Couldn’t Help But Comment (052808, Morning)

With all the hype about the home-price plunge, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s (OFHEO) House Price Index, the most comprehensive nationwide home-price report there is, reported that home prices fell 1.7% in the first quarter (stat is near the bottom of OFHEO’s home page). Prices nationwide were 3.1% lower than they were a year ago.

This is clearly not good, but it follows these six March-to-March increases, rounded a bit:

3/2007, +3.2%; 3/2006, +8.9%; 3/2005, +9.4%;
3/2004, +8.0%; 3/2003, +7.6%; 3/2002, +6.6%.

WITH the decrease during the last four quarters, that’s 47.6% appreciation in seven years. Appreciation during the seven years that ended on March 31, 2001, almost all of it before George Bush took office and started ruining everything (/sarc), was 36.3%.

Oh, and guess how many states had actual price decreases of more than than 2% in those 12 months?

Answer: Only six.

Unfortunately, one of them is California, which declined 10.58%. Even with that horrible result, the state’s 5-year appreciation is better than all but 12 other states. But, as is the case with unemployment and welfare, as I noted last week, housing is another area where California is disproportionately dragging down the rest of the country, which is, again, largely doing fine. Thanks, Arnold.

The idea that the “housing crisis” is a nationwide phenomenon doesn’t stand up.

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After nearly three years essentially on the lam, Evan Montvel-Cohen, founder of the first incarnation of Air America Radio, has been arrested (HT Radio Equalizer). Al Franken, the beneficiary of much of the $800,000-plus Mr. Cohen stole (and that is the right word) from a charitable foundation to fund AAR’s start-up, should be asked if he knew he was receiving stolen funds, in the form of his bloated salary and perks at the time.

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Now THIS is settled science, but the racial dividers don’t like it. Michelle Malkin has caught on to an attempt to overrule common sense:

The same folks who proclaim to support a color-blind America are aggressively pushing to stop non-black families from adopting black children in the name of preserving their “culture.” They are peddling a study, trumpeted by the NYTimes, which purports to show that de-emphasizing race in the adoption process is hurting adoptees. The identity politics crowd would rather have minority children languish in foster homes than have them placed with loving families who put compassion above racial boxes.

The idea that kids are better off adopted and in stable families than in foster care, regardless of their racial make-up, is beyond rational argument. Ohio’s recently-departed arch-liberal Howard Metzenbaum, who was the driving force behind the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994, understood that. What Metzenbaum didn’t understand is that the despicable divisiveness agenda of many of his fellow travelers is more important than the well-being of real children.

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From Peggy Noonan last Friday, about the presidential candidate I refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton):

Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

Her column is entitled “Sex and the Sissy.”