Letters, 11/21: Let's talk about promises
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Based on recent history, I’m not totally confident in Steve Schukar’s “Promises to Republicans” (letter, Nov. 14). Promise No. 10 is, “We will not tolerate corrupt politicians who are bought and paid for by the rich.”
Over the past two months, the biggest story has been the financial crisis. The crisis began with financial problems at Fannie Mae. There was a bill introduced in 2005 by Republican Chuck Hagel to increase oversight of Fannie Mae that may have averted the collapse. This bill never got voted on, primarily because of Democratic opposition. Subsequently, we found out there were three Democratic members of Congress who received large contributions from Fannie Mae lobbyists.
How did the Democrats prove they would not tolerate these congressional members? They forced one of them to resign from the U.S. Senate … by electing him president of the United States.
Byron Merrill, Lincoln
Power lines destroy view
Sorry to rain on your editorial parade, “Nebraska a winner in the next energy phase” (Nov. 12), but there are impacts and losses in the renewable energy future investments you touted. Those job-producing transmission lines potentially impair the quality of our state’s wide-open spaces. For example, the NPPD 115 kilovolt line that parallels Nebraska 2 near Mullen is out of scale and character with the road’s designation as a Scenic Byway.
As the nation’s only totally public power state, Nebraska unfortunately lacks the regulations and administrative structure to carefully site power lines (and plants) in a way that protects our scenic resources. Transmission line corridors in Nebraska’s Sandhills have no topographic barriers to hide behind and few federally protected lands to dodge, thus no doubt will end up as point-to-point cobwebs servicing wind farms and distant power users.
Nebraska’s circumscribed Power Review Board deals only with turf battles over service areas between power districts and has no authority or incentive to conduct or enforce careful study of visual and cultural impacts. For example, our own local public power supplier, Lincoln Electric System, did not adequately take scenic and historical impacts into account for its routing process. That led to LES recently destroying the view from Nine-Mile Prairie. Transmission lines change our state’s landscape; these proposed changes will be substantial and long-lasting.
Transmission lines and wind farms siting are simply too important to leave to flawed processes and an inexperienced and uninformed public power system.
So far, all I have mentioned are the local 115 kV to 345 kV transmission lines. President-elect Barack Obama recently has spoken about the need for a new power grid. This grid most likely will be made up of 735 kV lines connecting regional power plants. Recently, LES erected large towers for 345 kV lines around Lincoln that are about 115 feet high. For 735 kV lines in the proposed national grid, imagine 140-foot to 180-foot towers (about one-third the height of the Nebraska State Capitol) marching across the undulating Sandhills landscape. Bye-bye Scenic Byway and bye-bye scenic Nebraska.
Richard K. Sutton, Lincoln
Nice to see integrity
I congratulate the task force assigned to review the Helen Wilsoncase. Going into it, I’m sure they were prepared to see confirmation that this was just another guilty inmate trying to convince everyone of his innocence. Their willingness to set aside their assumptions and deal honestly with the case is a real triumph of justice. This should be the highlight of their professional careers.
And kudos to the Beatrice Police Department for preserving evidence so well that it could be used more than 20 years later.
There really are folks out there who are doing their jobs with integrity.
Holly R. Smith, Lincoln
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also gave over 53% of their contributions to the republicans.
All this is easily found by doing some research, so, if you want to blame someone, put the blame where it belongs on the republicans who controlled congress and the whitehouse in 2006 instead of where the right wing talking crackpots tell you. "
This is Nebraska Byron wrote on November 21, 2008 5:59 am:
Do more research wrote on November 21, 2008 8:37 am:
Jody P. wrote on November 21, 2008 8:37 am:
A word to the wise - include information sources besides partisan media and blogs in your "research". "
James wrote on November 21, 2008 8:45 am:
Why wrote on November 21, 2008 8:55 am:
Ha wrote on November 21, 2008 8:56 am:
in central Nebraska. You'd almost thought you'd suddenly hit the Colo
mountains with the miles and miles of dirt banks you couldn't see over.
They did finally become amusing with the coyotties perchered on top howling in the evenings and night. And a surprise Bear for my dad one time. "
Jim wrote on November 21, 2008 9:12 am:
Get the facts wrote on November 21, 2008 9:46 am:
It is absurd to say that democrats caused this crisis. It may also be unfair to say that republicans caused it, but there's no question who was in charge of the executive and legislative branches between 2001 and the end of 2006 and had the power to stop it if only they'd displayed some leadership.
Please, please, do not base your understanding of this crisis on what you hear on talk radio or Fox News. I have heard firsthand what Rush is saying lately, and he could not be more off-base on this. In fact, to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics, he sounds like a total idiot. Find some other source that you are comfortable with and that makes sense rather than spewing partisan gobblygook. Try Bloomberg, or CNBC, or the Wall Street Journal (stay away from the opinion page, though - WSJ editors don't seem to believe their own reporters). Take in a variety of viewpoints and then engage your brain. It's healthier in the long run. "
Zapped wrote on November 21, 2008 10:34 am:
General B wrote on November 21, 2008 10:57 am:
To "Jim", deregulation was NOT the culprit of this at all. The lack of oversight by the people who allowed it to happen is the problem. Thus, the problem lies with your congressional friends, not the President (whether it was Clinton or Bush!). That is the misnomer here. The President has NO power or authority over economic sways. The Congress is the one who holds the "purse strings", our founders made it that way for a reason. Going back, the difference between deregulation and oversight is the amount of restriction that is allowed. Oversight is more reactionary, but it is also MUCH less restrictive and should be done by the deregualting authority--Congress--yet they get to sit there and act like they didn't know whose hand was in the cookie jar while it was sitting in their laps! "
Kim M wrote on November 21, 2008 11:14 am:
THe same argument you made against the power lines could be said for the wind farms too. Should we just bury our heads in the sand and leave the mess for our children? If we continue with the Wind Farms (which I believe we need lots more of-free energy)then we are going to need a National Grid system to transfer the power across the country.
