Over the weekend the US Congress passed a massive bailout of homeowners and put taxpayers on the hook for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  President Bush will sign the bill this week.

It is just flat out discouraging to see this go down.  These are people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford or didn’t understand, driving up house prices to the point where the more cautious buyers found it hard to find affordable housing.  Bailing them out only encourages similar reckless behavior from them and all who witness this handout.  And who’s backing up the mortgages given to these high risk individuals?  You and me.

And the Too Big To Fail argument being bandied about for propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a non starter.  Let them fail.  Will it disrupt the lending industry.  Hell yes.  But the fuel behind the housing bubble and credit crisis was easy credit.  Negative consequences might actually encourage institutions to tighten up their lending standards.

I wonder if we’ll be bailing out these folks:

CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — An Extreme Home Makeover may be going bust. The first metro family who got a new home is facing foreclosure.

Channel 2 followed the progress as an army of volunteers swarmed a Clayton County neighborhood to build a new home for a deserving family on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” in 2005. When the show came to town, no one could have predicted what would happen less than four years later — foreclosure.

A foreclosure notice appeared last Friday, a $450,000 second mortgage they took out less than 15 months ago was in default.

How sad!  Right?  Well, not so fast.

Lake City mayor Willie Oswalt was among the 1,800 volunteers helping “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” build the Harper’s new home 3 ½ years ago. Beazer Homes of Atlanta was the main sponsor. The mayor said he is baffled.

“Beazer gave them $100,000 cash, paid their mortgage off and they still can’t make it,” said Oswalt.

Maybe I’m just a heartless jerk, but if someone pays off your mortgage, gives you $100k, and you subsequently get two mortgages on your house (in less than four years!) that you can’t pay off it is hard for me to have a great deal of sympathy.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal takes a look at how members of Congress use taxpayer dollars to build monuments to themselves.  He didn’t even mention Alabama’s own Richard Shelby.  You don’t have to travel far here before you run into some structure that bears the good senator’s name even though you and I paid the bill.

Outdoor mega-retailer Bass Pro Shops is planning on coming to Decatur.  Hooray, right?  Not so fast.

The store will be part of the “Sweetwater” project - and the city offered up a sweet deal indeed to entice the outdoor juggernaut.  The city will give them - that’s right, give them - a “free” $32 million dollar building sitting on a $2.5 million dollar piece of land.  That is in addition to millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements.

The deal has predictably irritated a Decatur outdoor retailer that has been in business for over five decades.  David Wiley of Wiley’s Outdoor Sports is fighting the sweetheart deal.  He has launched the aptly named website www.saynotobasspro.com and has been on WHNT (video here) and in the Decatur Daily.

Long time readers know that I am no fan of government furnished corporate welfare.  I abhor seeing the government giving one business a competitive advantage over another.  This particular case is especially egregious.  Wiley Outdoor Sports has been in business locally since 1953.  The stakeholders there have deep roots in the community.  For the city to extend such a generous offer to attract a large, out of state direct competitor to come to town and siphon off business from Wiley’s is unconscionable.

Decatur mayor Don Kyle gave this statement to WHNT:

The development will add significant value to our community tax base, grow our population, and bring many shoppers off the interstate and from surrounding communities to shop in all our stores.

It reminds me of the mindset present in the infamous Kelo vs. New London SCOTUS decision.  While that case centered on eminent domian abuse, the local officials in Connecticut shared Kyle’s philosophy.  All they care about is growing the tax base.  To hell with anyone who may be hurt along the way.  Kyle gave his statement in response to a story specifically about the impact on local competitors, namely Wiley’s.  He acted as if Wiley’s didn’t even exist or, worse yet, that having a Bass Pro Shops down the road will somehow help Wiley’s business.

If Bass Pro wants to come and pay their own freight I wouldn’t even bat an eye.  But to provide such an unfair advantage to one company at the expense of a local company is detestable.  Is it really worth growing your tax base if it means trampling all over members of the community who took risks to establish and operate businesses?

[Sidenote: I'm a big Bass Pro fan.  Back when I was a kid I convinced my parents to route our summer road trip so that we went to the original Bass Pro store in Springfield, Mo.  Some kids want to go see a pro baseball game.  I wanted to shop at the fishing gear Mecca.] 

The Huntsville Times reports that the ” Madison County Board of Education is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in a retreat at the Marriott Shoals Hotel in Florence”. “Superintendent Terry Davis has pointed out the already-overcrowded district has $160 million in needs today…”

I guess one of the needs is for the Board to take a two-day meeting in Florence, staying at an “elegant” “spa resort”.  Will the school principals (”seek input from principals”) shlep over to Florence and back or do they get “plush guest rooms” too? More:

Adding to their concerns are cuts in Alabama’s Education Budget for the 2008-09 year. The district already knows it can expect 3 percent less overall from the state program that pays for teachers and other instructional needs. And there will likely be an 8 percent cut in transportation funds.

Madison County Schools held a similar retreat at the same location last year. 

Note that the Times URL page is aptly named: “madison_county_school_board_ho”.

The Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa “invites you to experience a new level of refinement and charm among hotels in Florence, Alabama. Plush guest rooms feature comfortable luxury and modern conveniences, as well as private balconies providing stunning views of the river… Indulge in a lavish treatment at this Alabama spa resort, offering the pinnacle of rejuvenation”.

