Elizabeth Crum

A reader sent the following true account from his small rural town.  Names have been changed and some details have been edited out to protect privacy.  Here’s the story:

Several years ago, Marvin and Veronica moved here from a nearby state and told everyone they met that they were “so excited” to live in “such a beautiful place” full of “such wonderful, friendly, caring people.”  Marvin soon got a job with the County and began “working to improve things” using government monies and volunteer help and contributions.

So today he tells me, “I can’t wait to get out of this place.”

Why?  Because the town is now full of obstinate, backward, stupid people who don’t know anything about government and who obstruct his agenda at every turn.

A liberal?  You betcha.

I always laugh to read his articles in the paper, extolling this project or the other.  A perfect example is a new “tree barrier” along a roadside adjacent to one of our municipal facilities.  The trees were intended to block the unsightly row of cars and trucks parked between the road and the buildings.  To read about it in the articles he has put into the local newspaper extolling “community efforts,” you’d expect to find a verdant forest.   When you drive by, however, you find a row of very small, withered trees, spaced too far apart, which, if anything, make the site look even more run down and neglected.  In 25 years, should they survive, they might partially filter the view.  A fence would have made more sense.  Why didn’t they do a privacy fence?  Because it would “block the distant view.”  Of course, the large facility buildings already do that.

Currently he is involved in a fight with the City over a maintenance issue that damaged one of his properties.  The City says it isn’t responsible because there is no ordinance covering such maintenance, and for that reason, the government agency that insures the City denied his claim.

What would a conservative (i.e., native) do?

Pay for the damage, do the due diligence on the maintenance himself, and write a letter to the Editor letting others know of this issue so that those who wished to do so could pressure the City to update its ordinances.  And attend City Council meetings, keeping the issue alive until resolved.

A liberal?

He moves away in disgust.

Because, ultimately, it was always “all about him” and had nothing to do with us.

With the takeover of AIG, the federal government has wangled its fourth major bailout and taken control of its very first insurance company.  

Both McCain and Obama have called the bailouts of AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns “necessary measures.” McCain blames greedy Wall Street tycoons while Obama blames failed GOP policies.
 
Most sensible folks agree that the government’s implicit guarantee to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a license to lenders to run rampant.  Fannie and Freddie were able to buy bundles of home mortgages and/or mortgage-backed securities in massive quantities without contemplation of the financial risks.

  
Some economists blame the regulators/regulations.  I disagree.  The financial industry is heavily regulated.  It was the government’s guarantee of Fannie and Freddie that emboldened lenders to put together dicey loans and encouraged undisciplined financial endeavors.

Government policy laid the foundation of the mortgage crisis more than three decades ago when Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The law forced banks to loan money to low-income borrowers in order to meet the “needs” of the local community.

No worries, though.  The banks knew they could sell off those loans to Fannie or Freddie, and F & F knew they could buy those loans with little regard for the risk.

I’m reminded of the past weekend here in Las Vegas when a few enthusiastic friends (first time visitors) went out and hit the blackjack tables. 

A young man playing two hands was dealt four sevens.  A friend advised him to split and play four hands.  Pondering the risks, he hesitated – but the helpful friend offered to cover his losses and let him keep all the chips if he won. 

What do you suppose that young man did?

He behaved as anyone would:  he played all four sevens.  And, unfortunately, lost on all.

So it goes on the tables of Sin City.  So too, in Congressional corridors and bank board rooms. 

Last night in his interview with Bill O’Reilly, Obama said:

“If I am sitting pretty, and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t — what’s the big deal for me to say, ‘I’m going to pay a little bit more.’ That is neighborliness.”

Well, Senator Obama, it WOULD BE neighborliness if you were doing it VOLUNTARILY, i.e. if free will were involved.

However, if the amount you pay is decided by the federal government, collected by the federal government, and distributed where and whence the federal government sees fit, and if you resent the hell out of it (as I do), then the act is NOT neighborliness but state-mandated SOCIALISM, otherwise known as the forcible redistribution of wealth, otherwise known as highway robbery by the Nanny State bandits of the world.

(I was pleased when O’Reilly called him “Robin Hood Obama.”)

!!

Did anyone else feel the urge to choke the living daylights out of Chuck Schumer this week?  If not, you must have missed the Senate floor speech in which he re-opined the tired line that if only the Saudis would produce “half a million barrels more oil a day, the price [of oil] would come down a very significant amount.” 

Why does this statement make my blood pressure rise and my fingers twitch?

Because the tiny impact area within ANWR – a size ratio equivalent to a dime on a 4 x 8’ table – is projected to produce ONE MILLION barrels a day, every day, if only we would drill.  And because Schumer’s (true) statement that a greater immediate supply would reduce prices falls short of saying what is also true:  that even the ANTICIPATION of a greater FUTURE supply would decrease prices in the Now.

Schumer’s other infuriating comment – that more drilling would “stop the speculation that keeps driving up the price of oil” – also missed the proverbial mark.  Speculators wouldn’t “stop” if the Saudis drilled more, because speculation in free markets never stops.

Instead, speculators (also known as investors, also known as buyers and sellers, also known as people trying to earn money for their families and futures) would anticipate the increased oil supply, begin to sell for less, continue to drop prices as volume increased, and thus reverse the current market trend of charging a per barrel premium for what is currently a too-scarce commodity. 

Perhaps  “speculation” would then stop being a dirty word and be seen as what it really is:  the natural response of the market to the forces of supply and demand.  

For those not convinced that these tenets of ECON 101 are true, please note that we’ve already seen the evidence.  As Larry Kudlow reported the other day on NRO, oil prices dropped $9 per barrel the day after the offshore drilling moratorium was lifted by the president.  This is no coincidence.  It is case-and-point and perfectly illustrates what speculation really IS – not a crime against humanity, but the market doing what markets tend to do:  try to anticipate the future and adjust.

It is maddening that the same people who want to spend billions on economy-choking “climate change” measures that might (MIGHT!) reduce temperatures by one quarter degree over the next one-half century cannot see the wisdom of opening a tiny piece of ANWR in return for a sure thing over the next one to ten years.

It seems appropriate to begin this blog with one of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotations:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber-barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”