should be all over this, because the CBO report paints a very bleak picture of our fiscal situation. You should also understand that historically the CBO almost always overstates revenues and understates expenditures. In addition, the language of their reports is purposely vague. Even with that, the picture they paint is frightening indeed.

The report analyzes the impact on the budget under two scenarios. Under the most optimistic scenario, things are bad. Under the more likely scenario, things are catastrophic.

Under the Extended Baseline scenario, expiration of tax cuts, changes in tax law, and the way that the tax system interacts with the economy result in increasing revenues, with revenue reaching about 23 percent of GDP by the year 2035, and continuing to grow after that. At the same time, spending on everything but health care, Social Security, and interest on the debt would decrease to the lowest levels since World War II.

The projected result of the Extended Baseline scenario is that federal debt will increase to about 84 percent of GDP by the year 2035, from about 69 percent now. Interest on the federal debt will be about 4 percent of GDP, or about 17 percent of all federal spending.

The Alternative Fiscal Scenario incorporates several expected changes of law. The 2001 tax cuts, extended in 2010, will be extended again, the reach of the alternative minimum tax is reduced, and in general tax law will change to keep revenues at their historical average of about 18 percent of GDP. In addition, health care costs are projected more realistically and spending on other government programs are not expected to decrease as much as in the Extended Baseline scenario.

Under the Alternative Fiscal Scenario, federal debt explodes, reaching 100 percent of GDP by the year 2021, and 190 percent of GDP by 2035.

According to the report:

Many budget analysts believe that the alternative fiscal scenario presents a more realistic picture of the nation’s underlying fiscal policies than the extended-baseline scenario does. The explosive path of federal debt under the alternative fiscal scenario underscores the need for large and rapid policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course.

Note that the current spending is not sustainable, nor is either of the scenarios outlined above.

Scary as those projections are, the really frightening part of the report is contained in the section entitled The Impact of Growing Deficits and Debt. The first paragraph is so alarming that it should have every American calling his elected representatives to demand immediate changes to put us on a sustainable path:

CBO’s projections in most of this report understate the severity of the long-term budget problem because they do not incorporate the negative effects that additional federal debt would have on the economy, nor do they include the impact of higher tax rates on people’s incentives to work and save. In particular, large budget deficits and growing debt would reduce national saving, leading to higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, and less domestic investment—which in turn would lower income growth in the United States. Taking those effects into account, CBO estimates that under the extended baseline scenario, real (inflation-adjusted) gross national product (GNP) would be reduced slightly by 2025 and by as much as 2 percent by 2035, compared with what it would be under the stable economic environment that underlies most of the projections in this report. Under the alternative fiscal scenario, real GNP would be 2 percent to 6 percent lower in 2025, and 7 percent to 18 percent lower in 2035, than under a stable economic environment.

In other words, the budgetary impact of our fiscal overindulgence results in a reduction of GNP in the next 15 years.

As I said before, CBO projections in the past have typically been overly optimistic because they are based on current policies and projections of historical averages. They don’t take into account the rate at which government spending has increased over time. Regardless, even the CBO’s most optimistic projection here is unsustainable.

Meanwhile, Congress and the President are wrangling over a plan to reduce deficits by up to four trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Whereas that sounds like a lot (about a 27% decrease in deficit), it still saddles us with about $11 trillion more debt by the year 2021. Assuming, of course, that the plan actually has the projected impact. More likely, flaws in whatever convoluted legislation they cook up will result in much lower savings, and future legislation will negate whatever actual savings is realized.

When you find yourself in a hole with a shovel in your hand, sinking ever deeper, the first thing you should do is stop digging and drop the dang shovel. When you find yourself sinking deeper into debt, the first thing you have to do is stop borrowing money!

Any fifth grader can do the math. If you keep taking more than you’re getting, eventually you have nothing.

Putting our government on a sustainable fiscal path will require pain. A lot of pain. Historical evidence and the most recent CBO report indicate that raising taxes will not have a positive impact on our budgetary problems. The only way we can solve the problem is to reduce spending. As I pointed out in Out of Control, more than 60% of federal spending is on “mandatory” programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, welfare, etc. We spend more on those programs alone than we take in every year in revenues. Those programs must be cut.

But cutting any of those programs is political suicide. Because our elected “leaders” are more interested in keeping their jobs than they are in prolonging our way of life, Congress and the President will end up passing bullshit “reform” legislation that just whitewashes over the problem, perhaps extending the inevitable for another few years–long enough that some other suckers have to worry about it.

So go ahead, Mr. President. Mr. Speaker. Mr. Senate Majority Leader. Have your fun. Make all your silly speeches and look good for your constituents. Play the game of making the other guy look bad so that you and your parties can remain in power. But please don’t expect those of us who actually paid attention in fifth grade math class to swallow the shit you’re shoveling.

The costume isn’t fooling anybody

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When I was in military school, we were expected to wear our uniforms at all times when we weren’t in the barracks.  We had the daily uniform, a uniform for working out (PT gear), dress uniforms, etc.  The only time we weren’t in uniform was when taking a shower or sleeping.  We even wore our uniforms when we went into town on the weekends.