You know I live in the country and think that looking at the smog from Lincoln is an eyesore. Anything we can do to provide cleaner energy is a plus for everyone. "
Hop wrote on November 21, 2008 12:08 pm:
Per The Economist - the 'problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and down-payment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.'
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html "
Facts wrote on November 21, 2008 12:10 pm:
And to repeat - It was not Fannie and Freddie that created the housing bubble, it was private mortgage issuers with no underwriting scruples and private asset-backed securities issuers with no due diligence in concert with rating agencies asleep on the job (and on the take). This was an utter failure of free market capitalism (which I remain a strong supporter of as long as there are checks and balances).
I take your point about cloture and democratic obstructionism. However, as I explained above, Frannie and Freddie are scapegoats anyway. And the truth is, we don't really know how much obstructionism there was because the issue when it came up was not forcefully pushed out to the American people. It never got traction because it was not pushed hard by the congressional leadership. It wasn't pushed by the congressional leadership because they weren't leading.
Can we just agree that there is enough blame to go around and instead focus our efforts on getting the current do-nothing congress to do something? Besides, the truth is the we (the American people) are to blame. Folks from all socioeconomic levels borrowed too much and spent too much (like our government) and the house of cards was bound to collapse sooner rather than later. "
Jim wrote on November 21, 2008 12:35 pm:
Actually my comment today was an attempt to point out silliness by the AM radio listeners who keep trying to blame democrats for not doing enough regulatin', which is something AM radio listeners would normally be screeding against.
But I believe deregulation is the main reason for our problems today. Repeal of The McFadden Act rules barring interstate banking resulted in the behemoth national banks that were so large they '... couldn't be allowed to fail...'. This wouldn't have happened if this country still had the hundreds of smaller banks in each state that existed before then. Then Repeal of Glass Steagal allowed those giant banks to get into the investment business and sell mortgage backed securities (along with plenty of other unsavory and intentionally uncomprehensible investment vehicles), which resulted in them writing loans seemingly without the need to worry about a borrowers ability to repay them.
And I don't care which party did the deregulatin', I'll be happy to chastise anyone and all involved. "
Charles Jones wrote on November 21, 2008 12:49 pm:
to Richard Sutton; those big lines may be ugly to you, but to we residents of Mullen, NE, they are beautiful. They furnish a more dependable feed to our homes, schools and nursing home than the underground line they replaced. I love these Sandhills and appreciate the diverse plant and animal life they support, in addition to the cattle and we humans, and am willing to overlook those lines in order to live here. Thanks for visiting us and enjoying the Scenic Byway; we hope you return soon and often! "
Fannie and Freddie wrote on November 21, 2008 1:03 pm:
The bill (S. 190) was voted out of committee on a straight party line vote with all Republican members in favor and all Democratic members opposed. The bill was referred to Sen. Santorum (R - PA) for further action, but Santorum never scheduled a vote.
While there may be historical truth to claims that the Democrats were bought and paid for by Fannie and Freddie, that situation changed in 2004 in response to Sen. Hagel's regulatory bill. Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm (DCI Group) $2 million to kill legislation that sought to regulate Freddie and Fannie. In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. In the end, there was not enough Republican support for Hagel's bill to warrant bringing it up for a vote. The measure died at the end of the 109th Congress.
In addition to the payments to DCI, Fannie and Freddie paid more than $2 million to McCain's campaign manager and his lobbying firm, Freddie contributed $250,000 to the GOP convention, and the chief executive of DCI was hired by John McCain's campaign to manage the GOP convention. if you want more detail, go to the website of that notoriously liberal media FOXNews.com, http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Oct20/0,4670,TheInfluenceGameHousing,00.html
The campaign contributions that Democratic senators received from Fannie and Freddie pale in comparison to the payments received by Republican lobbyists. "
What happened to responsibility wrote on November 21, 2008 1:08 pm:
Can we move on wrote on November 21, 2008 2:09 pm:
It would be easy to say this was all a "certain" party's fault!". But it is not one parties fault, its the group I mentioned above.. WE THE PEOPLE
We the voting public and some that did not vote are responsible for the mess we are currently in. We can't blame politicians for neglecting to tell them that we did not want this or that.
Whining about this won't solve problems either. Can We Move on please! "
Zoomie wrote on November 21, 2008 2:22 pm:
Seems now that the failure of the bill is viewed as a major cause of today's economic problems, the GOP ideologues are desparate to find some sort of Democrat to blame, even if they have to make up fairy tales to explain to their loyal sheeple... "
Dana X Bible wrote on November 21, 2008 2:58 pm:
No. No it didn't. "
Sean1 wrote on November 21, 2008 3:17 pm:
Hop wrote on November 21, 2008 4:34 pm: