Virginian-Pilot realizes Government is the Problem
By Brian Kirwin | Monday, March 29th, 2010 | PolicyAttention, Virginian-Pilot editorialists. Have some coffee. Put your feet up. Relax in your new location – the right wing!
Our local newspaper looked at one of the many, huge government programs that was supposed to help people, and SURPRISE!, found it hurts the people it’s supposed to help.
The federal $75 million Making Home Affordable program is supposed to keep some of the 5 million Americans on the verge of foreclosure from losing their homes … if homeowners don’t mind watching their credit scores drop by as much as 100 points.
Amazing! Obama, the man of Hope and Change, offers homeowners in trouble of losing their homes such philanthropic help – and if people even apply for the help, crash goes their credit.
Wanna know why I had a big problem with the health care bill? Because I know government, and although I don’t think that government intends to hurt people, I’ve seen too many cases of it happening to think it won’t happen again.
I’ve seen government make it easier for kids to grow up fatherless. I’ve seen government make it impossible to grow a small business by sucking up investment capital in tax shelters rather than private enterprises that create jobs and build communities, towns and cities.
I’ve seen government make highways so expensive that 50 years after building the interstate highway system, we can barely afford to maintain it, much less expand it.
I’ve seen government encourage people into mortgages they didn’t need for homes they could never afford, and then act surprised when the inevitable happened.
Even at the local level, I’ve seen such idiocy. I’ve seen governments that give incentives to national name-brand chains while hammering local businesses who would compete with them with new zoning rules that eventually will put them out of business since they are suddenly “non-conforming.”
Now I see the Obama’s Making Home Affordable plan crushing the credit scores of people who try to be helped. And guess what will happen with Health Care “reform.”
So, welcome to our side, Virginian-Pilot. Welcome to the part of the spectrum where we read the Constitution, and not just the first amendment, and where we acknowledge that even though an idea may be good, government isn’t usually the best place to implement it.
Those good ol’ Constitutional limits were put in place because some geniuses who wrote them knew that a big government doesn’t get too big to fail.
It just gets to big to succeed.
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About the author
The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled.
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Comments
25 Responses to "Virginian-Pilot realizes Government is the Problem"
Greetings Virginian Pilot editorialists, Welcome to Bearing Drift. You and I have a lot in common.. We have all been bamboozled by “the most ethical Congress in history”.
As a regular reader of your news paper I hope to see articles covering the failure of elected leaders to read the contents of the massive bill that just passed and to question the authors.
Kind Regards, Turbo
Of course, Brian is consistent in his view that the ills of our nation can all be traced to the inefficiency of government. Ironic that his target this time is the failure of the government to adequately regulate the private mortgage industry. I guess Brian’s next step will be to call for total deregulation; that is, let the bums continue to issue mortgages to citizens with barely a pulse, based on a fictitious financial statement, whether they are employed or not, so the paper can by sold five times in the market and end up as a mortgate backed security with no practical way to unwind. Instead of one way journalism, why not actually think about the matter and print a piece with heft and rational thought. On second thought Brian, stick to the attack; apparently, this is the only thing you have been trained to do.
Nice attack, Mike.
Nice quip, Brian. Instead, you could have chosen to discuss the need for better regulation of the financial industry consistent with promotion of the private enterprise system. But that is too boring and I know you prefer the sniper mode of dealing with important issues relating to the nexus of private enterprise and government. What will make people mad seems to be your mantra. Regretfully, that seldom leads to effective public policy.
“Nexus”… Nancy Pelosi uses that word alot.
Now let’s see what Mike is trained for – 30 bonds to pay payroll at SPSA, having a SPSA Director who’s qualifications are education degrees, adoring all possible Virgina Beach tax and fee increase (he learned that when he was on the City payroll), and more. His effective public policy is to let the developers like himself do whatever they want. NOT
Sniper? are you advocating violence?
Mike, if you think more government intervention in a market that was fueled by government intervention is the solution, that’s your prerogative.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Markets have winners and losers. Government doesn’t like that. When government tries to prevent anyone from losing, they sap the incentive for anyone to try to win.
I didn’t buy too big a home. I didn’t get a mortgage that I couldn’t afford. I didn’t run up credit cards buying a hot tub and 50-inch hdtvs. My home still has tons of equity.
What’s my reward? Paying to bail out the folks who did.
Yes, I too am quite pleased that many citizens did not get overwhelmed by greed and excess during the last decade. Regretfully, many did. Should they have known it was funny money? Yes, of course, but to the degree that many trust private enterprise in the form of banks and other financial institutions to perform their appropriate roles, many got slammed by wall street’s insatiable greed. Should citizens demand that private enterprise operate with fairness and integrity at their core? Yes, they should, and one of government’s roles is to assure that is the case.
Mike, a role they have never been effective at performing.
