Just show me the crime…

From the Corner at NRO “HoyaDomer” writes:

I guess it’s the lawyer in me, but when people say that these Wall Street people ought to go to prison, I always ask, for what crime? If there’s a crime committed, as a prosecutor, I’m all in favor of holding people accountable. But Newt’s response was perfectly reasonable. There’s a lot more meat to charges of graft with the Countrywide sweetheart deal to Dodd, the shenanigans at Fannie and Freddie, and links between the corporate people involved and Frank than there are for any other allegation.

Living in the Past

Ben Jones, again, from the Housing Bubble Blog:

We live in a time when, if a sparrow falls in in Timbuktu, the media wants to know what the govt is going to do about it. One thing we could “do” is to stop making the situation worse…

Yes, we’ve wasted trillions trying to turn back the clock on the housing bubble. But IMO, the biggest mistake was to waste years ignoring the fact that we’ve got to earn a living in the post bubble economy.

Truth about Taxes

Dan at Half Sigma writes:

I think that the real reason many blue collar types are opposed to taxes for the rich is that they feel like it just facilitates welfare transfers to the poor and encourages even more mass immigration to the United States.

Those people are opposed firstly to a welfare state of the type that has rotted much of Europe.

When we were spending on things that were truly for everyone (National Park System, World War II, the Space Program) people generally didn’t have a problem with taxes. Now it is the case that most taxes are merely for handouts to other people. Hardly a unifying vision there.

 

Leadership

“Stilicho” at Vox Day:

The media voices are political animals just as much as the elected officials. The same M.O. applies as well: find a mob, determine where it’s heading, jump in front and scream “follow me!”

Affordable Housing

At his own Housing Bubble Blog, Ben Jones comments:

How many decades were we told we had to have HUD/FHA and the GSEs or there wouldn’t be affordable housing? Then when it all unravels, we’re told we have to have these organizations or house prices will fall.

How can the media not notice this absurd shift in policy?

Where is Osama?

From Steve Sailor’s blog:

One thing has been puzzling me. This simultaneous revolt across the Arab world seems to be exactly what Sheikh Osama was working toward for the last 20 years. He’s stated clearly that killing Western infidels is just a tactic. He doesn’t care about imposing sharia in non-Arab countries; his goal is to replace the Western-favoring dictators in the Arab world with Islamic governments. Suddenly he’s getting what he wants … or so it would appear … but why is he silent? Why no words of encouragement?

Is he dead?

Light Rail Fail

Coketown comments at Althouse:

I’m perplexed at the adolescent fascination of the progressive movement has with light rail systems. It seems like such a silly outlier on their wishlist. Healthcare, wage control, free college education, I can at least see why those make weak hearts bleed. But light rail? WTF?

The Ancient Argument

From commenter “Joseph” at Steve Sailer’s blog:

…not everyone accepts that the Platonic eidoi are not real. Just because something has been out of fashion for seven centuries does not mean that it’s false. Indeed, most of the arguments against realism are strawman arguments, too. I’ve yet to hear a defense of nominalism that accounts for our understanding of the world. People just take it as a given that nominalism is true — it’s a convenient convention, ultimately irreconcilable with our experience of reason and of the world, that agrees with our age’s tastes and concerns. Who cares about ultimate metaphysical and epistemic consistency when we can make such great predictions and cool stuff? Theory is so passé; we moderns want power.

On the Economy

At Calculated Risk, “Rob Dawg” comments:

Don’t mistake pessimism for being a pessimist. This is going to be a fantastic economy after the great cleansing. We avoided the pain of pulling the splinter. We avoided the pain of draining the resulting infection. We avoided the pain of excising the decay. We avoided the pain of curing the blood poisoning. Now we are trying to avoid the pain of amputating the toe. I’m still pessimistic over our manning up and taking the correct steps for a cure but when we finally do the prognosis is excellent.

The Education Bubble

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, “supertatie” writes:

To borrow an oft-used phrase at the moment, the current business model in higher education is UNSUSTAINABLE. Rather than making education affordable, the easy availability of student loans has enabled schools to send tuition rates skyrocketing, far in excess of cost of living, or inflation, or any other reasonable measure of financial expense.