I have been in and around banking long enough to know first hand that regulation is no substitute for responsibility; on the contrary it is often an excuse for irresponsibility and an explanation for poor service. Adding a sixth federal agency on top of the five already exercising jurisdiction on consumer banking activities (OCC, OTS, FRB, NCUA, and FDIC) is counter-intuitive and flies in the face of experience. Any banker who has attempted to explain a partial mortgage loan participation up or IRA prior year recharacterization to customers, for example, knows well how multiple layers of regulations written by staff bureaucrats in Washington DC can hamper good service and create a major scope for unintended errors. Adding another set of civil servants, political appointees, and lawyers is not going to help matters at all.

KsReaganite has known mega banks, community banks, and credit unions. The fact is that a vast majority of banks in America’s smaller cities and towns are strong, stable, and very responsive to customer concerns. Their frustration often is the layer upon layer of mind boggling rules imposed on them that require scarce resources to interpret, resources that can be better used in creating liquidity and jobs. Did you know that there are rules, for example, that prohibit the loan officer of a bank from uploading a loan into the bank’s computer systems? That these rules are often crafted by individuals who have never knows a real job in their lives, banking or otherwise, does not help matters. For lazy bankers, a trail of paper suggesting adopting internal policies that reflect the rules is an excuse for having to do nothing more to be worthy of their fiduciary responsibilities.

The solution, then, to the current mistrust of our commercial banking system lies in a regulatory regime that is streamlined, unified, and participatory. A single agency that regulates all commercial banking (including thrifts and credit unions) and is made up of public appointees, consumer advocates, and industry representatives should replace  the OCC, OTS, and NCUA. Such a financial oversight authority will streamline all banking regulations into plain English, develop a meaningful charter of rights for consumers, and have an ombudsman empowered to investigate substantive complaints and render sanctions as needed.

The downside? Well, it is possible that several dozen unionized civil servants and lawyers will lose their current positions and little perched of power. But, even they should be happy since they will be absorbed somewhere else in the large conglomerate that the federal government is.

Like thousands of others with real and virtual eyes, I remembered the birth of these panda cubs like it was yesterday and saw them grow up through the panda cams. Their childish antics were a source of calm and amusement in times of stress and agony. On a larger level, they represented- as do their parents and cousins at the National, Memphis, and San Diego zoos- an unbroken sliver of goodwill between two great nations (God Bless Richard Milhous Nixon for that stroke of genius).

Yet, home is home I suppose; the place where you belong in an instinctive way that can only be expressed by poets far wiser than I. Tai Shan and Mei Lan may not have ever seen the mountains of Sichuan, but they’ll feel at home there at once, I am sure. Some beings don’t have a home; I don’t mean that in the physical sense of having a nice, comfortable dwelling. Rather, these unfortunate souls may have wonderful abodes and yet know deep within that they don’t have a home. These are the perpetual refugees.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_susan_estrich/the_value_of_diversity

Most American women, like their male counterparts, are too busy with their jobs, families, and volunteer work to worry about who sits on the board of directors of each of the companies whose products they use in day to day life. They simply don’t have the luxury of unproductive time that, evidently, an overpaid Harvard faculty member does. 

Frankly, only a law professor from Boston could be so presumptive as to think that she/he can best determine the qualifications of those eligible to sit on the board of directors of a publicly traded company. Perhaps spending all that time in the confines of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts has made Professor Estrich forget that here in America, unlike in the former USSR, it is the shareholders who decide who sits on the board of directors of a company. If Estrich is an Apple shareholder, she is more than welcome to vote for her choice of a candidate or even run herself for that company’s board. Given her track record in running campaigns, however, I doubt she will be up to it.

Campaign rhetoric is cheap, even when disguised as conscientious outrage. It is lost on Susan Estrich and her fellow inhabitants of the towering ivy cocoons that Apple is a technology company and fewer and fewer Americans of either gender are getting into graduate level programs in computers and engineering. Amidst this dwindling supply of available talent and potential leadership, men outnumber women almost three to one.

The solution to this problem lies, of course, in the determined push for K-12 educational excellence that will help boys and girls both to come out of high school prepared to embark on college majors in the sciences, technology, and engineering. That kind of preparation requires the kind of rigorous performance driven academics that liberals like Professor Estrich have spent a lifetime resisting in the public school system. A casual look at the demographics in the computer science department in any major university will make it clear to impartial observers that the majority of students are from those supposedly backward parts of the world where homework, testing, and mastery of abstract concepts is admired, rather than derided, in public education.

