Flap’s Links and Comments for July 13th on 14:50

These are my links for July 13th from 14:50 to 14:52:

• Another possible contingency plan in the debt limit fight – Having blasted the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's "last resort" proposal, I thought I'd offer an alternative contingency plan. The way I see it, members of Congress have an obligation to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate future deficit spending that they already voted for, but nothing beyond that. That would mean, since Congress already approved a 2011 budget that includes deficit spending as part of the  deal to avert a government shut down, they should pass a clean debt limit increase that would take us through the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30. If and when Republicans eventually reach a deal on the fiscal 2012 budget, they should then vote to increase the debt limit by the amount of deficit spending that the Congressional Budget Office projects for that year.

  Admittedly, there are a number of obstacles to this plan. The most obvious being that it isn't clear if there would be enough votes in Congress, and President Obama has publicly ruled out any short-term deals. Yet as things stand, the McConnell approach has been deemed "dead on arrival" in the House. So if we're talking about "last resort" contingency plans, it's hard to see why this approach would be any less plausible.

  If Republicans favor this plan and it encounters opposition from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Obama, that would do several things. It could make Obama start to look intransigent and it would be another opportunity to highlight the fact that the Democratic Senate hasn't even formally released a 2012 budget while the Republican House has done its job and passed one. If there's no agreement about 2012 deficit levels and we don't even have details on Democrats' opening bid, why should Republicans agree to increase the debt limit past the end of this fiscal year? Compared to the McConnell plan, which hinges on arcane Congressional procedure to disguise the fact that Republicans would effectively be voting for a debt limit increase, this would have the advantage of being a clear, transparent, stance that's easy to explain to voters.

• Home ownership declines in California – The last decade saw a major housing boom, followed by a cataclysmic bust, and the net result was a declining rate of home ownership in California, according to a new analysis of 2010 census data by University of Southern California demographer Dowell Myers.

  Beyond the raw numbers, says Myers, the census data revealed a generational and ethnic transfer between an aging white population and a relatively young Latino population. During the last decade, white home ownership dropped by 157,877 units while Latino-owned homes increased by 383,778 with the latter group accounting for more than three-quarters of ownership growth in the state.

  The overall increase in owner-occupied homes, just under a half-million during the decade, was less than half the numerical increase in the 1980s and the state's overall home ownership rate, 55.9 percent, is one percentage point lower than it was in 2000 and the second lowest rate in the nation, just ahead of New York.

  Within California, home ownership rates vary widely from a low of 35.8 percent in densely populated San Francisco to well over 70 percent in foothill and mountain counties.

  The slowing incidence of home ownership, Myers noted, lessens upward pressure on home prices in the supply-demand equation.