Sunday Roundup
Phil Gramm obviously had the quote of the week. Voters dealing with skyrocketing gas prices and collapsing home values just love being called "whiners" by a millionaire. This kind of out-of-touch condescension comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed Gramm's career. He's left his fingerprints on some of the worst economic debacles in U.S. history. He was a champion of energy deregulation, which gave us Enron and blackouts and price gouging. He was a champion of deregulating the savings-and-loan industry, the bailout of which cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. And his leadership on banking deregulation helped create the current sub-prime mortgage crisis. Republicans love to talk about Obama's lack of experience. I'll take fresh blood over Gramm's kind of track record any day of the week.
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Dear Ms. Huffington:
The real scandal of the past week--which is going almost unnoticed in the press and media (and therefore by the American public)--is that John McCain was absent on July 9th for the Medicare vote. He was the ONLY ABSENT SENATOR for the vote. By being in Ohio, he avoided any criticism on how his vote would impact senior citizens who are part of his base or rile Independents he is trying to win.
While Senator Obama was drawing a great deal of heat for his FISA vote, Senator McCain didn't vote. To me, while I disagree with Senator Obama's stand, it is far more egregious to have one of the nominees for President fail to vote at all. I am tired of hearing about how Senator Obama did the politically expedient thing by moving to the center, when the "maverick" didn't move in any direction!
keep posting benny
Benny, you are dead-on correct.
McCain is clearly avoiding any and all controversial votes for what the people of Arizona elected him to do.
Considering the amount of money he has, both via this election campaign and personally, there is absolutely no excuse to not fly back to Washington DC for important votes.
Right now, Obama is having to defend his vote on FISA. McCain can claim to have considered voting one way or the other on FISA, Medicare, or any other vote he missed.
The seniors of America should remember this come November. The Dems would be wise to beat this drum from now till then - McCain was not concerned enough about Medicare to show up to vote for you!
go benny; you are sooooo right on.
McCain also did not vote on the new G.I. Bill (the only other Senator to miss the vote was Kennedy, and at least he had a good excuse!) and now goes around telling everyone that it was HIS IDEA!
Unbelievable, and the MSM just laps it up.
Arianna, still love your posts; short and sweet and on the money.
But it took more than one to bring this about.
Everyone forget msm and get to the Power of Now
Leave the past behind and move with your talents and abilities
The more we gravel about what upsets us, the less energy there is to do what will make a difference
You have a great head on your shoulders, doing what you need to do, be an example
And when someone asks you who'll you vote for
Tell them short and sweet with a simple answer/s ILLEGAL WAR, GUTTING the CONSTITUTION, UNFAIR TAXATION..
Whatever your favorite/s
We can do this; Stay Centered and use your time and money wisely
Help your neighbor, the EARTH and your community
Don't fall into the Rethugs trap, they have perfected it and it only works if you are pulled in.
Today on ABC Morning Show an "Economic Psychologist" was on the show to explain how the recession is just in our minds. I guess the MSM still just does not get it or will give air and credence to anything the neo cons say. Until we manage to get the MSM to start doing some real reporting with depth and weight we'll continue to get the white-washed version of what is going on. If it were not for this site and similar ones on the internet we would not be getting any semblance of truth. However here we are only preaching to the choir for the most part. In mainstream america if they don't see it on tv it just ain't happening. Right now the only thing people are reacting to is trying to get the latest version of the i-phone. If we could capture that interest in current events and politics we may have a chance at making some real change in the world.
Sorry, those producers are employed by people whose interest is not served by our being informed.
only oine way to do that and it would take discipline
The so called 'media' is corporate owned. It would be a simple and improbable thing to exercise a complete boycott of the interests of the corporation. Like, boycott all GE products. That means all of them. It would mean sell off all GE related stock.
That is the only thing that would effect the so called 'media'. The 'media' is now vanity projects, they don;t make any money, they have not real purpose other than entertainment. Canclelling your NYT paper delivery will do nothing. Its laughable.
If you have noticed the so called 'media' not caring one bit that the American people are 80 % in agreement with the fact the country is going the wrong way...they will continue with the neo con, right wing wacko party line.
Forever.
Yep, the GDP is 1%, therefore, no recession, right? Well......
Secondly, if you spread that 1% over the entire demography. It's a pretty thin layer of white-wash.
