Doug Smith has a good piece over at Naked Capitalism about the $88 million budget cut for HUD housing counselors, calling it "a stiletto in the back of sane housing markets":

Do the math. The market has too much supply and too little demand. The trends point to even worse un-affordability down the road – meaning more supply and less demand. So, as said, even the empirically wrong-headed extend and pretend strategy requires efforts aimed at reversing instead of exacerbating this picture.

Among other things, reduced housing supply means, as Yves has repeatedly pointed out, doing principal modifications that are actually affordable – which, in turn, requires a new, separate underwriting effort. And, the same applies on the demand side: only careful underwriting leads to affordable, sustainable purchases – and the asset values that go with that.

The banks do not know how to do this work. Nor, as long as they seek usurious rents, will they ever learn.

But non-profit affordable housing groups do know how to do this work. They know how to prepare people to buy homes that will remain affordable. They know how to help people find affordable solutions to avoiding foreclosure and staying in homes. And, finally, the dedicated, professional foreclosure counselors know how to help people who cannot afford to stay accept that reality and find the most humane route out of their homes.

Efficiency, as we’ve come to learn, is not part of the efficient market hypothesis. Unsustainable and predatory returns grounded in ignoring the balance sheet not to mention tail and even non-tail risks – yes, those are part of the efficient market hypothesis. But efficiency itself? Not so much.

But the self-serving proponents of this false theory remain in control. So, instead of rational, efficient capital finding its way to high performing organizations who know how to prepare and underwrite home ownership that avoids a plague of delinquency and foreclosure, our purveyors of capital prefer the casino, come what may. As a result, high performing groups like the excellent non-profit housing counselors –groups with strong track records of low delinquency and foreclosure — depend on government funding and private charity. Yet, the grown ups in government now stupidly endanger many of these groups instead of providing even more support for their economy-saving efforts. It is an upside down world.

Apologists for Obama and the Congress often speak soberly about taking scalpels to budgets as part of shared sacrifice and tough decisions. In this as so many other cases, that is arrogant and ignorant nonsense. These decisions affecting less than one one-thousandth of one percent of the federal budget are not ‘tough’ – at least on those who make them. Which means there’s nothing shared by the decision makers in the sacrifices that will now get worse. Finally, these are most certainly not scalpels. They are stilettos in the backs of everyday Americans and the people of good performing organizations who serve them — who see and treat them as customers instead of income-and-asset targets to be strip-mined. But, then, the ill-got profits from strip mining are more likely than the meager, shrinking resources of everyday consumers to find their way into the political war chests of a post-Citizens United oligarchy.

GE now joins the Reagan History Rewrite project as a new contributor, blanketing the airwaves with this nonsense, celebrating Ronald Reagan's "Centennial" while pandering to the right wing with tales of his majesty and legend.

Angelo (aka StopBeck on Twitter) was kind enough to list some facts as an antidote for GE's spin:

Ronald Reagan destroyed unions...cut the budgets for education, EPA, poverty programs, etc...engaged in a public policy initiative aimed specifically at screwing over the poor...advanced the prison-industrial complex...hollowed out the Federal government to the best of his ability...ironically espoused the belief that government was the enemy (hello! he was the president *facepalm*)...was reckless and neglectful in responding to HIV/AIDS...tried to cut disabled people from social security rolls (that’s right...disabled people)...HUD grant fraud…Sewergate…

And let's not forget the greatest achievement of his Presidency: the Iran-Contra arms for hostages deal.

GE takes billions of dollars for defense contracts and other goodies from our government, and sees nothing wrong with singing Reagan's praises on Rush hate talk radio?

I'm waiting for their celebration of JFK to balance things. And a unicorn. And maybe a pony, too.

Ed.: Be sure to read the definitive discussion of the Reagan mythmaking machine -- and how it is a significant cog in the mighty conservative-movement Wurlitzer -- in Will Bunch's Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future, an important read for every progressive.

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The Glenn Beck show tried to sandbag Barney Frank with one of their roving reporters or producers or whatever they are, but they messed with the wrong guy. ACORN is Beck's villain of the hour and Biff Jenkins asked Frank if he'd hold hearings on ACORN because the right hates them. He got an answer he didn't expect.

Frank: As you know, the Bush administration, every year of the eight years of the Bush administration gave them well over a million dollars for housing counseling, and nobody has shown me any sign that any of that federal money was misspent. You know, I think people are being somewhat unfair to President Bush and his secretaries of HUD who consistently funded ACORN for, as I said, for a total of about 14 million dollars during the Bush years. If someone has evidence that the money that President Bush made available was misspent -- that's what I have jurisdiction over, I don't have jurisdiction over election activities by another ACORN organization -- but if anyone has any evidence, and no one has sent it to me yet, that the Bush administration ignored the misspending of that $14 million, I'll look into it.

Biff: Yes, sir, but would you hold hearings or an investigation ...?

Frank: I think you're being very unfair to President Bush.

OK, his name is not Biff, it's Griff. Frank used this against Michelle Bachmann and when you hit them with facts like this, they really have no response other than to ignore what Barney Frank said and continue with their smears.

I wonder why Beck never asked Republicans to investigate the missing $9 billion in Iraq? I guess Beck still feels like a fool after being exposed as a liar by the ladies of The View.