have you called your doctor?

A weekend full of Coach K commercials,surrounded by Cialis ads with the doctors warning about 72 hour erections.


Insert your penis joke here....

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Conservatism is like Latin, it's dead language

Alas, in the midst of the Schiavo mess, some on the Right have realized they may have, just a teensy-weensy bit, mortally wounded the principles of their ideology. From the Times:

"This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative," said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked - even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism."

Stephen Moore, a conservative advocate who is president of the Free Enterprise Fund, said: "I don't normally like to see the federal government intervening in a situation like this, which I think should be resolved ultimately by the family: I think states' rights should take precedence over federal intervention. A lot of conservatives are really struggling with this case."

Some more moderate Republicans are also uneasy. Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the sole Republican to oppose the Schiavo bill in a voice vote in the Senate, said: "This senator has learned from many years you've got to separate your own emotions from the duty to support the Constitution of this country. These are fundamental principles of federalism."

Too bad for those fellows, they didn't realize they were watching the disintegration of their cause. "Conservative" no longer has any meaning in political discussion anymore. Those who claim to be it, rarely adhere to a set of principles about the limits of government, at least not when those principles get in their way.

It's not surprising really, Ronald Reagan probably genuinely believed in conservative governance, as did Goldwater, but the conservatives they led into the GOP upon desegregation were never really about limited government. These were southern "conservatives" who believed in a generally lassiez faire government with the ability to inflict great hardship on those who opposed the majority. They didn't see anything run with Bull Connor's hoses, or shutting down public schools, or even creating a whole separate beauracracy to implement segregation.

Initially these folks were attracted to limited government, because the government being limited was representative of a larger body which did not hold their views in the majority. But now as time has worn on, and admittedly conservatism has abandoned its overtly-racist stance, the descendants of the southern "conservative" have sought to utilize government power whenever it suits their purpose. Whether that be putting up a 10 commandments monument on public property or continuing to push a case that has spent 7 years in the courts on "due process" grounds.

So, conservatism is dead, it should no longer be used reflexively to describe those on the right. A new word is necessary. I would say it's "Delayism" but that's probably not going to get past the media.

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Why do I not Believe President Bush?

From today's News & Record
"This isn't a political issue," Bush insisted, in New Mexico. "This isn't, you know, Democrats trying to get ahead of Republicans or Republicans trying to get ahead of Democrats. If that's the spirit in Washington, nothing's going to get done."

From the Washington Post March 20

An unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators, said the debate over Schiavo would appeal to the party's base, or core, supporters. The memo singled out Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is up for reelection next year and is potentially vulnerable in a state President Bush won last year.

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Why your (newly) expensive house hurts our economy

Michael Kinsley writes about the housing boom, and provides a plain-spoken analysis for how it is likely to end (sometime). He ends with an explanation of the difference in increases in price for labor, capital and housing.

Perusing the real estate ads like pornography and imagining what our houses are worth is the great American pastime. But a real estate crash, if it came, would have some advantages. The 19th-century American Henry George explained how rising real estate values harm the economy by operating as a tax on both labor and capital. Money for labor makes people work harder. Money for capital makes people save more. Both make the country richer. Money for land just makes the owner richer. There are all sorts of complications and qualifications, but the basic point is a good one.

People do foolish things under the impression that they are getting richer because their houses are worth more. They save less, they spend more. Egged on by television commercials, they "consolidate their debts" (i.e., buy a new boat) with a second mortgage. And who really gains from soaring house prices? First-time buyers don't. Nor does anyone who plans ever to trade up. The only beneficiaries are those who are selling their last house, after a lifetime of appreciation. The bigger the house, the bigger the windfall. This is yet another thank-you from
America to the so-called Greatest Generation. I'm not sure it's necessary.

I'd add to elements to this, first housing prices are rising at a time when affordable housing is out of reach for many Americans, a consequence of the federal contribution to housing dropping from $79 B to $29B in real dollars over the last 25-plus years. Second, a major boost to the housing market over the last 2-3 years has been interest-only loans and adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). Both are dangerous lending devices, the interest-only loans eviscerate any gain for the homeowner through equity; the ARM is a time-bomb in light of the historically low level of interest rates and the weakness in the dollar (both of which indicate that the index on which the ARM's rate is based will shoot up). Alan Greenspan has been a big proponent of ARMs. Not sure if he's being paid by Ameriquest or Countrywide (two notorious predatory lenders) , but if he was, perhaps they'd let him know that many lenders base approval for an ARM on a borrower's ability to make the initial payment, disregarding his or her ability to afford the later, higher payments caused by rising interest rates.

Our housing bubble has been caused by multiple forces, many good. But in the end we have an over-priced market financed heavily by consumer debt. Worse, we have many borrowers who have traded unsecured debt for less equity in their home, which could shortly see a significant drop in its value - and thus put them in upside down mortgages (debt > secured property value). Thus when they try to get out of their much higher payments, they won't be able to find a lender willing to give them enough money to pay off their debt.

There will soon be hell to pay, it's just a matter of from whose hide the payments come.

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