Author: Michael O. Allen

Sound economic fundamentals

(Photo: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press
A figure in the window at Lehman Brothers headquarters in New York on Monday)

You get far away enough from a disaster and you don’t remember what it was like. In our case, the Depression was so long ago that it’s hard to imagine that we are in one.

Except this has the makings of a global economic meltdown.

And all during the intervening years since the Depression, people like McCain advisor and former United Senator from the state of Texas, Republican Phil Gramm, from his perch as chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, whittled away all of the measures put in place to prevent another one from happening.

Gramm was the author of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which did away with the Glass-Steagall law, which was put in place at the height of the Depression to limit the conflicts of interest created when commercial banks were permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds.

In the early part of the century, individual investors were seriously hurt by banks whose overriding interest was promoting stocks of interest and benefit to the banks, rather than to individual investors. Glass-Steagall Act banned commercial banks from underwriting securities, forcing banks to choose between being a simple lender or an underwriter (brokerage).

The also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), insuring bank deposits, and strengthened the Federal Reserve’s control over credit.

Gramm, who earlier this year complained that Americans had become a nation of whiners, was a particularly corrupt handmaiden to the banking industry. He was a lead economic advisor to John McCain, who keeps insisting the fundamentals of the American economy are strong, even as Americans lose their homes and jobs, and would have been a shoo-in for an economic cabinet position under the McCain administration.

These are dire economic times. The Depression must have felt like this. Banks are failing and Americans are losing their homes, their jobs and ways of life are falling by the wayside.

And, talk about being out of touch. Here’s McCain this morning talking about the catastrophe:

Our national leaders, meanwhile, are at sea about what to do. They keep rewarding the people who got the nation into this mess  with tax cuts and bailouts.

As our economy craters, shouldn’t we, to borrow a phrase from Harry Truman, attack these citadels of special privilege and greed, and drive the money changers from the temple?

Instead of bailing out Wall Street, should we be bailing out America’s Main Streets?

The Double Standard of Red or Blue

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

Received part of this from a friend, Something to think about…

If you are a minority and you are selected for a job over more qualified candidates, you’re a “token hire.”
If you’re a conservative and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates, you’re a “game changer.”
Black teen pregnancies? A “crisis.”
White teen pregnancies? A “blessed event.”
If you grow up in Hawaii, you’re “exotic.”
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re the “quintessential American story.”
Name you kid Barack you’re “unpatriotic.”
Name your kid Track, you’re “colorful.”
If you’re a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual, you’re “reckless.”
A Republican who doesn’t fully vet is a “maverick.”
If you spend three years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to a staff of 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, distinguish yourself as the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African-American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly eight more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, then spend four years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment, Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.
If you spend four years on the town council and six years as the mayor of a town with apprx. 6,000 people, then spend 18 months as the governor of a state with 675,000 people, then you’ve got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket. As the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military you are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.
If you are a popular Democratic male candidate, you are an “arrogant celebrity.”
If you are a popular Republican female candidate, you are “energizing the base.”
If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions, you are “presumptuous.”
If you are an older male candidate who makes last-minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a “shoot from the hip” maverick.
If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree, you are an elitist, out of touch with the real America.
If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of Annapolis with multiple disciplinary infractions, you are a hero.
If you managed a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an “empty suit.”
If you are a part time mayor of a town of apprx. 6,000 people with a town manager to assist you ,you are an “experienced executive.”
If you go to a South Side Chicago church, your beliefs are “extremist.”
If you believe in creationism, don’t believe global warming is man-made, and stated the Iraq War “is from God” you are “strongly principled.”
If you cheated on your disfigured wife and left her to marry a rich young heiress, you’re the family values Christian candidate.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years and are raising two beautiful daughters, you’re “risky.”
If you’re a black single mother of four who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you’re an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
If you’re a white married mother of four who waits 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you’re spunky.
If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
If you teach responsible age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you’re eroding the fiber of society.
If you believe separation of church and state is the cornerstone of our Constitution and will defend it, your against fundamental Christian values.
If you happily blur these lines, you’re God’s Warrior – Wait, what country is this?
Your thoughts?

The DAVISReport

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

Now this is more like it!

