A guest message

I’ll add some thoughts of my own afterward, but this came to me from a friend. I’ll reveal who at the end.

“Faith – to trust in, to believe in, have confidence in, loyalty to”.

To read the papers, one would think that America is rapidly going to “hell in a hand-basket”. All we read about is the high numbers of foreclosures, while never seeing reports that 96% of all mortgage payments are being made on time.

The press, along with an uninformed public, cry out to Congress to “fix this mess”. However, in reality, the greatest scandal of the mortgage crisis is that it was an intentional loosening of underwriting standards by our government.

At the core of this “crisis” are loans made with essentially no underwriting standards – no verification of income or assets; no down payments and very little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments.

And who is responsible for these ill-conceived policies? It was our own U.S. Congress and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1995 that essentially ordered lending institutions, under threat of repercussions from the Justice Department, to loosen their lending policies and approve more loans.

Ironically, the one mortgage lender that followed “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted” was none other than Countrywide Mortgage!

For Congress to chastise Countrywide and other lending institutions for the subprime mortgage situation is the ultimate act of chutzpah!

Congress is now blaming those institutions for simply doing what they were told.

The price of oil is sky-high and gasoline is pushing $5.00 per gallon while our elected representatives in Washington are standing in the way of energy independence.

This obstruction of America’s pursuit of energy independence shows a deep disrespect for and a serious loss of faith in the American spirit and American ingenuity and know-how.

America can and will develop safe and economical nuclear power. America can and will develop clean coal technology. America can and will be the leader in alternative forms of energy such as hydrogen fuel-cell technology, nuclear fusion, wind, solar, etc.

America can and will discover and extract our own petroleum reserves in an ecologically responsible way.

Congress – get out of the way and let us do it!

War is hell! The critics say that we must cut and run in Iraq. That all is lost. But there is never mention of the millions of lives saved from Saddam Hussein’s gas, or the open markets in Baghdad, or the new schools, power plants, sewage and water plants, or most importantly, the first democratically elected government in that country in decades.

Just a few short years ago, all of America, most of the members of the US Congress and most of the leaders of the free world were calling for Saddam Hussein’s ouster.

This was a man who claimed to have weapons of mass destruction, repeatedly threatened to use them and had actually unleashed them on his own people. Nearly 90% of Kurdistan villages, over 4,000, were wiped out when he used chemical weapons (mustard gas and nerve agents). In addition, if they were not killed by the chemical onslaught, they were captured and sent to detention centers where most died of starvation or dehydration.

All this was evident to the world while Saddam repeatedly refused UN inspectors into his country.

The men and women of our military understand the mission in Iraq, they see the benefits to the Iraqi people, the United States and the entire free world. They are proud to be a part of the extraordinary liberation of that country.

All of America owes them a serious debt of gratitude and we should all be as supportive and proud of the mission as they.

There are many that look to government to solve our problems. That approach could not be more wrong.

The solutions to many of our problems lie not in Washington (or in Annapolis) but in every household in America. It is time to put earnings back in the hands of the people, time to put trust back in the hands of the people, time to put America back in the hands of the people.

Many of the problems that we are dealing with at home were not caused by a misalignment of the moon or stars, erratic weather patterns or even global warming! They were caused by misguided governmental policies and a basic misunderstanding of human nature.

President Reagan’s comments are as true today as they were in 1984 – “You cannot create a desert, hand a person a cup of water and call that compassion. You cannot pour billions of dollars into make-work jobs while destroying the economy that supports them and call that opportunity. And you cannot build up years of dependence on government and dare call that hope.”

We must remember that, other than National Security, our government’s primary role is to create the environment for individuals to flourish and be able to reach their full potential.

A society of opportunity awaits us. We must only believe in ourselves and give men and women of faith, courage and vision the openings and freedom to build it.

Let the naysayers and pessimists run down America and try to punish success. Let them call you greedy, selfish, and uncaring for not wanting government to take more and more of your money.

The critics of America are wrong on taxes, national defense, free markets, individual freedoms, our place in the world and our traditional way of life.

