Dealing In Outrage

Did you know that Freddie Mac is betting against hardworking Americans struggling to pay off their mortgages - and stacking the deck so that it wins the bet? It's true! I read it on NPR!

Except that the NPR piece doesn't tell the whole story. In fact, if you think about it in the context of such basic lending concepts of "interest rate risk," why lending institutions sell loans in the first place and what constitutes a "bet," you quickly come to realize that the story here isn't about big Wall Street banks colluding with a government sponsored enterprise to rip off home-buyers who are barely keeping their heads above water. The story here is about how it's pretty much impossible to balance competing interests in a way that everyone comes out ahead. And perhaps how a news outlet spins a story to drive pageviews and position itself as a populist champion for the downtrodden while ignoring important underlying issues that simply wouldn't  be as sexy in the current news environment.

To go into detail about how the story takes a financial quandary and turned into fodder for misplaced populist anger threatens to become a deeper analysis of the whys and wherefores of mortgage lending than I'm really comfortable with writing myself. To make a long story short, the FHLMC is in a position where it serves multiple constituencies: the banks (big and small) that originate home loans, the home buyers who take out the loans, the investors who buy securities on the loans and the taxpayers of the United States, who are the ones who have to make up shortfalls in the FHLMC's finances. This particular NPR story pits the home buyers against the taxpayers. The FHLMC stands accused of making it harder for homeowners to refinance, while at the same time having structured its portfolio in such a way that if large numbers of the mortgages it purchased are refinances, it would lose quite a bit of (taxpayer) money. Or, to be a little more breathless about it, "Freddie Mac prevented households from being able to take advantage of today's mortgage rates — and then bet on it."

The story contends that by siding with the taxpayers, that Freddie Mac chose the wrong side. Because, you see, there's a win-win, if only Freddie Mac would take it:

"There is an argument for [... the actions of the FHLMC being better for taxpayers in general, even though it harms many home buyers] and the Obama Administration and the regulator who controls them have to weigh helping out taxpayers generally against more specific homeowners, but as Chris [Arnold] said, it's very possible that a lot of refinancings could help the economy and taxpayers in the long run."
Jessie Isginger, Pro Publica

Part of the problem here goes back to the multiple masters that the FHLMC was intended to serve. Whenever you set up a system designed to look out for the interests of groups whose interests are directly at odds with one another, someone is going to be screwed. NPR and Pro Publica decided that there was an easy way out, in the form of making the assumption that the taxpayer subsidy that would be given to home purchasers in the form of letting them off the hook for the interest that they originally agreed to pay would be made up for in a new refi-financed spending spree that would drive economic activity to the point that all of the lost revenue would be made up.

In other words, THIS would be the economic stimulus plan that finally worked. Proof of that? None. But this isn't unexpected. After all, it only an eight-minute piece. And it would likely take at least a couple of hours to lay out all the reasoning that underlies their position.

But even if it were explained, would it be any less a "bet?" In fact, it seems like more of a literal gamble than buying a mortgage with a payment stream attached and expecting that payment stream to actually be there. Remember how "frugality" was supposed to be "the new normal?" So... what happens if rather than blowing it on consumer goods, a sizable percentage of these people put the money into the bank? Or pay down other debts? In other words, what happens if this new bet, the one that NPR and Pro Publica are pushing, doesn't pay off? What will their headline be then?

All or Nothing

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community -- it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall."
Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield (R - Knoxville)

When a friend of mine pointed out an article about Senator Campfield being booted from a restaurant, he noted that, "The sheer volume of ignorance here dates back to the Reagan administration." I beg to differ. This is the sort of ignorance that many people wouldn't have 'fessed up to during the Wilson administration. But, in any event, it raises an interesting question: Is Senator Campfield REALLY ignorant? Or is he simply pandering to a constituency that simply wants to believe that anyone who transgresses their taboo against same-sex relationships would also have no problem with having sex with pretty much anything else that wasn't a human of the opposite gender?

It's a fairly common practice, and one that's always good for some Red Meat to the base. And if we believe that politicians aren't above saying all sorts of stupid, crazy or otherwise ill-considered things when pandering for votes, why should we be surprised when they reference the lowest form of bigotry out of a desire to appeal to the people who vote for them? After all, bigots can vote too, and like many people, they prefer to live in communities of the like minded. Sooner or later, someone is going to come along who, even if they don't believe a word of it themselves, is going to talk the talk to get into office. (If they can do it without feeling the need to scrub themselves clean for hours every night afterwards, that's too bad - but not unexpected.)

