Tag Archives: Voting

Commentary

Thomas Sowell explains how politicians cause recessions while getting elected

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Article here at Townhall.com. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

After the cascade of economic disasters that began in the housing markets in 2006 and spread into the financial markets in Wall Street and even overseas, people in the private sector pulled back. Banks stopped making so many risky loans. Home buyers began buying homes they could afford, instead of going out on a limb with “creative”– and risky– financing schemes to buy homes that were beyond their means.

But politicians went directly in the opposite direction. In the name of “rescuing” the housing market, Congress passed laws enabling the Federal Housing Administration to insure more and bigger risky loans– loans where there is less than a 4 percent down payment.

A recent news story told of three young men who chipped in a total of $33,000 to buy a home in San Francisco that cost nearly a million dollars. Why would a bank lend that kind of money to them on such a small down payment? Because the loan was insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

The bank wasn’t taking any risk. If the three guys defaulted, the bank could always collect the money from the Federal Housing Administration. The only risk was to the taxpayers.

Does the Federal Housing Administration have unlimited money to bail out bad loans? Actually there have been so many defaults that the FHA’s own reserves have dropped below where they are supposed to be. But not to worry. There will always be taxpayers, not to mention future generations to pay off the national debt.

Very few people are likely to connect the dots back to those members of Congress who voted for bigger mortgage guarantees and bailouts by the FHA. So the Congressmen’s and the bureaucrats’ jobs are safe, even if millions of other people’s jobs are not.

Congressman Barney Frank is not about to cut back on risky mortgage loan guarantees by the FHA. He recently announced that he plans to introduce legislation to raise the limit on FHA loan guarantees even more.

Congressman Frank will make himself popular with people who get those loans and with banks that make these high-risk loans where they can pocket the profits and pass the risk on to the FHA.

So long as the taxpayers don’t understand that all this political generosity and compassion are at their expense, Barney Frank is an odds-on favorite to get re-elected. The man is not stupid.

Can you guess which political party Barney Frank represents?

Polemics

Why did 77% of young unmarried women vote for Obama in 2008?

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Consider this analysis from a left-wing site of the 2008 election.

Excerpt:

On Tuesday, the nation made history. It made history in electing the first African American president; it made history in building a bigger margin for the first female Speaker of the House; it made history in delivering the biggest Democratic margin since 1964; it made history in sending a record number of people to the polls and the highest percentage turnout since the 1960 election.

[…]But one thing is immediately clear. Unmarried women played a pivotal role in making this history and in changing this nation. They delivered a stunning 70 to 29 percent margin to Barack Obama and delivered similarly strong margins in races for Congress and the U.S. Senate. Although unmarried women have voted Democratic consistently since marital status has been was tracked, this election represents the highest margin recorded and a 16-point net gain at the Presidential level from 2004.

In particular, note the chart that shows that younger unmarried women voted 77-22 for Obama. 77-22 for Obama. This is actually in keeping with my previous post on this topic, which documented how women have continuously voted for bigger and bigger government since they started voting. The problem with big government policies is that they drain money from the family which is then redistributed outside of the family.

To have a strong family, you need more than just money. You need independence so that you can keep your vision distinct and separate from the vision of the government. If a family depends on the government, then they are beholden to the government’s values. The government can even overrule conscience rights and religious liberty. Keeping the family strong and separate from government is especially important for Christian parents who have a specific goal of passing on their faith to their children.

Here are just a few of the things I thought of that help make a marriage strong: (there are many more)

  • low taxes so the household has more money to spend on the things we need for our plan
  • access to low cost energy provided by domestic energy production by private firms
  • access to low cost, high quality consumer goods through increased free trade
  • the ability to choose homeschooling or private schools (and the more school choice, the better)
  • the ability to fund a retirement plan that covers the family – not anyone else
  • the ability to purchase a health care plan that covers the family – not anyone else
  • the ability to own firearms for protection of the home and the family
  • the ability to pass Christian convictions on to children without interference from the state
  • the ability to speak and act as a Christian in public without reprisals from secular left special interest groups
  • low threat of being the victim of criminal activity
  • low threat of being bankrupted by the costs of divorce court
  • low threat of being arrested on a false domestic violence charge (e.g. – verbal abuse)
  • low threat of never seeing your children because of loss of custody after a divorce
  • low threat of being imprisoned due to failure to pay alimony and child support after a job loss

It seems to me that a vote for Obama is a vote against all of these things. So then why did unmarried women (especially Christian women) vote for him? It seems as thought they are less interested in marriage and family and more interested in having the government provide incentives for anti-child, anti-family behaviors like pre-marital sex, contraceptives, abortions, welfare for single mothers, divorce courts, government coercion of husbands, state-run day-care, government-run schools, in-vitro fertilization, etc. I don’t mind if people need these things, but they should pay for it themselves. but I don’t see why unmarried women should favor family money being spent on government programs that help other people to avoid the cost and consequences of their own decisions.

News

Canadian Evangelicals and Catholics more opposed to secularism and socialism

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The Hill Times reports. (H/T Joanne from Blue Like You)

Excerpt:

According to the recently-released EFC study, “Canadian Evangelical Voting Trends by Region, 1996-2008,” which uses a series of electoral polls by Ipsos Reid and Angus Reid Strategies, in 1996 the Evangelical support for the Liberals was 35 per cent and it has been rapidly going down to 11 per cent in the last election, as the Conservative vote rose. The Conservatives’ support from evangelical Christians peaked in 2006, with 60 per cent of the Evangelical vote and then dropped to 48 per cent in 2008. The NDP vote in 2008 was at 16 per cent among evangelicals.

Evangelicals make up about 12 per cent of Canada’s population, or four million people distributed throughout Canada and to a lesser degree in Quebec.

[…]”There are two things that are fairly important for evangelicals, as they are important to Canadians who engage in the political system. The first thing is that there’s space created for engagement; so we have identified in the paper some of the incidents where it appeared that the Liberal Party was closing down the opportunity for evangelicals to engage on equal footing with non-evangelicals in the party and we’ve also identified where the Conservative Party had opened some place for evangelicals to engage on an equal footing,” said Don Hutchinson, EFC vice-president and co-author of the report.

[…]According to this research, Catholic support for the Liberal Party has dropped 24 points since 2000. In 2006 they were as likely to vote Conservative as Liberal and by the 2008 election, they showed preference for the Conservative Party.

Joanne (who calls the Liberal leader “Iffy”) adds:

The question is less why it happened – because that is obvious, but rather why do the Liberals even bother?

Being religious usually involves having a moral compass and a set of strong values. It also means showing respect for other folks’ spiritual views.

Clearly Iffy is hardly the poster boy of unwavering commitment and sticking to principles and decisions. Furthermore, his strategists have have often shown contempt for people of faith and great delight in stirring up pseudo-scandals like Wafergate.

In other words, they are unable to walk the talk.

Michael Ignatieff appears to be an atheist. His Liberal party is anti-Christian, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-liberty and anti-prosperity. I am surprised that anyone could vote for the Liberals, or worse, the New Democrats or the Bloc Quebecois. The left in Canada is hostile to publicly-expressed authentic Christianity across the board. The left is happy to violate the rights of authentic Christians in Canada.

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