As you would expect, cadets from time to time would want to wander around town in “civilian clothes.”  For whatever reason, this was a common desire.  What we didn’t realize back then was that a Marine Military Academy cadet was recognizable even out of uniform.  The first “tell” was the haircut.  In the late ’70s, very few teenagers had military-style haircuts, and you can bet that no kid in Harlingen, Texas had such a haircut because he wouldn’t want to be mistaken for an MMA cadet.

Some kids got the bright idea to wear a wig or hat to hide the haircut and thereby go incognito.  That didn’t work very often, either.  MMA cadets stand straighter than their non-cadet contemporaries, and they march even when they’re just ambling down the road.  It’s trivial for anybody who’s familiar with cadets to spot one in a crowd.  He stands out because he looks, stands, walks, and talks differently from somebody who hasn’t attended the school.

Founded in early 2008, what eventually became the “Tea Party” was a reaction to the excesses of government perpetrated by both major parties.  What started as a popular uprising and was laughed at by members of both major parties soon became a serious force in American politics because Tea Party members were echoing the frustration and disgust that many of us felt.

Following the sweeping rejection of Republicans the 2008 election, many Republicans started looking for a way to re-make the party’s image, and they somehow managed to latch onto the growing popularity of the Tea Party.  At first, it looked encouraging:  Republicans who were interested in fiscal responsibility were embracing what looked to be an up and coming third party.  But somewhere along the way the Tea Party got hijacked by the Republican old guard.

An old school Republican can’t hide in a group of people who are fed up with the excesses of government any more than an MMA cadet can don civilian clothes and disappear among the natives.  Republicans are part of Big Government just as Democrats are.  The only difference between the two is what parts of Big Government they support.

Today’s “Tea Party” is just a bunch of old Republicans who’ve put on wigs and new clothes, trying to fool us into believing that they’re something else while they belt out the same tired old ideas.  As one of the original Tea Party founders said, the movement has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting against and is now obsessed with “God, guns, and gays.”

Don’t be fooled.  There’s nothing different behind the thin Tea Party veil.  It’s the same old crap you’ve been hearing for decades.  The Republicans today are screaming the “I hate Obama” message as loudly as Democrats were screaming “I hate Bush” back in 2004.  And, like the Democrats in 2004, the Tea Party Republicans have nothing else on their agenda.  They’ll have us believe that if we put them in power, they’ll “fix” everything.

That said, I’ll be happy to see Democrats lose control of Congress.  Not because I have any love of the Republican party, but rather because I think it’s dangerous to have any party control both the Legislative and Executive branches of government.  People complain about government gridlock, but I think it’s a good thing.  We’re much better off when Congress has a difficult time passing legislation.

Barney Frank is incompetent

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At least, that’s what he wants us to believe. The Boston Globe reports that Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, finally admitted that he was late in seeing the developing mortgage crisis and that he was wrong about the financial viability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Now, being late to see something is not a sign of incompetence.  However, when even I saw the crisis coming in 2005 and again in 2007 as did many financial pundits and Congressional leaders, you have to wonder how the head of the Financial Services Committee failed to see it or pay heed to warnings.  In 2003, Frank declared Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be fiscally strong and also maintained that even if they were to fail, the federal government wouldn’t bail them out.

Frank maintained those positions for the next five years.  Less than three months before those two government sponsored enterprises were declared insolvent, Frank maintained that they were financially sound.

His excuse?  “I was wearing ideological blinders.”  That’s right, he was concerned that Republicans and the Bush administration were going after Freddie and Fannie on ideological grounds, attempting to curtail the lenders’ mission of providing affordable housing.  In other words, he’d have us (his constituents, at any rate) believe that he mistakenly discounted information because it came from a source he didn’t like.  He wants us to infer that, had he obtained information from some other source, he would have seen the problem developing.

I find that exceedingly difficult to believe.  We’re talking about the head of the Financial Services Committee (in 2003, the ranking member of the minority party).  He would have us believe that he didn’t have his own sources of information who were telling him the same things.  If he admitted that, then he’d have to explain why he voted against a bill that would have instituted tighter control of Freddie and Fannie starting in 2004.  A few years later, when Frank became the head of the committee, he helped push through legislation that did institute such controls, but by then it was too late.  The damage was too extensive.

Even in July 2008, Frank insisted that the companies were “fundamentally sound, not in danger of going under.”  A few months later, he was proven wrong.

I’m not trying to lay the blame for the mortgage crisis or the insolvency of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae solely on Barney Frank.  There’s plenty of blame to go around, starting with the Clinton administration’s insistence on easing lending rules, the Bush administration’s continuation of those rules, and the Republican-controlled Congress’ failure to institute controls in order to prevent a crisis that they all saw coming.

My issue is with Frank trying to hoodwink his constituents into believing that his “ideological blinders” prevented him from seeing the real problem.  The way I see it, there are only two possibilities:

  1. Frank flat didn’t see it coming, in which case he’s incompetent.
  2. He saw it coming, but his ideology holds that affordable housing is more important than silly things like economic viability.  In other words, he insisted on maintaining the programs even though he knew what the eventual outcome would be.

If he’s incompetent, he should go.  If he put his ideology ahead of the best interests of his constituents and the rest of the country, he should go.  Either way, the voters in the Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts should do themselves and the rest of us a favor by kicking the bum out come election day.