Category Archives: culture

30-Year Mortgages

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Patrick Brenner, Southwest Public Policy Institute President, thinks these have been terrible ideas. I disagree. Central to his thesis this:

The 30-year mortgage locked families into a lifetime of interest payments that cost the borrower far more than the original price.

However, he never mentions a Critical Item that also obtained throughout his period of interest, the post-WWII mobility, both geographically and economically upward, of the American working force/homeowner population.

Two personal examples illustrate, and I claim our examples are typical, not unusual.

When my wife and I were starting out, as Lieutenants in the USAF, we were able to buy our first house courtesy of one of those “dangerous” shorter term balloon payment loans. We were highly mobile as USAF officers, but that mobility, as I claim, wasn’t unusual—the civilian work force also was highly mobile, and that mobility allowed homeowners to sell their homes, pursuant to their mobility, before the balloon came due, and buy another home in their new location, now with a variable rate loan (fixed for a period of years, then floating with the market), 15-year fixed mortgage, or an evil 30-year mortgage, with interest rates favoring the variable rate and the 30-year. Again, mobility allowed most homeowners to sell their homes before the variable rate reset, along with selling their 30-year mortgaged homes long before being “locked in for life.”

It also was the case that many of these balloon mortgage homeowners refinanced into a new variable rate loan or into a 15-year or 30-year mortgage. Banks expected these sorts of refinances and smoothed the path.

Many years later, as my wife and I were long established civilians and approaching retirement, we bought our current house with a 30-year mortgage. We’ve since refinanced that mortgage a number of times as interest rates went down, and currently have a monthly payment a bit over half that original payment.

So much for ever being locked in for life with a high-rate mortgage. With that mobility, very few homeowners actually paid more in aggregated principal and interest than the value of their homes—they refinanced down, or they sold and moved on.

The only thing in the way now is a greatly reduced mobility in our homeowner population. There are a number of reasons for that reduction in mobility, but the key here is that reduced mobility. Being “stuck” in some way with a 30-year mortgage is a symptom of relative immobility, not a cause of affordability. That immobility also contributes heavily to the lack of houses on the market while demand for homeownership remains high—that’s excess elevated pricing for homes.

“Democracy Wanes in South Asia”

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Sadanand Dhume uses as his canonical examples Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, wherein riots forced the removal of despotic governments and their replacement by popularly chosen leaders. In Nepal in particular, new elections have been set for next March.

Dhume did point out popular failures in Pakistan and Myanmar; however, his apparent concept that popular uprisings are, of necessity, antidemocratic is badly flawed.

This is what our own Declaration of Independence has to say about such popular violence.

[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

A government deciding unilaterally and with little to no warning to censor—abolish!—major communications systems, a government that has had a single Prime Minister for 15 years during carefully controlled elections with opposition candidates routinely jailed, a government dominated for 17 years by a single pair of brothers whose government did little to protect its population from routine violence—each of these governments with their long train of abuses and usurpations… would seem to be prime candidates for the people to decide that their governments’ evils are sufferable and so to move to exercise their right…their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards.

What must Dhume think of the Color Revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, or the People Power revolution in the Philippines, each of which involved the successful popular overthrow of Despotic governments and their replacement with more democratic institutions?

We’ll see what happens in the subsequent elections, particularly in Nepal. Dhume may be correct vis-à-vis his examples, but it’s much too soon to tell.

Apologize?

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Recall Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones’ overt threat of murder against a political opponent and his family. Now Virginia Progressive-Democratic Party Senator Tim Kaine is making clear his enthusiastically continuing support for Jones.

Jay has apologized[.]
I’ve known Jay Jones for 25 years. I think those statements were not in character, and he has apologized—I wish other people in public life would sincerely apologize for stuff.

Jones has apologized, and that makes everything all better. That’s Party’s view of taking full responsibility. Just say some words and call it a day.

No.

Words of apology, no matter how sincerely they’re offered, are nothing but that—words—absent any accompanying corrected behavior, behavior that lasts for a substantial period of time.

Jones has demonstrated no corrected behavior. He’s staying in the race for State’s AG, and he’s doing nothing to atone for his call for murder, nor is he showing any altered behavior regarding his fellow State citizens, political opponents or otherwise.

Mamdani’s Procrustean Education Bed

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The Progressive-Democratic Party’s proudly Socialist candidate for New City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced that he wants to truncate children under the age of 5 years to shorten them to fit his short Education bed.

Zohran Mamdani said late last week he wants to end the gifted and talented program for kindergartners in New York’s public schools. News reports say he’d allow this accelerated instruction only beginning in grade 3, with a campaign spokesman arguing 5-year-olds shouldn’t be “subjected” to a policy that “unfairly separates them right at the beginning of their public school education.”

The only equality that socialists will allow is the equality of outcome, which guarantees equality at the lowest level. They cannot tolerate equality of opportunity, an equality that acknowledges all Americans’ right to achieve their full potential in life, an equality that respects all Americans, including those whose full potential might be less than that of others.

Socialism, instead, demonstrates its contempt for Americans by saying none of us can compete on our own, so government must eliminate competition.

It Isn’t Only False Charges of Violence…

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…that encourage further violence.

The SPLC labeled my organization [Kristen Waggoner’s Alliance Defending Freedoma hate group in 2016, around the time we asked the Supreme Court to hear our case on behalf of Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop. These designations encourage violence: My car window was shot out shortly after I argued Masterpiece Cakeshop before the justices, and we see a spike in death threats whenever we receive fresh mention in the media.
The threats reached a fever pitch after Kirk’s assassination…. On Tuesday, we deliver oral arguments in Chiles v Salazar.… For the first time in our history, there won’t be an accompanying rally outside the court. Security professionals warned us that the threats of violence at an outdoor event were too great.

It’s a grave mistake to not hold the rally because of these threats and the overt murderous actions of others on the Left. Surrendering to threats of violence and actual violence only encourages more violence, not just threats of it, by those of the Left who are bent on destroying—physically, if possible—those of whom they disapprove.

Better to meet the threats head on, have the conspirators, attempted murderers, and the few who succeed tried, convicted, and jailed or executed as the case may be in the first instance. That would mitigate greatly, if not obviate the second and subsequent instances. That’s the only way to obviate the second and subsequent instances.

This is a better answer:

But we won’t be cowed. When our cases in defense of women’s sports are argued at the Supreme Court in January, we expect to be back with the biggest rally yet—this time with the security apparatus needed to defend our speakers.

Hopefully the DC police will be up to the task and—finally—allowed to do their job and arrest the violence inflictors, followed by—hopefully—a vigorous prosecution and conviction, concluded by—hopefully—serious jail sentences.