Nonetheless, another candidate has joined since my last post on the issue. Harvard alum Rob Wasinger, the youngish former chief of staff to Senator Sam Brownback, is also running for the seat. Earlier in the week, at a coffee, I had asked Rob some tough questions. Some of his answers (like on the desirability to gut the current monstrosity of a tax code) I liked; some I did not. What impressed me subtly was his refusal to be condescending or use clichés like ‘to put it in perspective’ and ‘I have to study this further’. Nor did he appear to be slick like a regular politico; I guess having a growing family of nine kids and one on the way does not leave you much time to have false affectations. It was a privilege to meet Rob’s wife Meghan as well; again I was impressed by the normal down to earth demeanor that is not common amongst the spouses of aspiring politicians.

Nobody but God knows what’s in the hearts of men. I cannot predict what kind of Congressman Rob will turn out to be. What I can say is that this guy seems thoughtful, down to earth, and beholden to no clique so far. Beyond that, the very outlook exuded by this candidate is one of optimism, hope, and growth which contrasts starkly with the gloom and doom of some of his peers. In the party of Reagan, we need some of that sunshine of the city on the hill!

Rob is definitely the underdog in a race with two sitting members of the state senate, both wealthy in their own right, and both strongly supported by the usual players in the state’s Republican politics. It is without hesitation that KsReaganite is backing Rob Wasinger for Congress in Kansas' Big First district. I have linked his webpage in the blogroll to the right for you to get more information and help him out. He needs the help of regular conservatives like you and me, because groups with nice offices and big staff salaries are backing his career politician opponents.

Take heart my friends. While an economically distressed country elected the most anti-life Congress and President in 2008, in 2009 all major surveys are showing that, finally, a majority-yes a majority not just a plurality-of Americans identify themselves as prolife. And they are real prolife, not the bizarre ‘personally I am prolife but…’ variety. Even in the very bastion of the anti-life forces, just two days ago we elected a United States Senator who, while not fully prolife, has openly admitted that at some point, the elimination of an unborn life is, well, murder.

The last two years have seen a vigorous national debate about the role of government in the management of the economy. With certain sectors of the economy almost collapsing under the weight of imprudence and greed and resultant bailouts and stimulus packages, the very concept of unfettered markets has been challenged in the minds of many, while accusations of ‘socialism’ have been bandied about by others.

By its very nature, a robust free market with minimal regulatory interference cannot survive in an amoral secular environment. The liberty to profit from production of goods and services can never be unlimited in a stable society. Unchecked greed, not an uncommon human instinct, easily leads to chaos, anarchy, and ultimately a dissolution of functioning societies. The limits on such human instincts can come from within, in the form of individual conscience and social sanctions . Or they can come from without, in the shape of legislation and regulation.  While a sharp conscience is hardly an exclusive preserve for those who go to church, organized religion is the most widespread and time tested platform for an ethical rulebook for the masses. Dismissing the church, synagogue, mosque and temple as irrelevant to the concept of markets is reflective of dogma rather than introspection.

One of the most prominent social sanctions to check capitalism is unionization which, in its extreme form, can encompass compulsory membership, frequent strikes, and intimidation. An observer needs only look at Europe to see the correlation of faith and economic freedom. The most highly regulated economies are those of Scandinavia and  the most unionized one is that of France, all countries that are home to the most secularized Western populations. Conversely, largely observant Ireland and Poland host economies least constrained by the state and far less troubled by organized labor disputes. By the same measure, we can contrast the freer economy of the more church-going United States with that of Canada where the population is far more secular.

If men were angels, opined Thomas Jefferson, governments would not be necessary. Taking a practical step backwards form that flourishing dictum, we can perhaps argue that if people have well developed consciences, big governments may be unnecessary in the marketplace.

Part of the CIA’s problem is that since the Stansfield Turner era under Carter, we have progressively hamstrung the agency’s manpower with encumbering it with affirmative action programs. This is not just another government agency. It worked best when bright, patriotic, stoic, and well educated young men of good families quietly worked there to assure our national security.

