Archive for May 5th, 2009

School choice: kids or unions … don’t bet on the kids

May 5, 2009

I’m a big fan of charter schools and vouchers … the latter giving motivated families to send their children to provably better schools. 

Congress — with Obama approval —  is about to kill the demonstrably successful DC voucher program.  Why? Because kids don’t vote but union members do.  Pretty sad.

There are a sprinkling of articles today on the hypocrisy of government reps on the subject.  They boil down to this fundamental argument:

“Some hypocrisies are apparently more equal than others. If, for example, you are a politician who preaches “traditional values” and you get caught in a hotel with a woman who is not your wife, the press is going to have a field day with your tartuffery.

If, however, you are a pol who piously tells inner-city families that public schools are the answer — and you do this while safely ensconcing your own kids in some private haven — the press corps mostly winks.

As strong as the outright opposition may be, perhaps the biggest problem faced by these parents is the Beltway’s complicity in a smarmy double standard. Two weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation highlighted this double standard with the release of a new study showing that members of Congress are sending or have sent their children to private schools …  at a rate that’s more than three times the rate for rest of America.

For Democrats especially, their choice of a private school for their own families tends to make them opponents of choice for others. The bargain the teachers unions offer is this: We won’t fuss about private or parochial schools for your children, provided you don’t help any other kid get the same chance.”

From the Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124147923132785121.html

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Goldman to Repay TARP Funds…but Feds May Not Let Them!

May 5, 2009

The TARP saga continues …

Excerpted from New York Times, “Goldman Using Share Sale to Return Bailout Funds”, by Louise Story, April 15, 2009

Six months after accepting a financial lifeline from Washington, a newly profitable Goldman Sachs is pushing to return the billions of taxpayer dollars that it received in an effort to extricate itself from heightened government control.

If successful, Goldman would become the first major bank to return funds received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Such a step would probably enable Goldman — long one of the most lucrative places to work on Wall Street — to free itself from government-imposed restrictions on compensation.

It is unclear how quickly Goldman might be allowed to return the $10 billion it accepted last October. Goldman is not allowed to return the money without the approval of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, which both declined to comment on Monday.

One analyst comments, “Goldman can walk the halls of Congress waving a check, but is it in the best interest of the marketplace for them to pay it back?”

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Goldman said on Monday that it would seek to raise $5 billion by selling new common stock and use the proceeds, along with other funds, to repay the government.

“We just think that operating our business without the government capital would be an easier thing to do.  We’d be under less scrutiny, and under less pressure.”

Edit by DAF

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Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/business/15goldman.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print

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