Judicial Insanity

Last year, a Riverhead judge decided to eliminate the mortgage debt of an East Patchogue couple - all of it principal, years unpaid interest, fees, charges everything. He completely discharged the debt and gave them clear title to the house that was security for the loan that they did not repay. There were no allegations that the lenders did anything illegal, only that they were aggressive in collecting on a valid debt and recovering the security that was pledged on a the loan. Three things are clear: the couple owed the money; they had not paid it back; and the lender wanted their money to be paid back or wanted their security (the house). The judge's decision to void the loan was based upon his perception that the lender imposed "mortifying abuse against Defendant" - they were were mean.

Fortunately, a higher court reversed this madness noting that it was not based upon anything.

The newspaper article announcing the reversal mentioned only a Riverhead judge and avoided any mention of the idiot’s name. But his name is something that everyone should know. His name is Jeffrey A. Spinner and claims to be a registered Conservative. What is worse, he had the Conservative line last time he ran.

Economic Insanity

A woman wrote into the paper with a two part solution to all our economic problems. Her first step is for everyone to stop buying things (she singles out video stuff and make-up)that she considers a waste of money. Her plan is for reinvigorating a consumer economy is for consumers to stop consuming! People should spend within their means but to stop spending on entire industries will: put those industries out of business, make thousands more people unemployed, and remove more people from the tax rolls. The second part of her plan assumes that all this money that would not be spent by consumers on what they want to buy should be sent to the government to use as they see fit. Brilliant! It is a large part of the problem that this dope is allowed to vote.
This level of economic analysis is equivalent to suggesting that the minimum wage be raised to $100 an hour so that everyone makes over $200,000 a year.

Paying for Health insurance

The Obamoids have announced that 85% of health insurance premiums have to be spent on health services. The other 15% can be used to cover those pesky things like Rent, salaries and benefits to employees, electricity, heat, marketing/advertising, general administrative costs, and the twin evils of “executive bonuses” and profits. This comes from a group of people who have no experience running a company, meeting a payroll, or dealing with revenues that are dependent upon market forces. When they run out of money their plan is to print more. The result of this effort will be to put private companies out of business so that the government is the font of all health services. You will be going to the guys who run the Post Office to fund your knee replacement. That will work well.

Unemployment benefits

Last week’s vote against extending benefits without funding it was the right vote for the Republicans but another step along their road to becoming a permanent minority party. Pelosi brought a bill to the floor to vote for extending benefits – no conditions. She put the Republicans in a position where they could not get any reduction in other spending to “pay” for it. Good politics by her - everything happened according to her plan. The Republicans come off like the Grinch; the Democrats are the friends of the (non)-working man. Wanting to fund the extension by not spending (wasting?) money elsewhere was the right thing to do. The Republicans problem is that they do the right thing and stop. No campaign to announce why they took the position; no effort to publicize Pelosi’s political machinations. They didn’t even make the point of their support for the extension. Marketing is not their strong point.

Senior Bankruptcy

Newsday guy wrote an article about all the poor seniors who are filing bankruptcy because they have excessive credit card debt. No sympathy here.
Apparently, 67 percent of the senior bankruptcy filings are citing problems tied to credit cards. What could those problems be? The news flash is that they borrowed more money than they could afford to pay back. The Newsday defense is that they were “deluged with applications in the mail, and cards are [were?] easy to get” is a joke. This defense was once simply dismissed by mothers all over the country with the observation that just because the other guy jumps off the bridge you should not do it too. But now more specifics are required. Neither the Banks, BMW, Lexus, nor any one else has the power to make American citizens buy anything against their will. (Excepting of course President Obama’s requirement that everyone must buy medical insurance.) Marketing pitches for a variety of products are a part of every day life for all of us. People who bought more stuff than they could afford and borrowed money to do so, simply did a stupid thing. But their problems are not mine or anyone else’s who has people managed to reach “seniorhood” while living within their not very munificent means. To single out seniors like this is condesending. It can reasonably be assumed that bankruptcy filings are up for every demographic group. For the most part, the reasons are the same - people voluntarily entered into more debt than they could pay back. You could have written exactly the same piece using race in lieu of age and you would have been castigated severely. But you generated this puff piece to rail at banks that lent people money and actually want it back with the agreed to interest. Waste of ink.


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Earmarks

The earmark defenders are trying to convince everyone that earmarks only account for about $9 billion in spending. That depends. Earmarks are bribes. The system works like this: I’ll put your earmarks in my bill if you vote for it. Then, you put my earmarks in your bill and I’ll vote for that. They both get their earmarks and the taxpayer pays for A.) the bribes (earmarks) necessary to collect votes for these bills, and B.) for the bills that wouldn’t have passed without bribes. Think the total is still $9 billion?

Rangel

Guilty verdict by a group of his peers. Big surprise. But the charges are misleading. Not paying income tax is a federal crime - let’s see where that goes; not reporting assets is internal to Congress (slap/slap – but where did all that money come from and is there more?); you are supposed to own one rent controlled building and he owned 4 – probably fraud. The big one here is hiding behind the “using government stationary” charge. That means he was soliciting money from companies that had issues before his committee - the one that gives out all the money. In simpler terms the deal is: Your Company donates money to my cause and I pass the earmarked legislation that helps your Company. In more blunt language that is a bribe – felony.
It took minutes for 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans to see that he was guilty and see through his ridiculous efforts to postpone the verdict. Incredibly, there are still people who are defending him with excuses ranging from “everybody does it”, through “he didn’t do it maliciously”, to that old standard of “RACISM”. Sorry Charlie – doesn’t wash. Now wait until we hear Maxine Waters scream.