Couldn’t Help But Notice (082307)

Here’s what struck me about this coverage of the hit campaign against Bobby Jindal in Louisiana — I have a general impression that I bet could be backed up by research that when a poll-trailing conservative/GOP candidate goes on offense against a front-running lib/Democrat candidate, there is almost always a reference to how the lib/Democrat “is leading in the most recent polls” — the better to play into claims that the conservative/GOP candidate is “getting desperate.”

There is no mention of Bobby Jindal’s poll standings in the AP piece in question.

Suuuure enough, according to this article in the Lafayette, La. Advertiser, Jindal is comfortably in front — “In Jindal’s internal polling, as in most polls that include a trial heat question naming the specific candidates, Jindal has remained well above 55 percent as the campaigns round the stretch towards the Oct. 20 primary election.”

The suspicion that polls are only cited when they help lib/Democrat candidates would appear to have a valid basis.

Cross-posted in expanded form at NewsBusters.org.

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Amnesty International, founded by a Catholic in 1961 (communist, but nevertheless Catholic, never mind the self-evident contradictions in trying to be both at the same time, according to this portion of the Wiki entry) is now pro-abort. Backlash is, and should be, significant.

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Along with some at the New York Times, add employees at the BBC to the list of Wiki vandals.

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Yeah, it’s about green — THE green:

Democrats in $7bn plan to turn US green

America’s politicians are waking up to the moneymaking and job creation possibilities of combating global warming and challenging the Bush administration to invest in a new generation of “green-collar” jobs.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives wants to spend almost $7bn (£3.5bn) in the coming year to reduce the nation’s enormous carbon footprint. This has put it on a collision course with the White House, which remains in denial about the dangers of global warming.

A major clash is expected between the White House and Congress in the autumn, with President George Bush sceptical of the Democrats’ newfound enthusiasm for the environment. The best way to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil is to drill for more, he believes.

Never mind the globaloney/Big Oil distractions in the article. Hundreds of existing and new companies are investing billions in potentially moneymaking initiatives every day. Internal projects at companies are known in the corporate world as “capital projects.” These capital projects must be justified on their ability to pay for themselves in a reasonable amount of time.

Many of these happen to be aimed at reducing fuel and utility costs. That would make such projects “green initiatives” that also happen to have a “green” payback.

Many of these initiatives require going to start-up and other companies that have developed the equipment and services involved in making these capital projects work. As these providers grow, they provide the jobs and profits to employees and shareholders/owners that Congress says it desires — but without congressional intervention. How ’bout that?

What Congress is proposing to do with tax dollars would not be subject to the payback rigors companies must impose on themselves to stay in business and grow. Congressionally authorized “green,” like Congressional pork, would more likely than not end up in the pockets of favored constituents and companies good at playing the lobbying game, while the environmental “green” accomplishments coming out of these initiatives probably will (if anyone even bothers to check up on them) be negligible at best.

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I agree with Richard Alter at American Thinker that “A ….. rescue plan for the sub-primes is an undeniable recipe for disaster.”

The dirty little secret of the sub-prime crisis is the fact that sub-prime lenders failed to charge interest rates high enough to offset their expected level of defaults. Make no mistake: sub-prime lending is going to have borrowers who fail.

True enough, but the other “dirty little secret” is that the government agencies securitizing many of these subprime loans lowered credit-approval standards significantly a few years ago. Lenders were, in essence, encouraged to approve loans where the chance of failure was unduly high, knowing full well that once the loan was off their books (i.e., sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and packaged in mortgage-backed securities sold to the investing public), it wouldn’t be their problem any more.

In sum, government-sponsored enterprises helped to create the mess we’re in. Logic, and history, are on the side of the idea that further government intervention is more likely to make things worse.

Update: Commenter “spongeworthy” tells me that “Fannie and Freddie don’t buy sub-prime loans.” Assuming that’s the case, which I have no reason to doubt, Fan and Fred still caused the approval standards for sub-primes to be lowered in the software models lenders use to process loan applications.