Errol Southers nomination as TSA chief should be stopped dead in its tracks. A man who has repeatedly abused his authority to run background checks on individuals to grind a personal axe (in his case, on his former wife’s lovers) should be prosecuted and jailed, not put in charge of a vital component of national security. On top of that. Mr. Southers wants to unionize TSA, something unheard of in front line agencies. Frankly, public employees being unionized is wrong in principle and potentially dangerous in practice.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_iraq_military_pregnancy

That liberal Democrat senators have chosen, once again, to interfere on behalf of their radical feminist patrons says quite a bit about their disregard for military ethics. That my fellow Kansan Bob Gates has stood silent instead of supporting General Cucolo is disappointing.

The military is in the business of fighting wars, not crafting a social experiment at the behest of the those who seek to dangerously remake the building blocks of society. Please, take your experiments to Berkley or some other place where they won’t endanger the national security of the Republic. Let generals and soldiers do their job. It is bad enough that we have to send a battalion of lawyers before soldiers are sent into war zones; it is a mockery that now we will have to send therapists, counselors, and obstetricians as well.

In case the liberals didn’t get the memo: America is at war.

Some of the earliest organized English settlements in the New World were called commonwealths, rather than states or colonies. Even today, four of the states of our Union-Massachussetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky-officially designate themselves as commonwealths rather than states, unlike the other forty six states. The difference in nomenclature is one of pure semantics today. It wasn’t so always. The founding fathers of those entities purposely chose the commonwealth moniker to emphasize the nature of their respective governments’ public trust in looking after the common weal.

That common weal was hardly looked after in the trillion dollar health care bill that has been rammed through the Senate this week, with support from the six senators from the Commonwealths of VA, MA, and PA. It was a naked display of parochial bribery rather than the public trust as hesitant and vulnerable senators were purchased with taxpayer money. The most expensive were Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana who were each bought for almost five hundred million; less expensive were Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota who each had price tags of over a hundred million. Looking at the auction market that has been the United States Senate this Christmas, it is hard to argue with President Reagan’s observation that politics is an undertaking very similar to humanity’s oldest profession.

A trillion dollars is money beyond the imagination of ordinary people. Yet, it is the ordinary people’s money.  Much of the amount will be, in the short- and medium term, financed by public debt and increased revenue generation. This is liquidity that could have been otherwise available to the private sector for job growth and trade expansion. Granted, some of it will arguably go towards delivering actual healthcare; but a large proportion will be overhead geared towards bureaucrats with fancy titles and lawyers with kinship to politicians.

This bill is not an example of taking care of the common weal. Rather, it a study in the plundering thereof.

Well, the heavy hands of the Obama administration are now on the tiny Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. A small liberal arts institution run by the gentle Benedictine monks, Belmont Abbey is on the receiving end of federal investigation and possible prosecution by three arms of this administration: the Civil Rights Commission, the EEOC, and the Justice Department.

The crime of Belmont Abbey is its faith: it is college that follows the Roman Catholic teachings in letter and spirit. And few trait are more worthy prosecution and persecution in these times than authentic, counter-cultural, traditional Roman Catholic living.

You all know that KsReaganite is neither Roman Catholic nor subscribes to every tenet of Catholic teaching. But I urge you to support the cause of Belmont Abbey College because if is the cause of individual liberty and conscience. So, please help the college out as it fights against a bureaucracy that has no limits on zeal or funding. You can make a contribution here to the Belmont Abbey Chancellor’s Fund.

The fact is that drugs of a similar or even better quality are significantly cheaper abroad due to regulations, competition, and production costs. Notwithstanding the incessant propaganda, not only are drugs made in many countries at least as safe as ours, but our bureaucracy has the tools and staff to check for quality at the point of importation. Heck, even today the number one source of chemicals that go into our drugs is India; and to think that somehow Canadian drugs are unsafe!

The drug companies, as Senator Dorgan rightly points out, want the American people to subsidize their profits but fighting against trade and competition. Sadly, otherwise pro-free trade Republican senators are buying into the drug companies’ argument hook, line, and sinker.  By failing to pass the Dorgan amendment, the Senate has shown that it has a strong bi-partisan caucus that abjures the principles of free trade and swallows the nonsense of xenophobia for the sake of contributions from the drug lords..er…the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies.