Category Archives: Government
Wrong Stuff
In his State of the Union, Obama referred to our Sputnik moment. It was an attempt to rally the nation to “win the future” or do something or other. The one thing it was not was an attempt to deprive the Russians of a monopoly on manned space travel.
Walk the Walk
Wall Street wasn’t an innocent bystander but Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner pin the blame for the financial meltdown on Fannie Mae in their book Reckless Endangerment. They say Fannie head, James Johnson figured out how to monetize the outfit’s government backing.
Under Johnson, an important Democratic operative, Fannie Mae became, Morgenson and Rosner say, “the largest and most powerful financial institution in the world.” Its power derived from the unstated certainty that the government would be ultimately liable for Fannie’s obligations. This assumption and other perquisites were subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worth an estimated $7 billion a year. They retained about a third of this.
Morgenson and Rosner report that in 1998, when Fannie Mae’s lending hit $1 trillion, its top officials began manipulating the company’s results to generate bonuses for themselves. That year Johnson’s $1.9 million bonus brought his compensation to $21 million. In nine years, Johnson received $100 million.
Fannie Mae’s political machine dispensed campaign contributions, gave jobs to friends and relatives of legislators, hired armies of lobbyists (even paying lobbyists not to lobby against it), paid academics who wrote papers validating the homeownership mania, and spread “charitable” contributions to housing advocates across the congressional map.
Jet Setter
Chris Wallace famously asked Michelle Bachman if she were a “flake”.
Obama’s been called worse.
Tax breaks for corporate jets were included in the $800 billion stimulus package, right around the time auto execs were being slammed for arriving for congressional hearings in corporate jets. You can read about it here, here, or here.
Not only that, Bloomberg says it’s not even enough money to save student loans.
Presser
The president’s press conference ran about an hour today. It seemed like each answer ran that long. The thrust was 1.) the Republicans better do their job and raise taxes and 2.) Malia and Sasha are more responsible than Congress. Number 2 I agree with.
It Depends
It seems the government’s terror campaign against the elderly requires 95 year old air travelers to drop her Depends for inspection.
Keith Olberman has his panties in a bunch over this one. And Jonah Goldberg dumps on the TSA here.
