Paulson Changes Course
Keven Ann Willey, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, notes that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is saying that the $700 billion financial bailout program will not be used to buy troubled mortgage-backed assets, but will be used to invest directly in banks. Willey says she'd like to see a discussion of this change in course among those who understand it.
That would make for a pretty small conversation. Lest anyone think that comment was tongue-in-cheek, I refer you to the testimony of the one person I would have predicted would have an explanation for what's happening, Alan Greenspan:
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief."Reader Eric Brandler suspects the taxpayer was conned and that there's "no theoretical upside, only downside for the taxpayers" in this new direction. It might not be as bad as that. The money the government is investing in the banks is being exchanged for preferred stock, so if the banks prosper, the taxpayer might still get his money back. That's what we're being told anyway. The reality is anyone's guess.
Congress created the position of special inspector general to oversee the bailout program, but the Bush administration has yet to nominate anyone to fill that newly created position. The most worrisome news about the bailout is the quote by the Treasury Department's Inspector General: "It's a mess."
One good consequence of the long wait between the election and the inauguration is that for a few months at least we truly have bi-partisan self-interest in doing something about the problem. We only have one President at a time and, for better or worse, right now that's George W Bush, whose legacy would be even more tarnished with further economic collapse on his watch. Barack Obama is keenly interested in avoiding that, too, to prevent his watch from having quite so deep a hole to dig out of. That all changes on January 20, 2009. Then, the Democrats will be in complete charge of the government and the Republicans go into full stonewall mode, hoping to blame as much of the continuing economic disaster on Democrats as they can. You can get a sneak preview of that from some of the reader comments. "Michael R McCullough" gives a conspiracy nut's view of the landscape -- there's no problem now, but just wait until Obama takes over.
"Unless Obama and congress institute their socialist principles, there is no cause to worry. ... This is a manufactured crisis and nothing more.""mr.ed" absolves Bush of all blame and explains just what the Democrats are scheming to impose on America:
"Chris Dodd (D), the Senate Banking Committee Chairman IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN CHARGE, not the President...that the Democrat-controlled House and Senate are SUPPOSED TO BE IN CHARGE, but continue to be in absentia. The handouts are a Democrat administration concept...it's called speading the wealth...it's called SOCIALISM!"If this is all the help Republicans can offer when their own man is still President, maybe impatience for January 20, 2009 is the right attitude after all. Lead, follow, or get out the way. It's time for the Republicans to just get out of the way.
Street Renaming a Skirmish in Bigger War
Tod Robberson, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, gives us a backstory to the news that the Dallas City Council rejected a proposal to rename Ross Avenue after Cesar Chavez. Robberson says that renaming advocate Alberto Ruiz, when he met with The Dallas Morning News editorial board several weeks ago, "could not have been more insulting and abrasive." Robberson says that being successful in politics is about being persuasive and Ruiz lacks the diplomacy to succeed.
I don't know Alberto Ruiz, but my guess is that he wasn't interested in persuading the DMN editorial board as much as he was in doing some good old fashioned consciousness-raising in the Hispanic community. For that, a little controversy goes a longer way than would a quick, polite agreement to put new street signs up in some neighborhood. My guess is that Alberto Ruiz has much bigger goals in mind than just a street renaming and he is more than willing to lose this skirmish in order to rally his side for the more consequential battles to come. And that's a lesson Tod Robberson either never learned or is overlooking as a possibility in this situation.
Consequences for California Prop. 8
Rod Dreher is at it again, publishing his soft bigotry in the The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog. This time the target of his complaints isn't Hispanics, isn't African-Americans, it's gays. He reports that a financial supporter of California's Proposition 8, denying gays the right to marry, resigned from his job as a local theater director when customers began to boycott his theater in protest.
Dreher says he's being persecuted for his support of traditional marriage, that angry gays are driving the man out of his job, that this is a return to the "blacklist" and "we don't want to go there again in this country."
Oh, please. Quit claiming he was defending traditional marriage. He was funding an effort to deny the benefits of traditional marriage to gays, a right that was already established. He was taking away rights from others, not defending anything. Reader "leslie" put it best: "He lost his job, but not the RIGHT to have one. I lost the RIGHT to marry."
If customers don't much care to see their ticket money get used to pay someone who funds anti-marriage activities, it shouldn't surprise anyone.
By the way, when the House Un-American Activities Committee starts hauling theatre producers in front of them to demand to know if they employ any anti-gay Mormons, then Dreher will have a historical analogy worth scare-mongering about.
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