The Orphaned Issues

While reading Steve's article on Barney Frank's bill to double-down on all of the errors that brought our financial system to its knees, I began thinking:

When the gun-grabbers get legislatively frisky, the NRA gives me an opportunity to send a pre-written email to my congresscritters.

When illegal immigrant amnesty is on the docket, NumbersUSA does the same.

When its time to boycott the sponsors of cultural decline, the American Family Association lets me know.

When a high-profile tax-and-spend initiative is on the horizon, FreedomWorks steps into the breech.

But . . . the mischief wrought by the Community Reinvestment Act has demonstrably exceeded all of these. And yet, its massive expansion is, as near as I can tell, an orphan issue. No organization with the resources to compose a hard-hitting letter and post it on Capwiz has done anything to mobilize opposition. This says something about the nature of our political system. Steve Sailer calls it "the age of small print". Congress to does a lot to create winners and losers, and at a sufficient level of craftiness, the winners are concentrated and organized, while the losers are diffuse and uninformed.