Orson Scott Card: Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

[m42]

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-10-05-1.html

[kerrin]

It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

This is true but Bush did nothing to stop this and he could have. He even praised the fact that more American's would be part of his 'ownership society.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9viaJatpo

Bush is just as much to blame. Orson Scott makes a good point about what this did to the "poor," but he's another hack apologist for Bush and the Republican party.

[Couloir]

Yes but truth doesn't sell. Ratings and distribution lead the messages news agencies pass. That's why all the news shows are opinion ones and never investigative journalism any more.

[Anenome]

We need to change the game somehow. Something must be done which is currently not being done. Crises need to be used to advance a libertarian / individualist agenda the way the left uses crises to advance theirs. Despite the absolute truth that the government's intervention by both parties created the home-loan fiasco the left is selling it as a failure of the free market!

An example: somehow we have to figure out a way to create a philosophic movement which draws attention to unintended consequences so that narrative can be worked into the national consciousness that is favorable to and advances our ideas.

Call it 'Consequenceism' or something ;P Use the explanation of how the good intentions of government officials which led to the housing fiasco as exhibit A, elaborate exhibit B through ZZ and posit a way out of this mess that's credible and understandable and then you have some real political capital that no leftist can easily escape.

That's a 30 second example, but somethig has to change because those allied or close to the Individualist perspective have been routed in the most individualistic (arguably) country in the world. The arguments of socialism are kicking our ass on the public field. We have a socialist for a President! We must take a different tack, some how, some way, or face increasing marginalization and irrelevance into obscurity.

Which is one of the reasons, Kerrin, why I say the most efficacious way to be taken seriously is to accumulate power within the one party sympathetic and responsive to individualisms ideas, the Republican party, and use that vehicle to spread the philosophy broadly. Wouldn't actually be too different from how neoconservatism was spread. In fact you could've taken individualism, relabelled it neoconservatism and done the exact same thing they did at that time and we'd all be in an entirely different place in history right now.

[Anenome]

^^^ Seems the Teaparty is doing now what I suggest here so long ago: taking over the Republican party.