Afternoon Coffee

Let's give two cheers to Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander. They will submit a bill that provides for government-backed mortgages for new and old home-buyers at a 4% fixed rate over 30 years. Even with a VA discount, my father never beat that. The key here is not only first home buyers but those who want to refinance. I'll take it.

In the afternoon mail, Freedom Watch warns me that the choice facing all of us is freedom versus socialism. The letters outlines imaginary tax increases proposed by the Obama Administration that would raise the top marginal tax rate to 60%, as high as it was when Reagan was inaugurated. I don't remember us being socialist then. The fund-raising appeal wants me to forward my envelope to Steve Forbes, who actually might have something to worry about with higher rate for the top income earners.

This piece of mail reminds me why the Republicans lost the presidential election. Obama basically cut the legs off the Republican argument by calling for tax cuts of those earning less than $250,000. With a national average income of $46,000, Obama's plan basically included everyone, except the wealthy. For their part, the Republicans had nothing in their platform for the middle class or for small businesses. It was only when Joe the Plumber showed up did John McCain even discover small businesses. The irony was that the man wasn't named Joe, wasn't a licensed plumber and had no intention of starting a business. Yet, the Republicans kept insisting that Obama was going to raise everybody's taxes. Maybe John was worried that he would have to forfeit his AmEx Coronado Card.

One blogger on Daily Kos has a free market idea for solving the current banking problem--The Government takes all the TARP money and creates a separate, independent bank without all those liabilities and start lending money.

Barnie Frank was snarky on the Sunday talks shows by answering the claims about the stimulus bill being too large--"it's cheaper than the Iraq war". Shouldn't we spend at least the same on repairing the U.S.

Personally, I am for the Made in America proviso on the stimulus package. It only affects those programs funded by the Government, not the private sector. I think screams over protectionism and trade retaliation are overwrought.

The "birthers" are now suing Congress for allowing the electoral college vote to be completed. They now claim all Obama has to do is produce his birth certificate. They are arguing now that they have 47 suits going on and that this is wasting the taxpayers' money and that Obama is spending millions fighting this. I would love to see any evidence that Obama is spending any money responding to these suits. I say let a thousand flowers boom. Or let's arrest all the lawyers in this case on fraud and racketeering charges.

Weird but True. Kiryas Joel, an Hasidic community in New York, now is rated the poorest place in the country. Only Carbondale,Illinois had a lower per capita income ($15,799). 68% of the population are living below the poeverty line, compared to runner-up Athens City, Ohio at 52%. It inches out food stamp usage by 1 percent point of East St. Louis and Prichard City,Alabama.

Fox News is loudly ( do they say anything in any lower tone) proclaiming that Obama wants to cut the Defense Budget by 10%. To put it in prospective, the U.S. spends more on defense than all the rest of the earth combined. Of this amount, over 25% is currently missing and unaccounted for. Over $250 billion in contracts for the Iraq war,those for development programs only, is also lost. Combined you would have a decent downpayment on a stimulus package. Would we really suffer if the budget was cut by 10%? We'd probably save money.