It is time that we say no to those who keep saying no to America. It is time to say that if you do not have FAITH in America and her people, stand aside and we will get the job done!

The writer in question is the chair of the Maryland Republican Party, Dr. Jim Pelura. At the time I received this, the op-ed hadn’t been printed and insofar as I know, I’m the first to do so (and quite pleased to be the first if I indeed am.)

Editorially, this is pretty much a grand slam. We Republicans do have a set of principles that we’re supposed to follow, but lately those in the upper reaches of the party seem to want to redefine the principles to suit a particular pet program or candidate. What Dr. Pelura has expressed is more along the lines of how the grassroots of the party indeed feel. I’ll admit that I voted for his opponent when Jim ran to be party chair after the 2006 elections, but thus far Jim Pelura has won me over by actually paying attention to those of us who take the time and attempt to sway voters at the local level.

The other part of this that I truly liked was how it goes on the offensive in a tactful way – hell, it’s probably about seven times as tactful as I would put it, but I’m not really known (aside from the bloviations of a critic or two) to be one who minces words. One criticism I make about myself when I reread posts after publication is that I point out the problems or level the charge against an issue or candidate, but don’t always think through what a good alternative would be – Dr. Pelura’s op-ed brings the solution to the problem he describes to its most basic level and for that he deserves commendation.

I suspect that over the next 28 months we on the conservative side in Maryland will have a lot of easy targets to choose from in our criticism; however, the trick will be to come up with sound alternatives and not just simply and reflexively be against everything the Democrats propose (but it’s so easy! After all, this is how the Democrats have campaigned against President Bush the last 7 1/2 years. But I digress.)

What does help us in the challenges we face in Maryland and across the country is having our set of principles to work with. You know, no one has ever really told me what the principles of the Democrat Party are – generally they have some sort of pablum about being for “working families.” Well, there’s a huge number of working families at the moment crying for relief from high taxation and high energy costs – unfortunately, the party that supposedly is catering to them seems only to hear what the special interests have to say.

I think Dr. Pelura was listening to those families when he wrote his op-ed.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

3 thoughts on “A guest message”

  1. It is interesting that Republicans are looking for ways to blame someone else for the mortgage crisis. Pelura suggests that the cause was a 1995 act. Can he provide some proof of that, or are we just supposed to take his word for it because you call him Dr.? The mortgage crisis could not possibly have been caused by six years of government by the corporation, for the corporation, under a Republican President and Congress. The next six months will bring us a flurry of merger and acquisition activity as companies try to get deals approved before the election. If Obama wins, it won’t be as easy to create a monopoly.

  2. In chastising Dr. Pelura for shifting blame for the mortgage issues we’re facing (which doesn’t affect the 96% of us who are on time with our mortgage) you decide to blame instead “government by the corporation, for the corporation under a Republican President and Congress.”

    Personally I think that the regulations are one factor in the issue, but the main problems are with consumers who in most cases went into getting the loan without the common sense to know that there’s only so much they can safely pay a month, while other loan consumers took a risk in speculating in property that they assumed would continue to increase in value. As we know, that risk didn’t pay off and many are looking to have the government bail them out for their poor investment decision.

    There is a larger point to be made about the law of unintended circumstances, though. With more abundant and Byzantine regulation we’re bound to trip over our own feet in more and more cases, and I think that’s Dr. Pelura’s overall theme.

  3. Consumers were buying houses the same way that they buy cars. If the bank would approve the loan and payment, then where do I sign. It was ridiculous, and it wasn’t caused by some act of 13 years ago. It was caused by poor oversight of the financial institutions involved. For two years, you couldn’t buy a livable house in Wicomico County for under $200,000. Banks were giving 80% mortgages, and then writing a second loan for the other 20%. Interest only loans, selling ARMs when fixed interest rates were at historic lows. There were mortgage brokers on every corner at the peak.

    And yes it does affect a small percentage of mortgage holders, but if you add up the total asset value involved, we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars.

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