ACORN=Waste

Thought of the day: One of the hidden costs of subsidies is monitoring the process. Of course, politicians never bring this dirty little fact to light when they are pushing a program that will "benefit" society. ACORN is just such a program. No one bothered to check on their practices because like many government programs that are essentially political patronage the cost of monitoring is rife with costly political risk. Even if a Republican had, out of the blue, pushed against funding for ACORN--a hydra headed operation with a massive network--without the scandal now brewing, I believe that he would have been rebuffed by his own party. Heck, even Bush funded ACORN without any protest.

This is a lesson. Beware of government funding any program that proposes to fix society's ills. They always have very expensive hidden costs.

Acorn and the seeds that it has sown

Democrats and the Left have constantly accused Republicans of voter fraud (with little real evidence) particularly over the last two presidential elections. Well, here's a real eye opener. ACORN is a radical liberal pet agency that has recently been nabbed for voter fraud in eleven states. But wait--there is more to Acorn than meets the eye-- ACORN also has a hand in the subprime debacle. It intimidated banks to lend to borrowers that would not have qualified for loans by using the Community Reinvestment Act as a legal bludgeon--threatening litigation if it didn't get its way.



HT: Liberty Pen

Some of the best posts I’ve read on the “Wall Street Bailout.”

From The Bobo Files:

There is an overwhelmingly clear majority in both the House and the Senate in Congress. If the Dems really wanted to pass a bill, they could do it on their own. I don’t buy their bullshit that they want to pass a partisan bill. They could care less about anything else, so why this? Could it be the fact that they are trying to siphon off 20% from the $700 Billion + to go to ACORN (the organization that Obama worked with) and other housing organizations? That 20% which is supposed to be going to pay down debt - they want to put it back in to the same kind of freakin’ organizations that caused this problem in the first place. They want to bail out stupid and/or unqualified homeowners on our dollar. They want to give money to an organization that is currently under investigation for voter fraud. Is it any wonder the Republicans won’t sign off on it?

From Shaving Leviathan:

Thanks to the creation and favored treatment of Fannie and Freddie, the CRA, the Tax Act Reform of 1986, and a host of other legislation, the mortgage lending market was severely distorted. Self-limiting free-market mechanisms that constrain bad investment decisions was thus removed. The Fed greased the wheels, and put the whole train on a roller coaster, through a years-long policy of artificial manipulation of interest rates.

(This is not to mention the ample funds Obama himself received from Fannie and Freddie. However, even at #2 on the list of recipients, $135,000 over three years isn't enough to make the case that he was bought, as is common currency on conservative blogs. It's chump change and a tiny percentage of the $150 million those two paid to politicians over the years.)