Obama On the Stump in Daytona Beach

On fire yesterday:

John McCain Wants to Bring Banking De-Regulation to the Health Insurance Market

McCain and his chief economic adviser, lobbyist Phil Gramm. In 1998 Senator Gramm wrote the bill that deregulated banking.

Yes, John McCain's chief economic adviser blew up the economy.
Heckuva job, Phil.

[A] correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. [2008] issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Paul Krugman, NYTImes: McCain on Banking and Health

If you have been thinking about writing a letter to the editor to your local newspaper, I'd start with this quote. Let's blow up health insurance, just like Republican deregulation just blew up the banking industry.

This puts the lie to all McCain's claims that he will fix our problems. He is one of the problems. He loves deregulation. He loves the giant corporations that flood his campaign with money and lobbyists. The only Americans he has ever really cared about are the rich ones. He's their man.

That's What I'm Talking About

Best Obama ad yet:

Barack Obama voiceover: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.

Voiceover : John McCain admits he doesn’t understand the economy

So who advises him?

Carly Fiorina, the fired CEO who got a $42 million golden parachute.

Phil Gramm, the ex-Senator who pushed through deregulation, and called Americans hurt by this economy "whiners."

Then there’s George Bush, whose disastrous policies McCain wants to continue.

They think the economy is fundamentally strong.

We know they’re fundamentally wrong.

Hitting McCain and his merry band of lobbyist/economic thieves hard with the truth. Yes.

"The Old Boys Network, in the McCain Campaign That's Called a Staff Meeting"

Obama delivers the best line of the campaign today:



And he's finally talking about Phil Gramm, the man who gave us the mortgage crisis. Phil Gramm cost American taxpayers $85,000,000,000 today. He's John McCain's chief economic adviser. This country cannot afford any more Republican steal from the poor, give to the rich country club economics.

Yes! We! Can!

hat tip to JedReport for the video. Jed rocks!

House-rich McCain Stealing The Right To Vote From Americans Whose Homes Have Been Foreclosed.

John McCain owns between 8 and 10 houses. (He's not sure how many!) He is rich beyond the imagination of most Americans. His Republican Party has run Washington for the last eight years. (They've run Congress for the last 14 years.) McCain's chief economic adviser Phil Gramm wrote the legislation that deregulated the banking industry and gave us the mortgage crisis.

Now the Republican Party is trying to get the owners of foreclosed homes thrown off the voting rolls.

The Republican Party is further abusing the suffering Americans who are losing their homes because of the Republican Party's terrible economic policies. Losing their homes isn't enough? Now the Republican Party must steal their right to vote, too? How cruel of the very wealthy John McCain to let his party do this to poor voters. Haven't they suffered enough?

McCain is the nominee. He rules the party that is doing this. This is his policy. House-rich McCain is stealing the right to vote from Americans who no longer have homes.

That's the Republican Party for you. First they steal your money, then they steal your house, then they steal your right to vote.

Obama/Biden '08

Crooks & Liars: GOP seeks to contest voters from foreclosed homes

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

McCain: People with Subprime Mortgages Need to Work a Second Job, Skip a Vacation

Coronado Shores

It is truly unbelievable how out of touch John McMansions is with the problems of ordinary Americans.

TPM: McCains Bought Second Beach Condo At Around Time McCain Said Struggling Homeowners Needed To Skip Vacations

Here's the speech he gave chastising Americans, while he was buying (or his rich heiress wife was buying) his 10th, or 11th, or 12th house.

TRANSCRIPT:
JOHN MCCAIN: A sustained period of rising home prices made many home lenders complacent, giving them a false sense of security and causing them to lower their lending standards. They stopped asking basic questions of their borrowers like "can you afford this home? Can you put a reasonable amount of money down?" Lenders ended up violating the basic rule of banking: don't lend people money who can't pay it back. Some Americans bought homes they couldn't afford, betting that rising prices would make it easier to refinance later at more affordable rates. There are 80 million family homes in America and those homeowners are now facing the reality that the bubble has burst and prices go down as well as up.

Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million are doing what is necessary -- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets -- to make their payments on time. That leaves us with a puzzling situation: how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?

What's wrong with all those poor people? Couldn't they just marry up and let their rich spouse buy them another house?

The Real John McCain

Latest video on McCain and the mortgage crisis from Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films:

Completely Random

New York Public Library: 5 varities of pears and a half-cut pear,
from Traité des arbres et arbustes que l'on cultive en France en pleine terre / par Duhamel. (published [1801-1819])

Things that interested or amused me today, in no particular order:

McCain's gaffes are piling up.

John McCain imagines a baseball game.

Jews don't like Lieberman; they like Obama much better. I don't like Irish music but I love sushi!

Barack Obama won yesterday's war of images by a country mile. I particularly enjoy the picture of McCain with Bush 41, and the ridiculous sign on the golf cart. Grumpy old men.

While the media obediently reported that Phil Gramm was "out" of the McCain campaign, he just lost his title. He'll still be advising McCain, and he still shaped McCain's economic policies. And you knew he would never really be out if you saw these pictures of him blowing kisses to Cindy. Double ewwww.

Hullabaloo warns Obama against getting bogged down in the quicksand deathtrap that is Afghanistan. No one ever wins in Afghanistan. Ask the Soviets.

It's All In Your Head

New ad from moveon.org:



Maybe I should start using psychological money in the grocery store? That should work.

Economics + Whining + Barry White: Genius

hat tip to Talking Points Memo.

We're All A Bunch of Whiners

So sez the loathesome Phil Gramm. That's John McCain's TOP ECONOMIC ADVISER. Don't worry, be happy! I'm rich, why aren't you?

