Libertarian Party National Chairman Bill Redpath has some harsh words for the $300 billion proposed measure to “stabilize” the housing market: “The bill is an atrocity, pure and simple,” says Redpath. “[It] creates more regulation, more government and more mess, all with the taxpayer on the hook. In the end, the government will have spent at least 300 billion dollars trying to solve a problem it created in the first place, without ever addressing why we are in this situation to begin with.”
The solution to the housing prices is “time,” says Redpath. “Only with time will the housing market straighten itself out,” adding that government’s intervention only exacerbates the problem.
Party spokesman Andrew Davis is equally outraged: “This housing bill is like Congress painting a collapsing house,” he says. “It’s just a pretty façade masking a ramshackle interior. Unfortunately, it’s the taxpayer who’s responsible for the bill, and it will be the taxpayer who suffers during the clean up.”
Leaving the housing market untouched by government is not as scary as it sounds, says Davis, commenting that “people may think they need government help when really it only makes matters worse for them in the long run.”
“The solution is not complicated,” Davis continued, “and it doesn’t take a mountain of regulation and subsidies. All the government has to say is ‘we’ll let the forces of the market balance themselves out,’ and then let it be. Anything else puts taxpayers on the hook for mistakes other people made.”
You’re welcom G.E. – I know I’m often a cowboy, shooting quick off of the hip, but it’s really not personal. (I’m still laughing about being called a neocon, btw)
Good points in that Volok article for people who go a little too far and end up deifying the confederacy.
“If Sonny Landham comes out later today and says, “I repudiate racism and I’m for a free market in energy; a non-interventionist foreign policy†— would it erase his earlier comments?”
No, but better late than never, right?
“18% of respondents say they would support a secession movement in their own state, including 24% of southerners.”
I wish they’d break stuff like this out by state, a vague average doesn’t give any insight. I seem to remember a Hawaiian poll from years back had support up in the 40s.
Thanks for that link, pdsa. Interesting.
What a cretin this “Professor” Ann Outhouse is.
G.E., it’s completely OT, but Ping-Up, over at Volokh Conspiracy. I believe you’ll appreciate the discussion going on in the thread presently.
So what?
He said elsewhere that we should “privatize” companies that are already private in every way but two, and in those two ways, he wants to make them less so… Including giving the Fed more power.
If Sonny Landham comes out later today and says, “I repudiate racism and I’m for a free market in energy; a non-interventionist foreign policy” — would it erase his earlier comments?
I can see it now… If Landham had apologists like Barr, he would have people saying, “Look, Sonny isn’t racist! He doesn’t hate Arabs or love socialism!”
Bob Barr said something pretty similar in his recent press release.
The LP has been horribly wrong in many of their recent press releases — the Shane Cory smear on Mary Ruwart; the assertion that the government has never before regulated food prices (laughable); and Redpath’s hideous suggestion that the Supreme Court establishes “rights” (a “right” he doesn’t even endorse)…. HOWEVER, on the housing and Fannie/Freddie issues, the LP has been 1000% on the mark. I wish I could say the same for Barr.