GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

IRS targeting the Tea Party: really a surprise?

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For years, the Left has been trying to link the Tea Party with terrorism. Examples include:

Given the climate of bias, hate and fear that our top leaders and media have sought to foment against the Tea Party for years, is it any wonder that self-important IRS bureaucrats would act unethically toward it?

UPDATE: As long as my list is, I know that I’ve missed some juicy examples of our top leaders and media fomenting bigotry against the Tea Party. Please feel free to add more in the comments.

UPDATE: Rick Santelli points out the logical endpoint of the IRS’ approach – namely, your Obamacare death panel Accountability Board saying “No stent for you!” based on your politics – and predicts that Obamacare will be altered partly to prevent such a nightmare.

UPDATE: How could I not mention how they’ve also tried to link the Tea Party with racism? Latest example: a top NAACP leader claims that America’s racist Taliban deserved the IRS scrutiny.

Obama, Market Manipulator

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Via HotAir and others, we had the news last week that:

The Justice Department sued Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services late Monday, alleging the firm ignored its own standards to rate mortgage bonds that imploded in the financial crisis and cost investors billions. The government was seeking penalties of more than $1 billion…which would be the biggest sanction imposed on a firm related for its actions in the crisis.

This is market manipulation at its dirtiest. I’ll explain.

During the housing bubble, the government’s mortgage finance agencies, FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac), securitized scads of mortgages. That means they re-packaged them as securities – in this case, as bonds – which could be traded on Wall Street. And that helped the bubble along, because it made a lot more money available for people’s mortgages, especially sub-prime mortgages.

All three of the major U.S. bond ratings agencies – S&P, Moody’s and Fitch – gave the ‘securitized mortgage’ bonds the safest rating, AAA, which helped keep the housing bubble going. And that was what almost everyone wanted at the time, including the government.

Later, when the housing bubble burst, it was clear that these bonds did not deserve an AAA rating, and probably never had. The ratings agencies had been wrong, along with everyone else.

One question to ask is: why is S&P the first ratings agency, and so far the only one, to be punished after all this time? What distinguishes S&P? The answer seems fairly obvious: In August 2011, S&P downgraded the U.S. government’s own bonds, which remains a huge blow to Obama’s reputation.

Reports indicate that the government may also sue Moody’s. But they haven’t yet; any efforts there “are in the early stages, largely because state and federal authorities have dedicated more resources to the S&P lawsuit.” Golly, ya think?

So far, then, the moral of the story is: Don’t criticize Obama. Nice business you got there; would be a shame if anything happened to it.

But there is a deeper story: how market manipulation by the government causes bad outcomes; for which politicians (and other supporters of Big Government) always blame the market’s players, rather than themselves.

It was government which created Fannie and Freddie and had them massively support the sub-prime mortgage market. (For which GayPatriot has criticized Barney Frank’s involvement; see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Moreover, as Peter Schiff reminds us, it was government which established the Big 3 ratings agencies in positions free from ‘consumer’ pressure, where they would descend into a culture of complacent groupthink that favored, not the small investor, but the big players: [Read more…]

Gay Groups Should Make Repealing DADT the Priority

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Last night, when I tracked down the Gallup poll showing increasing number of conservatives favoring repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military, I saw in the margin a link to poll finding a Majority of Americans Continue[s] to Oppose Gay Marriage. This in line with Pew’s recent findings.

Indeed, while the number supporting state recognition of same-sex civil unions has steadily increased over the past six years, the number opposing gay marriage has remained relatively constant, hovering between 55 and 59 percent (it’s nowat 57).

So, while the President expressed a commitment to repeal both the military’s Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) policy as well as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in his speech Saturday night to the Human Rights Campaign, the smarter move politically might be to put the latter on the back burner and concentrate on repealing the former.

That’s why I commended the Administration for reaching out to Senator Lieberman.  He can help frame this as a national security issue, making it more difficult for the military from reacting as they did when, in 1993, Clinton first introduced the idea of lifting the ban.  The Democrat announced the move with Barney Frank, a longtime foe of a robust military, standing by his side.  And many in the military saw this as a move to enlist them in a social experiment crafted by legislators they did not trust.

That President Obama’s team has been working with the Connecticut Senator suggests the incumbent is aware of his predecessor’s mistakes and wishes to avoid them.  With ever larger majorities supporting repeal, the time is ripe for action.  But, he shouldn’t dither and should come forward with a time framer move forward on the issue or his promises will be for naught.

So, gay groups should focus on moving repeal, indeed, making this issue their priority, given that the chances of success are high.  And to increase those chances, they need end their suspicion of conservatives and build partnerships with those on the right side of the political aisle who have shifted their views on the ban in recent years. [Read more…]

Wall St. Meltdown – There Are People To Blame

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No, “WE” didn’t cause this Wall Street mess – Richard Miniter – PajamasMedia
(and yes, this is the whole column printed below)

You must be as tired of hearing it as I am.  Somehow, we are all at fault for Wall Street’s meltdown.  We demanded cheap loans for houses we couldn’t afford and voted in corrupt dolts, who took from Fannie Mae and told us what we wanted to hear.  Now, we are getting what we deserve.

Take Rod Dreher’s otherwise excellent column in the Dallas Morning News:

After all, these scoundrels did not elect themselves, nor was there an outcry heard in the land against Wall Street rapacity and recklessness when our 401(k)s were rising, and all but the lowliest plebeian was moving into his very own McMansion.

Along those lines, there’s one proverb that we will all become painfully acquainted with in the years to come: You reap what you sow.

There are two essential problems with this analysis: it is factually false and morally unwise.

Rep. Barney Frank was elected by a majority of the people of his district in Massachusetts. Senator Chris Dodd is brought to us by many but not all of the voters of Connecticut. And so on. Most of us never had the chance to vote for or against these solons. So why should we be blamed?

The regulatory changes that led us to this point were the work of lobbyists, bureaucrats and lawmakers including Dodd and Frank and corrupt executives, like Raines and Johnson. We know or can know their names.

The idea of blaming “all of us” is a way to avoid blaming those who did the deeds and reaped their ill-gotten gains.

What about cheap mortgages?   Sure, some of us took them when they were offered.   But who offered them and why?   Yes, it is the Clinton-era changes to the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend more for “affordable housing.” Law firms, including ones connected to Obama, sued banks that failed to meet their low-income quotas for mortgages. Bankers were not driven by greed, as everyone says, but by fear.  Fear of the baying hounds of regulators and lawyers would call them racist and ruin their careers.  But who unleashed the hounds on the bankers?

Particular policies and people made this mess. The public’s only role will be to pay the tab, a cruel addition that will equal more than $2,500 per person.  Can’t the talking class at least have the decency to stop blaming the one group generous enough to pay for the party they didn’t attend?

Amen, brother.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)