Obama spokesperson Bill Burton today released the following statement:

“We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election. Politico’s Johnathan Martin explains why. Money quote:

McCain seems to have made a choice that many politicians succumb to but that he had always promised to avoid — he appears ready to do whatever it takes to win, even it if soils his reputation.

“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

Rogers, who hung tough with McCain through the dark days of the primary and has lived through every high and low of this turbulent and unpredictable race, argues that they tried to run a high-ground campaign and sought to keep the candidate in front of the media in the fashion he enjoys. His point: No one paid any attention.

“We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn’t cover John McCain. So now you’ve got to be forward-leaning in everything,” he said.

I don’t fault McCain for being negative — even nasty — if he thinks it’s what he needs to do to win. But there’s an ethical way to go negative and an unethical way to go negative. It’s not clear yet which works better, but it’s clear which one McCain has chosen.

Cross-posted from Facebook.

Sarah Palin: Foreign Policy Heavyweight

I take back everything I ever said about Gov.Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience. It turns out that Palin is, indeed, a world traveler.

We already knew that Palin visited Kuwait to visit members of the Alaska National Guard. We already knew that she visited Ireland on her way to Kuwait. (Okay, it wasn’t really a visit. It was more like a refueling stop.)

Now. thanks to an article in today’s Boston Globe, we learn that Palin has also been to Mexico and Canada. On vacation.

I’m so relieved.

She scares the bejeebers out of me, too.

The New York Times has a great piece out today about Gov.  Palin’s personal style of politics. I’m more convinced than ever that Palin has abused her power for personal and political purposes.

My favorite line, from Laura Chase, who ran Palin’s first mayoral campaign in 1995:

I’m still proud of Sarah, but she scares the bejeebers out of me.

Me too, Laura. Me too.

(Hat tip: Shapour)

Cross-posted from Facebook.

“Respect” and other words

There’s this new political advertisement out from the McCain-Palin presidential campaign that again tries to stoke the anger of those Hillary Clinton supporters, you know, “white,” “working-class” and “women” voters still mad at Sen. Barack Obama about the alleged disrespectful treatment of Mrs. Clinton during the primaries.

In the McCain campaign’s calculation, Gov. Sarah Palin is interchangeable with Sen. Clinton and any criticism of Mrs. Palin is another slap at women.

ANNOUNCER:

He was the world’s biggest celebrity, but his star’s fading.

So they lashed out at Sarah Palin.

Dismissed her as “good looking.”

That backfired, so they said she was doing, “what she was told.”

Then desperately called Sarah Palin a liar.

How disrespectful.

And how Governor Sarah Palin proves them wrong, every day.

JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.

This is a despicably racist political advertisement and here’s why:

The ad takes up the “uppity” angle because of the sensitivity of women, especially white women, to being criticized by black men. But let’s put aside, for now, the historical clash between the struggles for the civil rights of women and people of color in this country and let us focus, instead, on the code words employed in this political advertisement.

The word “disrespectful” in this context is so loaded, especially when you consider our nation’s history and culture. In this ad, it is not just a man disrespecting a woman, or men disrespecting women. It is a black man, Obama, disrespecting a white woman, Sarah Palin. And he has a history of doing this. Remember Hillary Clinton, the ad, without saying so (it doesn’t have to), reminds viewers.

But Obama’s crime here, whether he was the one who said the actual words or not, is more egregious: He dismissed Palin as “good looking.”

Noticing a white woman throughout the history of this nation got black men lynched and murdered.

The whole rationale for McCain’s candidacy in hinging on this: Don’t let this uppity black man violate our cherished White House.

I won’t ask how long Sen. McCain will continue putting his name to these disgusting, underhanded and shameful campaign advertisements. I have never labored under the illusion that McCain was an honorable man. This unscrupulous campaign is exactly who John McCain is, a corrupt, craven politicians who will use anything, including racist codes, to get elected.

McCain says he’ll stop this gutter politics only if Sen. Obama agrees to go on a barnstorming nationwide tour of town hall style debates with him. The “I’ll stop sliming you if you debate me” strategy? How do you define Chutzpah?

McCain does not want a debate. He is doing exactly what he wants. Obama should call his bluff and agree to appear on stage with him.