Political commentators have spilled a septic field of ink explaining what drives the Tea Party movement; and, sure, the movement is complex and varied, resisting any single attempt to blah blah blah. But the core of it boils down to the Saturday Night Live skit below. The analogy runs like this: The Steve Martin character and his wife represent the ruling political class in Washington; and the Tea Party is the book author.
Read more on SNL Skit to Congress: Don’t Buy Stuff You Can’t Afford…
Memo to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore: Free markets didn’t cause the financial crisis. The biggest culprits were government planners meddling with the market. That’s the message of Acton’s newest video short.
What is the root cause of the sub-prime crisis shaking the global economy? We need to know so we don’t allow it to screw up our economy even worse.
Many point to dishonesty and poor judgment on Wall Street. There was plenty of that leading up to the near-trillion dollar bailout, and even now the stock market is busily disciplining stupid, dishonest companies.
Others point to the many people who falsified loan applications to get mortgages beyond their means. That too played a role.
But dishonesty and poor judgment are as old as Adam and Eve. Something more was at work in the present crisis, a crisis of unprecedented scope. Why didn’t profit-minded loan companies run thorough credit checks? Why did they keep pumping out low interest loans to high risk borrowers, ignoring the risks?
It’s as if somebody spiked the financial system’s punch bowl with stupid juice, driving normally prudent financiers to dash, en masse, over the cliff.
It seems that way because it is that way. The brewers of the stupid juice were largely (if not exclusively) politicians in Washington who sought to redistribute wealth from the rich and middle class to poor people with bad credit. These politicians fostered various laws and institutions that directed, cajoled and legally bullied mortgage companies to extend big loans to people with little credit.
A case in point is a group called ACORN—Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Stanley Kurtz explains in an Oct. 7 essay at National Review Online:
“You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.” So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left “community organizers” called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness.
… At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.
Read more on The Credit Crisis: Who Brewed the Stupid Juice?…
The first week of the CRC’s Sea to Sea bike tour is in the books. The first leg of the journey took the bikers from Seattle to Kennewick, a total distance of 319 miles.
The Acton Institute was out in front on the warnings of all the problems associated with using corn ethanol as a fuel source. My article “The Unintended Consequences of the Ethanol Quick Fix” was published in The Christian Science Monitor last July.
Read more on Another Problem With Using Corn Ethanol As Fuel?…
The Birth of Freedom premiered in Washington, D.C., on June 19 to a sold-out crowd! A special screening has been scheduled for those who were unable to attend the premiere and is kindly being coordinated by the Heritage Foundation. This screening is scheduled for July 16 and begins at 7:00 p.m. at The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Auditorium. If you would like to attend, please be sure to RSVP on Heritage’s website.
Read more on The Birth of Freedom – Washington, D.C. Screening…
Francis Asbury was so well-known in early America that letters addressed to “Bishop Asbury, United States of America” were delivered to him. During his life, Methodist Bishop Asbury (1745-1816) is said to have preached well over 16,000 sermons and traveled nearly 300,000 miles on horseback alone. The explosion of Methodism in the United States after the American Revolution, and during the Second Great Awakening is well documented in the history of the church. When Asbury arrived in the colonies, Methodists numbered at most a few thousand, but most likely were fewer than that. By the time of Asbury’s death, the Methodist Episcopal Church was the largest denomination in the U.S. with more than 200,000 members.
Read more on Francis Asbury & The Rise of American Methodism…
Last week, Marc posted audio from the Fred Smith’s presentation at the 2007 Acton Lecture Series. Mr. Smith, president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, spoke about Corporate Social Responsibility and the dangers associated with the socialization of the corporation. Video of this event is now available online and for download. You can watch it online, (a new window with a Flash video player will open), you can download the file via Acton’s podcast, or download directly as an MP4 file (60Mb). Enjoy our video goodness!
Read more on The Irresponsibility of Corporate Social Responsibility…
