The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Unlike Randy Kuhl's earlier town meetings, the current crop finished on a quiet note.  Besides a feel-good story about home-schooled kids, the only other media notice I've seen is a reprint of a press release by WXXI, Rochester's public radio station.

I'm guessing the reason for the calm is a combination of factors, including the holiday week and the lack of any burning issue coming to the floor of the House in the near future.  Location of the meetings probably wasn't a factor, since meeting places included the Monroe County towns of Chili and Perinton, as well as the neighboring Ontario County town of Victor.  Perinton, the site of Kuhl's northernmost district office, has see protests before.

The Syracuse Post-Standard has a story on a bi-partisan effort to increase Medicare reimbursement for ambulance services.  Chuck Schumer is leading the effort for New York in the Senate, and Randy Kuhl, Jim Walsh (NY-25) and Michael Arcuri (NY-24) have co-sponsored the bill in the House.  (hat tip:  Ontario GOP)

I missed this morning's Massa press conference because if it were fun, they'd call it play, not work.

In his recent post about Mortgage reform, Ontario GOP gives a reason why Randy Kuhl was right to vote against the recent reform bill.  GOP points out that the bill may end up punishing those with "decent but not perfect" credit, because the bill increases the amount of due diligence required by lenders.

I agree with GOP that borrowers are going to feel some hurt.  As he points out, "lenders are already adding many more hurdles to the underwriting process than ever before".  His observation mirrors my sense that, no matter what Congress does, the invisible hand is going to spank lenders who don't have perfect credit.  The reason is the huge correction that's occurring in the financial markets.

Today's news that Freddie Mac lost $2 billion last quarter is just the latest indicator of a market in turmoil.  One of the key mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), have been steadily downgraded.  Citibank's CFO, whose company holds $43 billion in CDOs, says his latest valuation of that paper is a only "reasonable stab".  That's because the crisis isn't over, and more writedowns are coming.  Amidst this turmoil, banks and other underwriters aren't eager to issue more mortgages.

Unless the requirements of the mortgage reform bill are completely out-of-control, it's unlikely that they'll be any stricter than the lending institutions that have been burned by the current lax environment.  For the near future, banks are going to be extremely tight with the mortgage buck, for reasons that have nothing to do with Congress, and everything to do with the markets.  That's unfortunate for lenders, but  the invisible hand is behind this smackdown.

I don't normally comment on newspaper editorials, but there's one in the D&C today that is full of muddy thinking.  The main point of the editorial is that the Democrats need to drop their current Iraq strategy and try to compromise with the President on the war.  The writers at Rochesterturning dissect this editorial pretty completely, but I want to focus on one additional point.  The D&C says:

The goal is, or at least should be, to begin moving in a direction that will allow greater control by the Iraqi government and people. Engaging in power struggles over funding, especially symbolic ones, for the remainder of Bush's presidency will be time wasted.

The first sentence is the most important one in the whole editorial, and it's a key point that's missed by those who tout the military progress being made in Iraq.  To date, military progress hasn't led to any appreciable political progress. The political apparatus that we've installed there hasn't been able to assert "greater control", because they're unwilling to make the compromises and deals necessary to form a viable central government.  This was true last year when violence was higher in Iraq, and it's true this Fall when violence has lessened.  

Since our military efforts aren't yielding political progress, what does it matter that Congress is embroiled in a power struggle over funding?   Whatever Congress does is clearly irrelevant, because if one thing is true about the whole Iraq mess, it's that the mis-application, over-application, under-application, or even Petraeus-perfect application of military force doesn't get us anywhere in enabling a government there.  When everyone's ready to acknowledge that, then maybe we'll get somewhere.

Update: The lede of Thursday's front-page Washington Post story on the war says it all:

Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.

Judging from today's blog post, holding two conflicting thoughts at one time doesn't seem to phase Randy Kuhl.   In that post, Randy notes that the IRS is printing forms which assume that the AMT has not been repealed.  Through Randy's looking glass, this is somehow the Democrat's fault.

Either Randy doesn't suffer from cognitive dissonance, or he doesn't remember his vote last week against the repeal of the AMT.