By Sancho Panza
Chip Filson and I were friends until recently, but things have changed.
Calling him a modern day Don Quixote, for his relentlessly obscure attacks on the NCUA [chipfilson.com] sparked the breach. Seeking to upend the “giants” of NCUA with logic, facts, and reason once is certainly an act of fantasy, persisting is delusional. I speak from experience, if you get my tilt.
Entrenched, NCUA trifles and traffics in bureaucratic unaccountability. Those Duke Street windmills remain churned by the oft-feckless winds of politics – and their own internal hot air.
Mr. Filson aside, it is unsettling to find a Republican-majority NCUA Board perpetuating--and even encouraging--the legendary “we-know-better-than-you” bureaucratic insolence of the agency. Republicans, one thought, were the party of less government, not more; of more accountability to the people, not less. Republicans, one thought, were “Bill of Rights”-type folks who believed that the federal government should be less intrusive in our lives, not more. Republicans, one thought, would easily spot that NCUA, an “independent” (answerable-to-no-one) federal agency, is more or less a small “d” democratic mess!
Not ‘RRs’
But, apparently, the two NCUA Republican board members, Mr. Hood and Mr. Hauptman, are “RINOs,” not “RRs”! Real Republicans shouldn’t vote 3-0 on risk-based capital, unnecessarily increasing regulatory burden and overriding federal law. Reagan Republicans shouldn’t condone a mushrooming agency budget in an era marked by far fewer credit unions, the availability of micro-cost digital monitoring, and virtual regulatory exams. Responsible Republicans should actually stand for something, not just “go along” with the “dINO-mite” (democratic-In-Name-Only) “Agenda of the Chair” (Mr. AOC!).
Whether RINO-1 (Republican In Name Only] or RINO-2 (Regulator In Name Only), something isn’t “right” with Mr. Hood and Mr. Hauptman. Surely when “the base” realizes the problem Mr. Hood won’t be dining again at Mar-a-Lago and will soon have more free time to enjoy opera.
An Ernest Tilt
As for Mr. Hauptman, hard to believe that his political sponsor – an Arkansas senator - would “Cotton” to learning that his protégé has gulped down the in-house, let-them-eat-cake Kool-Aid and swerved off the right road into a ditch on the left.
Oh, by the way, wonder if Chip Filson remains a life-long “RR”?
Is that why he continues to tilt so earnestly?
Jim Blaine is the former CEO of State Employees Credit Union in Raleigh, N.C.