MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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A call to Change

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I don’t know this writer, Marc Ginsberg, but he had this post calling on Sen. Barack Obama to propose something big to tackle our nation’s economic malaise. I could not agree more. My friend, Todd Drew, and I have talked ourselves hoarse over just this topic.

I believe now is the time for Obama to consider a bolder and more historic approach to the financial crisis by presenting to middle income Americans a step-by-step “big think” FDR-style New Deal program to add greatness and urgency to his economic recovery plan. Tough times call for urgent and big-think measures. Surely, we are in this era, once again.

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt unveiled a landmark economic recovery plan that created a “New Deal” for America’s middle class and restored confidence to a hard-pressed nation. It was imaginative, bold and daring and lifted America up by its bootstraps and restored confidence and stability. It took several years, but it worked.

A similar type of “new deal” program aimed principally at the crux of our financial crisis — the falling U.S. housing market — is now urgently needed by our Democratic standard-bearer to create an indelibly understandable and comprehensive framework in the minds of voters that he has the most coherent and bold recovery program that gets at the very heart of what plunged our financial markets into chaos (aside from greedy Wall Street executives peddling credit default swaps, etc.) . Another financial infusion of funds to average Americans modeled after the last economic stimulus proposal may just be too insufficient to meet the emergency that will surely follow us well into 2009.

October 9, 2008
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A step back in time

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Prior to the debate in Tennessee, C-Span re-broadcast the Oct. 15, 1992 debate between incumbent President George H. W. Bush, then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and crackpot businessman H. Ross Perot. Some of you will recall that debate as the town hall style debate where Pres. Bush doomed his re-election by impatiently looking at his watch, as if he had somewhere better he’d rather be.

What the re-broadcast made evident 16 years later is how phenomenal a candidate Bill Clinton was. He was so young but so wise and so brilliant. He played the audience masterfully, like a master violinist playing a rare Stradivarius, connecting many questions he answered that night to many members of the audience.

Carole Simpson, the ABC News correspondent who was the moderator that night, asked a question that I did not remember until I saw it again tonight but which struck me as important:

“We have very little time left and it occurs to me that we have talked all this time and there has not been one question about some of the racial tensions and ethnic tensions in America. Is there anyone in this audience that would like to pose a question to the candidates on this?”

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What I’d like to know, and this is to any of the three of you, is aside from the recent accomplishment of your party, aside from those accomplishments in racial representation, and wit-hout citing any of your current appointments or successful elections, when do you estimate your party will both nominate and elect an Afro-American and female ticket to the presidency of the U.S.?

SIMPSON: Governor Clinton, why don’t you answer that first?

CLINTON: Well, I don’t have any idea but I hope it will happen some time in my lifetime.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I do, too.

CLINTON: I believe that this country is electing more and more African Americans and Latinos and Asian Americans who are representing districts that are themselves not necessarily of a majority of their race. The American people are beginning to vote across racial lines, and I hope it will happen more and more.

More and more women are being elected. Look at all these women Senate candidates we have here. And you know, according to my mother and my wife and my daughter, this world would be a lot better place if women were running it most of the time.

I do think there are special experiences and judgments and backgrounds and understandings that women bring to this process, by the way. This lady said here, how have you been affected by the economy. I mean, women know what’s it like to be paid an unequal amount for equal work. They know what it’s like not to have flexible working hours. They know what it’s like not to have family leave or childcare. So I think it would be a good thing for America if it happened. And I think it will happen in my lifetime.

SIMPSON: Okay. I’m sorry. We have just a little bit of time left. Let’s try to get responses from each of them. President Bush or Mr. Perot?

BUSH: I think if Barbara Bush were running this year she’d be elected. But it’s too late.

(Laughter) You don’t want us to mention appointees, but when you see the quality of people in our administration, see how Colin Powell performed — I say administration —

AUDIENCE QUESTION: (Inaudible).

BUSH: You weren’t impressed with the fact that he —

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Excuse me. I’m extremely impressed with that.

BUSH: Yeah, but wouldn’t that suggest to the American people, then, here’s a quality person, if he decided that he could automatically get the nomination of either party?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Sure — I just wanted to know — yes.

BUSH: Huh?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’m totally impressed with that. I just wanted to know is, when’s your-

BUSH: Oh, I see.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: When?

BUSH: You mean, time?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah.

BUSH: I don’t know — starting after 4 years.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Laughs)

BUSH: No, I think you’ll see —

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot.

BUSH: I think you’ll see more minority candidates and women candidates coming forward.

SIMPSON: We have — thank you.

BUSH: This is supposed to be the year of the women in the Senate. Let’s see how they do. I hope a lot of —

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot — I don’t want to cut you off any more but we only have a minute left.

PEROT: I have a fearless forecast. A message just won’t do it. Colin Powell will be on somebody’s ticket 4 years from now — right? Right? He wanted that said — 4 years.

SIMPSON: How about a woman?

PEROT: Now, if won’t be, General Waller would be — you say, why do you keep picking military people. These are people that I just happen to know and have a high regard for. I’m sure there are hundreds of others.

BUSH: How about Dr. Lou Sullivan?

PEROT: Absolutely.

BUSH: Yeah, a good man.

SIMPSON: What about a woman?

PEROT: Oh, oh.

