Shameless

It is a bit of a tradition in politics for a ward-heeler to make the rounds of the neighborhoods and buy a round of drinks. You don't go so often as to be conspicuous but you show up often enough that like Cheers, "everybody knows your name." When election day comes around a bit of loyalty is inevitable and your guy wins again. That's simply a way of life in old city politics, but it shouldn't be a national policy.

We've been exposed for the last three years to a binge of hand-outs and redistribution the likes of which we've never seen. This is a long way from Keynesian pump-priming. It is much more akin to putting a double-sawbuck in the hands of a street-corner wino and taking him to the polling place with a check-list.

There was some semblance of governmental response when the pay-offs to loyal unions and state/local government supporters was cloaked in "stimulus" garb and linked to magnificent restorations of infrastructure. Then it began to erode as we learned that "shovel-ready" was more related to a dirty barn than the rebuilding of a nation.

Healthcare became a bloated bundle of exemptions, carve-outs, unsustainable gift boxes and a very apparent seizure of an otherwise satisfactory industry.

All semblance of justification has now been abandoned as this week we see a frantic President desperate for re-election criss-crossing the country to buy votes. The Constitution is suspended for the duration. Legislation is no longer given even a nod. It is government by fiat with executive orders replacing democracy.

We got into economic trouble because we promised people with no credit and no income a "right" to home-ownership. Reasonable businesses were forced to comply with federal laws mandating suspension of due diligence. Governmental gas pumped an inflation in property values that kept the air in the sinking financial boat. Then someone cried out that the emperor was indeed unclothed and mortgage based derivatives insured by a magic and mirrors government duo of agencies collapsed.

The solution was to pump gas faster. We got TARP and Stimulus I. We got Government Motors. We got Quantitative Easing I and II, pending QE III. We've got more QEs than Cunard. Surprisingly, through it all, the American masses assumed that government was the source of money and that it was limitless. The "right" of everyone to everything right now is clearly manifest in the OWS movement.

This week we got a threat, not a proposal, for a Presidential order to mandate mortgage refinancing with further suspension of underwriting rules. Your house is currently mortgaged at 130% of assessed value? That's OK. We'll now mandate that you can refinance at a lower rate for even more. And good ol' Bamster will "insure" the mortgage lenders. Wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn?

Here's a new one:

Exclusive Government Student Loans Now Lessen Repayment Obligation

You see, buried in Stim I we had the end of privately financed student loans. You can't shop for a student loan anymore. That's way too free market. It is solely under the control of the federal government.

We've already got a default rate on existing loans which is well beyond the fiscally tolerable level. But the whining class represented by Occupy Elm Street, et. al. has pleaded for loan forgiveness. Seriously, they took money, graduated from college, and without having learned the most basic concept of loan and payback they now find they can't get a job using their Master's degree in Trans-gendered Environmental Pacifist Studies. Therefore it is the government's job to make those greedy people who gave them money in the first place forgive them their debts. It's sort of the Lord's Prayer in the financial markets.

The scary part is that the mouth-breathing segment of the population inhales this stuff like high-quality Columbian through a rolled up Benjamin.