But it makes the problem larger than we like to think that it is. Because Senator Campfield's coded assertion that homosexuals will sleep with anything isn't the problem. The fact that he can go on the record with that without committing political suicide is. And not because the people in and around Knoxville, Tennessee have some obligation to be enlightened enough that sexual orientation doesn't matter. If they want to believe homosexuality is a sin, that's between them and the deity they profess to believe in. But it's still slander to call a thief a rapist. Their unwillingness to stop with what those they dislike have actually done, and to expect those that represent them will not stop there either, is where they cross the line.

P.S.: For a somewhat more plausible explanation of the AIDS pandemic, listen to RadioLab on the topic. I don't know that it's the correct explanation, but it's better than Campfield's.

Nothing To Hide

"People who are abiding by the law should have no problems with this," said [Fort Lauderdale Police Department Detective Travis] Mandell. "People may feel that their privacy is being infringed on, but when you think about it, every day you walk down the street you are being watched by 20 to 30 cameras from private businesses and homes."
Police roll out video surveillance truck called The Peacemaker

This is a common refrain, designed to put people at ease with more and more police surveillance. And, to be sure, the police are simply doing the job we ask of them. When we say "catch everyone who does something scary and lock them up, and we'll pillory you when you can't," it's to be expected that the police, like anyone else, are going to look for a way to carry out that mandate.

There are a couple problems that I have with this. The first is that I don't trust someone who's a complete stranger any more than I would under any other circumstance, simply because they're wearing a badge. A badge is a symbol - not a mind-control device the keeps people from doing bad things or misusing information that they become privy to. The simple fact that someone is wearing one doesn't make them any more trustworthy than they were an hour before then.

The second is this: What's the definition of "abiding by the law?" Are you sure?

Sec. 16-97. - Misprision.

It shall be unlawful for any person to commit misprision. A person commits misprision when, having knowledge of the commission of a crime or offense in this city, fails to report it to the police department.

Okay, so let's assume they're not going to get you on that one. And you're pretty much covered all around, because you've memorized the entire municipal code of the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and know everything you can and cannot do. Good for you! That mean's you're aware of this:

Sec. 16-1. - State offenses and county ordinances adopted.

(a) State felony. It shall be unlawful for any person to commit, within the corporate limits of the city, any act which is or shall be recognized by the laws of the state as a capital felony, felony of the first degree, felony of the second degree, or felony of the third degree.

(b)  State misdemeanor. It shall be unlawful for any person to commit, within the corporate limits of the city, any act which is or shall be recognized by the laws of the state as a misdemeanor.

So... are you up on the Florida Statutes? Because if you aren't, are you positive that you're abiding by the law?

Of course, it's unlikely that the FLPD will find (or even look for) a way to use their camera trucks to find some poor sod who witnessed or learned about a state-level crime and then didn't report it. And that's not really my point. Actually, despite the exercise that we just went through, my point isn't even that the pool of law abiding citizens is likely smaller than you might think that it is.

Instead, the point is that "People who are abiding by the law," is more or less meaningless as a legal term in this context. Rather it's a public-relations term, that can be roughly translated as "people who trust the police and don't do anything that calls police attention to them."

Which brings us back to the "20 to 30 cameras from private businesses and homes." These can be problematic in their own right, but they, generally speaking, aren't being manned by people who have the power to detain you for simply being weird. (Or, to quote the municipal code, loitering in a place "at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals." How's that for descretionary?) The police can, and to a certain degree are expected to, detain you for simply not bahaving the same as everyone else. And let's not forget the more serious laws that you may have unknowingly broken. (And remember, ignorance of the law is no excuse - in fact, there are some cases where being intentionally deceived by another isn't an excuse either.)