BUSH: (Inaudible) totally agree. My candidate’s back there.

SIMPSON: (Laughs)

PEROT: Okay. I can think of many.

SIMPSON: Many?

PEROT: Absolutely.

SIMPSON: When?

PEROT: All right. How about Sandra Day O’Connor as an example?

SIMPSON: Hm-hm.

PEROT: Dr. Bernadine Healy —

SIMPSON: Good.

PEROT: National Institutes of Health. I’ll yield the floor.

BUSH: All good Republicans.

PEROT: Name some more.

(Laughter)

SIMPSON: Thank you. I want to apologize to our audience because there were 209 people here and there were 209 questions. We only got to a fraction of them and I’m sorry to those of you that didn’t get to ask your questions but we must move to the conclusion of the program.

October 7, 2008
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Keating 5 ring a bell?

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sent us this message:

Dick Cheney with lipstick in her best wink wink, nod nod, curtsy curtsy, wiggle wiggle, bratty girl whine is really desperate to turn this election around on fear and smear politics.

Fact is Obama’s connection to William Ayers has been dissected to death and it comes down to the happenstance of serving on the same board with a university professor who has a criminal history dating back 40 yrs and not relevant to the context of their crossing paths in the context of his life today as a university professor.

Like a good little pit bill she is trying real hard to gain some traction with her flirty little smear and fear act (that is so demeaning to woman) but Americans are a little too preoccupied with real crisis like vaporizing portfolios and melting mortgage houses to engage.

It does seem a bit surprising and arrogant however, that McCain would send her on this witch hunt on his behalf considering his own embarrassing involvement in the Keating 5 scandal. You’d think he’d understand the damage of innuendo and the guilt by association of questionable relationships.

Thing is, he wasn’t 8 yrs old when the crimes occurred. More on the Keating 5 scandal on the link below, courtesy of the L.A. Times

The DAVISReport

Keating 5 ring a bell? – Los Angeles Times

Posted by www.EileenDavis.blogspot.com The Davis Report – The Voice of Central Virginia and the Capital City.

October 7, 2008
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A liberal in the U.S. Senate

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The Agonist is one of my favorite stops when I’m inclined to read other blogs. It is simply one of the best out there. I stopped reading for a while because I felt their vociferous support of Senator John Edwards blinded them to the good points of other candidates.

In any case, I stayed away too long. For instance, Bob Geiger has a piece that greatly interests me that I might have missed when I was not actively reading the site. The point is that when Republicans hurl the liberal epithet at Sen. Barack Obama, his votes are very much in the mainstream supporting things that most Americans support.

Please check out the piece and the Agonist.

October 6, 2008
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Calamity John

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The Los Angeles Times today offered details about a previous post of mine that some people have told me is controversial because I deigned to question Sen. John McCain’s heroism during the Vietnam War.

My contention remains that McCain, at least initially, took valuable training and equipment of the American military for granted. But, because he was the son and grandson of Admirals, his carelessness was swept under the rug and he was allowed to become a navy pilot.

His subsequent capture in Vietnam could have easily been predicted, based on his performance during his military training.

The Times interviewed men who served with McCain and located once-confidential 1960s-era accident reports and formerly classified evaluations of his squadrons during the Vietnam War. This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits.

In today’s military, a lapse in judgment that causes a crash can end a pilot’s career. Though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain’s record stands out.

“Three mishaps are unusual,” said Michael L. Barr, a former Air Force pilot with 137 combat missions in Vietnam and an internationally known aviation safety expert who teaches in USC’s Aviation Safety and Security Program. “After the third accident, you would say: Is there a trend here in terms of his flying skills and his judgment?”

Jeremiah Pearson, a Navy officer who flew 400 missions over Vietnam without a mishap and later became the head of human spaceflight at NASA, said: “That’s a lot. You don’t want any. Maybe he was just unlucky.”

Naval aviation experts say the three accidents before McCain’s deployment to Vietnam probably triggered a review to determine whether he should be allowed to continue flying. The results of the review would have been confidential.

The Times asked McCain’s campaign to release any military personnel records in the candidate’s possession showing how the Navy handled the three incidents. The campaign said it would have no comment.

The LA Times story provides invaluable service by digging into some of the details of this sorry affair. What they reveal is instructive because the same pattern would later emerge in Sen. McCain’s political career, especially in the case of the Keating 5 controversy.

October 6, 2008
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McCain, the pot

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From the Obama campaign:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

Did McCain Learn From the S&L Crisis?

The GOP nominee has supported fiscal deregulation and relaxed accounting for 20 years By John Dougherty,The Washington Independent, 9/29/08 5:08 PM

McCain’s recent history by LANNY V. STRICHERZ, the Argus Reader, SIOUX FALLS, SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Keating 5 ring a bell? McCain’s past collides with the present Wall Street debacle by Rosa Brooks, the Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2008
At one time, John McCain said the worst thing that ever happened to him, Vietnam included, was the so-called Keating 5 scandal. “The Vietnamese,” he would say, “didn’t question my honor.”

 

October 6, 2008
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New Yorker magazine: ‘The choice’

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In a long article, the New Yorker magazine endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), and made the argument for why Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), would be the wrong choice to lead the nation at this time:

Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.
*                          *                            *

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

Continue . . .

October 3, 2008
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