Actually, that is simply not true. They performed it well for decades. Regretfully, when investment banks saw the need to create products for international money to invest in, they hit upon the securitization of home mortgages. It was this greed for product that drove many mortgage compnies to make loans they could sell for securitization. The regulators and the banks failed America, and the only way to stop that is to have effective regulation and financial reform.
yeah, 1987 was a great year, wasn’t it, Mike? S & L crisis? You call that “performing well?”
No, I don’t. A classic example of Reagan’s influence. Hands off, so S & L’s starting speculating on commercial projects, a business they did not understand, especially the risks involved. So just like the debacle under Bush, they started making loans for the fee income with little thought to the fact that commercial loans are bigger and harder to measure the risk.
I wouldn’t call the 1986 tax reform act “hands off”
Debacle under Bush? Nice revisionist history, Mike. You’re such a partisan that you don’t even look at facts. Bill Clinton’s administration set the conditions for sub-prime mortgages. Remember the whole schtick that it was “everyone’s right” to own a home. And the idea started with Carter.
Please, spare us your rose colored glasses.
Hey…and for what it’s worth, Bush is at fault for allowing it to continue too. But at least be a little intellectually honest, if possible.
OK J.rR. perhaps it was both administrations. Kind of funny that you would call attention to Clinton when you seem to deny any responsibility for Bush and the republican Congress for causing the greatest financial disaster of our History since the depression, but yes, there was systemaic failure to prevent the S & L crisis just like the systemic failure in the Bush administration that caused our economy to come close to near collapse. In both cases, both government and private financial institutions behaved poorly. The question is, will republicans work with democrats to devise strict, limited yet effective regulations to ensure we don’t allow greed to cause our own demise again?
Mike still sounds like those folks who called the Titanic unsinkable.
Has government done anything “strict, limited yet effective?”
Well Brian, right back at you. If private enterprise is left strictly to its own devices, to pursue profit for its share holders, will it exercise restraint to prevent creation of monopoly and the potential for financial collapse?
Mike, you need government to make you exercise restraint?
Well Brian, given the unabashed excesses shown by Wall Street that came close to causing the world wide collapse of the international financial system, that was a rhetorical question. I should have known that you would not get the point. Never mind.
A little off the thread of conversation but related to the original article by Brian…
Brian wrote:
“I’ve seen government make highways so expensive that 50 years after building the interstate highway system, we can barely afford to maintain it, much less expand it.”
Well I will comment that the most gold plated highways typically are the toll ways. Even after the primary bonds are getting close to being paid off, the members of the tollway authorities will come up with gold plated improvements necessary for additional bonds and in order to justify their continued employment. No need for cost savings. If insufficient money goes into maintenance the percentage of the tolls received going towards paying the salaries of the toll collectors goes up and that is not a good thing.
Now, I have considerable personal experience as a self employed truck driver and I hate tolls. I do not find myself alone with this, but in agreement with the ATA (American Trucking Association), the OOIDA (Owner Operator Independent Driver Association) and even Virginia’s own VTA (Virginia Trucking Association) who all agree an increase in the fuel tax is the best, most efficient method of raising the additional needed revenue. It is hard to disagree, when you have the experience, to disagree when the obvious slams you dead on in the face.
The trucking industry pays huge taxes for highway maintenance and I personally pay sums that dwarf the what even a multitude of citizens pay together every year. We just want to see the largest percentage of what we pay ending up in the asphalt instead of seeing it wasted paying unnecessary expenses.
By the way Brian, when Ronald Reagan faced this problem, he raised the fuel tax he did not call for an increased reliance on toll roads. But I guess not only is the trucking industry wrong, so was the Gipper.
Mike, google this >> Community Reinvestment Act
David, just like the health care plan doesn’t do a thing to cut health care costs, raising taxes doesn’t make roads cheaper.
OK Brian,
But when inflation drives the cost of the candy up, stop complaining if the revenue raised no longer is enough to pay for the candy. Do without.
It is my fear that is what we are going to end up with, no candy and no improvements to the transportation problems.
Meanwhile it is not just the trucking industry that favors an increase in the fuel tax; so does the national Chamber of Commerce. But I guess Republicans are going to preach business while ignoring all the business voices when it comes to transportation, right?
David, it would be fine if it was just inflation. It’s not.
Brian once again reveals that his allegiance to the Party and to its principles of no taxes is absolute; after all, it has proved in some cycles to be a very effective election gimmick. But given the massive deterioration of our roads and bridges (and buildings, but that is another story), to hold to this ideology is to deny reality. It has been estimated that we have eight billion dollars in deferrred maintenance of our roads and bridges, which is incredible in a state that has such incredible benefit from the operation of the Port of Virginia. This failure to deal with such a strategic issue will have significant impact on our ability to recover from recession, as well as to participate in the expected bonanza from inrease in port activity incident to the widening of the Panama Canal. OK, not back to arguing among the candidates in regard to the contract.
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