I guess he thinks we regular folk who don't have Gulfstreams and millions are kind of bitter about the economy. The media talked about that for weeks. Do you think our whiner status will merit the same?

Don't hold your breath, kittens.

McCain's Adviser Phil Gramm: Monster

McCain adviser Phil Gramm pushed an investment scheme where bonds would be sold and tied to a state teacher's retirement fund, betting, in essence, that retired teachers would die.

Shameful

And because of the policies of rich Republicans like UBS Swiss Banker Phil Gramm and Private Plane McCain, things like this are happening in the richest nation in the world:

Bloomberg.com: Foreclosures in Military Towns Surge at Four Times U.S. Rate

Military families were targeted as customers during the boom in subprime lending because their frequent moves, overseas stints, and low pay meant they were more likely to have weak credit ratings, said Rudi Williams of the National Veterans Foundation in Los Angeles. In 2006, at the peak of U.S. subprime lending, the number of VA loans fell to barely a third the level of two years earlier, according to VA data.

VA loans totaled 135,000 last year, its fourth consecutive annual decline.

An Army or Marine Corps sergeant with four years of experience makes $27,000 a year, plus combat pay of $225 a month, according to the 2008 Military Authorization Act, which increased basic pay rates 3.5 percent from a year ago.

Soldiers authorized to live off-base also receive a housing allowance that this year starts at about $500 a month, 7.3 percent higher than in 2007, paid even when they are deployed. Counting the stipends, they still fall short of the 2007 median U.S. household income of $59,224 as measured by the National Association of Realtors in Chicago.

Meet McCain Adviser, Lobbyist Phil Gramm: He Gave Us "The Mortgage Crisis"

Yet another Phil Gramm scandal
Mother Jones: Phil's Felon
Phil Gramm is McCain's man on economic issues. Gramm is one of the most loathesome of the former Republican officeholders advising McCain. He's on the board of Swiss bank UBS and was registered as a UBS lobbyist until April 18th of this year. His wife Wendy was on the board of Enron when Enron imploded, stealing millions of tax dollars from California taxpayers. And Phil Gramm pushed legislation that helped Enron steal their money. The Gramms are Republican corporate slime of the highest order. Oh yeah, and they're rich from all the corporate money they've been pulling down.

As Senate Banking Chairman in the 1990s, Phil Gramm authored the bill that repealed the Depression-era mortgage regulations, and allowed basically any kind of corporation to give loans, without regulation, which lead directly to the mortgage crisis. The he quickly left the Senate and sold the remnants of his soul to Swiss banking giant UBS.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was signed by Bill Clinton in 1999, BTW, another of his centrist moves that I have a big problem with, like NAFTA and welfare reform. Why am I to believe that Hillary Clinton will not be just as much of a centrist, despite the very liberal positions she takes in front of Democratic audiences? But I digress. Now we are the middle of the subprime mortgage crisis, loans having being given to people who didn't have the income to pay them or the house not being worth what they were borrowing, and now the government is giving bad actors like Bear Stearns $30 billion bailouts. So what was John McCain's (and his lobbyist pal Phil Gramm's, as Gramm advised him on the speech) solution to the problem? Let the homeowners lose their houses, said McCain in March:

“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers,” McCain said. “Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.”

Fuck those little people, said Mr. Lobbyists-R-Us. Let them sleep in the streets. I can go to one of my eight homes. Phil Gramm can go home to his little house outside San Antonio, or to the vacation home in Maryland that he had renovated for free. Screw the little people.

Molly Ivins summed up Phil Gramm the best (hat tip to Christy at firedoglake for this quote):

...Gramm, the great crusader against government spending, has spent his entire life on the government tit. He was born at a military hospital, raised on his father's Army pay, went to private school at Georgia Military Academy on military insurance after his father died, paid for his college tuition with same, got a National Defense Fellowship to graduate school, taught at a state-supported school, and made generous use of his Senate expense account. In 1987, a Dallas developer named Jerry Stiles flew a construction crew to Maryland to work on Gramm's summer home. Stiles spent $117,000 on the project but was kind enough to bill Gramm only $63,433. When Stiles got in trouble for misusing funds from a savings and loan he owned, Gramm did him some "routine" favors with regulators. Stiles was later convicted on 11 counts of conspiracy and bribery.

As a member of the Senate Finance Committee and the recipient of enormous banking contributions, Gramm did an even bigger favor for the financial industry in 1999 when he sponsored the Financial Services Modernization Act allowing banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to combine. The bill weakened the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to help meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Gramm described community groups that use the CRA as "protection rackets" that extort funds from the poor, powerless banks. The bill is also a disaster for the privacy of bank customers and weakens regulatory supervision. As Gramm proudly declared, "You're not going to find a single bank, insurance company, or securities company that will say they were hurt financially by this bill."

To be fair, Gramm occasionally found it in his heart to assist the poor -- like the time he suggested that mothers on welfare would be better off working for $2.50 an hour. A more typical Gramm vote, though, came on an energy bill that benefited oil and gas companies at the expense of consumers. "There are winners and losers in every economic decision," Gramm said portentously. He was then getting more oil and gas money than any other member of the Senate....

Here are some excellent posts outlining Phil Gramm's nefarious lobbying activities:

Christy Hardin Smith, firedoglake: McCain’s Cronies: Phil Gramm (R-Enron) And His UBS Lobbying Problem


dday at Hullabaloo: Lobbyists In The Closet

MSNBC: McCain economic policy shaped by lobbyist
Swiss bank paid McCain co-chair to push agenda on U.S. mortgage crisis

Here's Keith Olbermann last night on McCain's Gramm problem: