Tag Archives: Politics

News

Republicans want bonuses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs canceled

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Rep. Michele Bachmann

Story here from CNS News.

Excerpt:

Seventy Republican members of Congress want Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to cancel up to $6 million in bonuses and deferred compensation — approved before  Christmas 2009 — for the chief executive officers of the failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“(T)here’s a letter that’s going to Sec. Geithner from a number of us calling for a rescission of those bonuses,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told CNSNews.com Wednesday.

On Christmas Eve, at the same time the Obama administration announced that it was removing any cap on the amount of taxpayer aid to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failed mortgage giants announced that they had received approval from their financial regulator to pay $42 million in compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.

The compensation packages included up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac chief executives. For the CEOs, annual compensation consists of a base salary of $900,000, $3.1 million in deferred compensation and incentive pay of as much as $2 million. Public disclosure that the retention bonuses were being copnsidered first surfaced in the Spring.

And naturally my favorite member of Congress was involved:

“(We are pushing) for an ending — an unwinding, if you will — of the U.S. owning Fannie and Freddie. We want out of this sinking business as quickly as we possibly can, and we want to pull the plug on an unlimited taxpayer bailout of Freddie and Fannie,” Bachmann said.

[…]“When Sec. Geithner said that there’d be unlimited taxpayer funding continuing to go into this sinking ship, and then bonuses they’re given?,” she said. “On what basis?  What did they do?  What was the criteria that they could possibly be given a bonus?  The fact that they got unlimited taxpayer money?”

Bachman was referring to Treasury’s announcement that it would send unlimited tax money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thereby eliminating the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid that Treasury can give without having to come back to Congress for authorization.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are closely tied to Democrats.

Consider this Fox News story.

Excerpt:

Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn’t afford them.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

More here about how the Democrats caused the recession.

News

Pro-life backlash against abortion in Mexico, South Korea and China

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Mexico

Story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Abortion-rights activists dreamed of legislative victories across Mexico after its Supreme Court last year upheld a Mexico City law allowing abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Instead, the opposite has happened. In state after state, antiabortion forces have won changes to local constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and explicitly granting legal rights to the unborn. In all, 17 state legislatures have approved such measures, often with minimal debate, since the August 2008 court decision validating Mexico City’s law. The Gulf Coast state of Veracruz in November became the latest state to do so. Its measure also called on the Mexican Congress to consider a similar amendment to the nation’s constitution.

[…]After the Mexico City rule was approved, lawmakers in many states “began to debate it and concluded that abortion goes against the rights of the person, against the woman,” said Jorge Serrano Limon, who leads an antiabortion group called Pro Vida.

The drive for stricter abortion laws has featured the Roman Catholic Church and the National Action Party of President Felipe Calderon. The party, known as the PAN, has a strong religious tilt and favors conservative social policies.

I’m a strong supporter of Felipe Calderon, especially his strong opposition to criminal gangs and unions. Good behavior doesn’t just “happen”, government needs to make sure that no law that is passed discourages people from working hard, following the rules and attending to their own families and communities.

South Korea

Story from Bio Edge. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For perhaps the first time, South Korea is debating abortion, to the great discomfiture of its gynaecologists. Unlike the US and other Western countries, abortion has not been framed as a moral issue in Korea, despite the growing number of Christians. And with a vigorous government campaign to reduce the birth rate, the number of abortions annually is about 340,000. Yet paradoxically, nearly all of them are technically illegal. Abortion is only permitted when the mother’s health is in serious danger, or in cases of rape, incest or severe hereditary disorders. All abortion over 24 weeks are illegal.

The problem is that the government’s campaign has been too successful. Liberal attitudes towards abortion have helped the South Korean birth rate to plunge to 1.19 children per woman. Now the government is desperate to boost it, lest the rapidly ageing population drag down the economy. President Lee Myung-bak has called for “bold” steps to increase the nation’s birthrate. Amongst these, apparently, is a crack-down on illegal abortions. “Even if we don’t intend to hold anyone accountable for all those illegal abortions in the past, we must crack down on them from now on,” the minister for health, welfare and family affairs, Jeon Jae-hee, told the New York Times.

The government is even sponsoring public service announcements and billboards. “With abortion, you are aborting the future,” says one of them.

Totally apart from the moral argument against abortion, there is a prudential argument that has more force the more the state forces retired people to depend on younger workers for pensions and/or health care benefits.

China

Story from the UK Telegraph. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, with sex-specific abortions a major factor.

A study by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences named the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country’s population of 1.3 billion.

“Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas,” where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were “complex”.

[…]The study said the key contributing factors to the phenomenon included the nation’s family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children citizens may have, as well as an insufficient social security system.

The situation influenced people to seek male offspring, who are preferred for their greater earning potential as adults and thus their ability to care for their elderly parents.

The Global Times said abductions and trafficking of women were “rampant” in areas with excess numbers of men, citing the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Illegal marriages and forced prostitution were also problems in those areas, it said.

More on this story here from LifeSiteNews. (H/T Andrew)

News

Berkeley high school to close science department to eliminate racial disparities

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Story from East Bay Express. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The proposal would trade labs seen as benefiting white students for resources to help struggling students.

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

Berkeley is probably the most liberal place in the United States, (located near San Francisco, CA). They best reflect the thinking of radical secular leftists who value equality of outcome far more than liberty and excellence. Rather than introducing educational reforms like merit-based pay, standardized testing, and expedited firing of underperforming teachers, they instead punish success with wealth redistribution.