 UPDATE:

John Ehinger of the Huntsville Times says Let’s annex the Marriott Shoals:

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, every time the Madison County or City of Madison school boards go on retreat, they hop in their cars and race to the Marriott Shoals, where for a few days, apparently, they engage in the kind of heart-to-heart dialogue they seem unable to engage in here.

I guess they sit in a circle on folding chairs and wail about how the people just don’t understand. But I don’t know.

In short, they take serious discussions of a serious issue - public education - out of the community they serve. And while the sessions (because of that darned state open-meetings law) are open to the public, how many parents can drop what they’re doing, find supervision for their kids and follow the entourage out of town for a few days?

The latest to frolic at the Shoals Marriott was the Madison County school board and other school officials. Superintendent Terry Davis was careful to note that the money spent was mostly federal money. That means, I assume, that it arrives from Mars every other week by bus and is thus paid by Martians and not by Alabamians or Americans.

I have a lot of respect for Ehinger’s professionalism, and now I’m gaining more respect for his humor as well.  Madison County Schools Superintendent Davis just got schooled; let’s hope he realizes it…

From the NY Times:

It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents, especially the poor.

Municipal officials in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and 10 other major cities, as well as dozens of smaller towns, quickly said they would match Philadelphia’s plans.

But the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be profitable led to sudden withdrawals by service providers like EarthLink, the Internet company that had effectively cornered the market on the efforts by the larger cities.

The state of Alabama is now in the business of taking money from its citizens and then dangling that money out in front of fat people like we’re running a game show.

For the second year in a row, the state Department of Public Health is sponsoring a weight-loss contest to help nudge Alabamians toward longer, healthier lives.

The rules of Scale Back Alabama are simple: Form a team of four friends or co-workers, get weighed at any Huntsville Hospital wellness center in early January, and start losing. Anyone who sheds 10 pounds or more during the 10-week competition is entered into a drawing for up to $1,000 cash.   

I wonder what Jefferson, Madison, etc. would think if they knew that state governments in this country had fallen to this level?  Running game shows with tax dollars to encourage moderation.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.

I have a better idea.  How about we just put the participants on a treadmill and dangle a $100 bill in front of them like the proverbial carrot.

Last year’s contest was modeled after “The Biggest Loser” TV show and rewarded the team with the highest percentage of weight loss. The 8,400 people who completed the program dropped a total of 78,472 pounds - an average of 9.34 pounds per person.

Despite those successes, Miriam Gaines, the state health department’s nutrition director, said the emphasis on percentage weight loss may have encouraged some contestants to try crash diets and other risky things in an attempt to drop as many pounds as possible.

Gee Miriam, ya think!  Who would have guessed that some poor, fat people might crash diet to get $1,000?

Remember this next year when you hear about the critical state of our General Fund.  You’ll be told we don’t have money for this or that. but it didn’t stop the state from giving some of it away in a lose the fat competition.

From the AP:

Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute.

What’s that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

There is a presidential candidate who actually has a unique plan to reign in debt.  It’s called decreased government spending.

All those FEMA trailers bought with our tax dollars are just sitting unused in Hope, Arkansas.  The total cost of the 18,000 trailers and mobile homes cost us $424 million dollars.  That includes $4.5 million just to lay out 140 acres of gravel to park all the trailers on.

Government at its best.

Here’s a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.

Officials seized 2,400 bottles late last month during warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, the southern Tennessee town where the whiskey is distilled.

…

Tennessee law requires officials to destroy whiskey that cannot be sold legally in the state, such as bottles designed for sale overseas and those with broken seals.

“We’d pour it out,” said Danielle Elks, executive director of the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

The estimated value of the liquor is $1 million, possibly driven up by the value of the antique bottles, which range from 3-liter bottles to half-pints.

I don’t follow Tennessee politics closely, but I would imagine it is like politics in Alabama and all over the country in one regard: lots of politicians whine about not taking enough taxes out of people’s pockets.  For one of those governments to then destroy $1 million of anything - let alone fine aged whiskey - rather than sell it and put the proceeds into government coffers defies logic.

That is what WAFF called the Huntsville metro jail boondoggle.

Over budget and overdue, the Huntsville-Madison County Metro Jail is now a monument to your tax dollars at waste.

Already Huntsville and Madison County’s new metro jail is projected to cost $40 million over the original budget, $5.7 million of that just in repairs so far.

…

[A] document we found summarizing at least one of those forensic reports is a letter dated March 23, 2006, from CTL group’s vice president, adressed [sic] to Bruce Taylor, projects manager for for the city. The documents reads in part, “Specific concerns regarding the brace and connections and overturning of top most modules were addressed in a letter dated February 22, 2006 to the city of Hunstville [sic]. To date these concerns are unresolved.”

But construction continued, and until June 30, 2006, Dawson was still the builder under contract and Bruce Taylor was still the director of facilities projects, as David Wall remained the owner’s project’s representative.

…

City attorney Pter Joffrion did sit down with us to explain where this project went wrong.

“None of it was the city’s fault, it all occurred on the other side. It’s very clear now that not only were there design deficiencies, but significant construction deficiencies as well. Even a well trained project manager would have missed much of what occurred,” Joffrion said.

Joffrion’s “even a well trained project manager” statement is a frank admission that the city did not have a well trained project manager overseeing the project.  Who dropped the ball by saddling an unqualified manager to run the project?  The buck has to stop somewhere.

As predicted, Commissioner Faye Dyer is going to beat Glenn Watson over the head with this debacle.  She is now calling for an audit of the project.