The answer to this isn't to expect the police to dial it back a notch. It's for us to start going through and culling out laws. As near as I can tell, I don't live in a jurisdiction with a misprision ordinance, so I'm not breaking that particular law. But then again, I'm not completely conversant in the legal structures of King County or the State of Washington, so maybe if they looked, they'd have me on something else. (By the way, some of you Occupy types may want to watch out.) When our laws are too long and complicated for you to actually be able to know which ones you've followed and which ones you've blown off in the past six hours or so, people start to become twitchy about the whole "people who are abiding by the law," thing, because they start to understand that they don't actually fit into that category. Even if they don't understand exactly why until a police officer shows up at their door with a photograph.

But It Says So Right Here

"Based on something he read online, an Oklahoma state senator has introduced a bill..."

And it just goes downhill from there.

Personally, I suspect that this guy is actually super-deep cover; perhaps a gerbil or a cabbage masquerading as a human. Or maybe this is simply a particularly convoluted scheme by Plankton to get his hands on the Krabby Patty formula. It's hard to believe that one could get into high school, let alone a legislature, without having figured out that you shouldn't take at face value everything you read on the internet, especially those things that push your emotional buttons. To borrow a phrase, if your immediate reaction is "Must. Denounce. Now," that's the time when getting an independent verification of the facts is most important. After all, it's the people who you're convinced would never lead you astray who you're most likely to allow to lead you astray.

Believe With Me

I've already written about the somewhat raw deal that people of various faiths find themselves confronting whenever they deal with people who don't believe the same things that they do.

But the fact that Washington State is moving ever closer to legalizing same-sex marriage is giving a certain segment of the Christian community the opportunity to demonstrate that they, too, can seem to forget that not everyone else the world, or even the state, thinks in the same way that they do.

One common lament that has been making the rounds lately is that, "God defined marriage and it is not for man to redefine." Another is: "It is a very sad day when we get to choose which one of God's laws we will obey and which ones we will choose not to." But if one is Wiccan, or practices Shinto, what does it matter what the Judeo-Christian-Moslem god defines marriage as? Why should anyone who doesn't follow an Abrahamic religion or one of its offshoots care? But more importantly, why should they agree that religious strictures from faiths they don't follow are valid reasons for civil and/or criminal legislation? After all, if Christian legislators in Tennessee can convince themselves that practicing Sharia law should be punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment, why would they think anyone else wants to have to follow religious laws from faiths they don't practice? Or religious laws that simply differ from their own understanding of the religion? After all, it's not like the dietary laws were expunged from the Bible; but you'd have a hard time codifying them into law. Hand wringing about "picking and choosing" would likely be of little use.

While "legally-mandated lip service" isn't really the correct term for it, it's one that always comes to mind. Of course a more accurate way to look at things from the point of view of believers is that "Right makes Right" - the "fact" that they are morally correct gives them the right to legislate their beliefs into laws that everyone else must follow. This is perfectly understandable, if not exactly desirable. But it veers into the odd when its presented as a perfectly straightforward reason that everyone should sign on to. Part of it, I suspect, is the idea that often comes up that deep down inside, everyone is actually a conservative Christian, or wants to be. If the Pope can maintain that the targets of forcible conversion wanted in their heart of hearts to be converted at any cost, it's not too much of a stretch to believe that everyone secretly wants to be a pew every Sunday. There's also the corollary that what we're seeing is a childish temper tantrum thrown by a willful Humanity against a parental deity - claims of disbelief are simply disingenuous attempts to get around having to follow bothersome rules. But I think that part of it is also the flip side of what many religious people themselves deal with - the idea that one's own beliefs are so self-evident that no-one can honestly see things any differently. This is aided and abetted by the somewhat homogenous nature of American society. While the United States is not exclusively Christian, it is overwhelmingly so, and so its possible to go quite some time (perhaps one's whole life) without ever actually meeting anyone who professes to be otherwise. And so it becomes much easier to assume that everyone else thinks and believes in the same way. And for many people, the whole world isn't much different than whatever community they are currently a part of - it's just bigger. Despite the fact that the continental United States is some three thousand miles from East to West, people still experience unexpected culture shock after moving a significant distance. Despite the fact that many large states have populations large enough to be decent-sized nations themselves, many Americans are taken off-guard by things that are different than the way they were used to them.

As unbelievable as some find it, however, we do not all believe alike. Therefore appeals to and expectations of a universal understanding and adherence to faith will fall on as many deaf ears as appeals to and expectations of a universal agnosticism have.