No Arianna. You have it wrong about nearly everything you attribute to Phil Graham. Unfortunately, repeating a mantra has taken the place of recearching the facts in this politically divided Republic.
Since you've apparently researched the facts yourself why don't you provide us with some credible links?
Still waiting for BIOYA to grace us with links that prove Arianna wrong.
Please do educate us with your sources. That would be real sources not right-wing talking points. Arianna is on the money with this, as usual.
Ah, the mantra of of "you are wrong, and I am right just because I say so" Because that's all you have in this case. The facts are easily researched and everything Arianna stated seems to be true. Unless you can prove her wrong. Do some of your own research and set us up with some links. I know that's harder then just saying what you think is right, but try it, you might learn something factual...
Phil Gramm's voting record is publicly documented. You have some other "source"?
Read much?
The evil gnome Graham is the author of the famous Enron loophole. Being from CA this is very meaningful.
You should read more.. Open your eyes, because it is uneducated people like you that insist on screwing it up for the rest of us.
And we do not appreciate it.
As a seventy year old middle-class male, OK a millionaire but in single figures, I cannot understand how people would want this country to be governed by people of my generation. I have been lucky, but my fellows in politics have screwed up everything so much they have no conception of what they have made inevitable for the next generations. (And they don't give a damn)
Bring on innovation, education, infrastructure, new agriculture and new energy, and cut the bloody defense budget by 50% at least, you crazy old buggers.
And revise the tax system so upper middle class / rich people pay their fair share of taxes as well. 40% of my paycheck goes to taxes before I see even a penny of it. How much does the upper class pay?
Please define "upper middle class." 25 years ago to be "millionaire" had economic meaning. To have net worth of a million dollars remains a significant accomplishment but it does not define rich. To make over $100,000. a year is also significant but to suggest that these people, who occupy your loosely defined upper middle class, don't pay their fair share of taxes is inaccurate. We're in the top 10% of income and net worth and Bush tax cuts meant a big tax increase for us. Why? Alternative Minimum Tax, which hasn't been indexed for inflation in more than 25 years. AMT was meant to prevent rich people from avoiding taxes and in the early 1980s, ~$160,000 was the figure used to identify "rich." When a person's income exceeds $160,000, they begin losing deductions. Indexed for inflation that figure should be over $350,000 today. You'll have to move well above $160,000 dollars before you find people not paying their fair share of taxes. I paid $60K in taxes last year on an adjusted gross income of $167,000.0
Managers of Hedge Funds pay 15% as they get to call their compensarion Capital Gains unlike you and I . Senate Republicans BLOCKED an effort to cause their compensation to be treated as Wages.
I'm a mere 57 but essentially in the same economic situation you are and my sentiments closely parallel your but I'm a tad more radical. I'd support elimination of both major parties and replacing the existing government form with a parliamentary democracy separating head of state and head of government. I'd also support increasing the size of the Supreme Court to mitigate the influence of the mindless conservative block. I'd certainly decrease the military budget by at least 50%, I'd re-regulate the Hell out of business, put the brakes on globalization, re-establish a seriously graduated income tax, and re-establish the social contract between society, government, and individuals that our generation of leaders has worked so hard to destroy.
Let me suggest you run for state legislator.
I think it pretty pathetic the republican want to accuse Obama of being arrogant antd yet would you like me to name all arrogance that has transpired with Bush and company. Bush staying the course of the war in Iraq, Rummsfeld the troops in Iraq need to suck it up and work with what they have, Chenney answer of so during an interview with ABC and this is just the short list. Glad to see McSame is going to have the same working in his administration, that really makes me feel at ease. NOT. Seems to be not only simularities in the administrations but also the same ole personalities.
The Bohica Era is coming to an end.......
.
Thanks again Ms H, you can say more in a few paragraphs than the talking heads and the MSM do all Sunday long.
It would have been fair to have Jesse Jackson share the hot seat with Gramm for faux pas of the week.
Obama's reply might also have been questioned. He said, "We need somebody to actually solve the economy. It's not just a figment of your imagination, it's not all in your head." While we might presume that "somebody" is Obama himself he furthers with vague solutions such as he wants "government" to "step in" and provide "relief".
I have to ask, is this relief going to come from my tax contributions? That's why we need deatils as opposed to generalities. Tax dollars to stimulate manufacturing - given the cost of transport - might be a nice tickler if there are some details to go along. But, using my money to bail out people who made very poor choices in personal finances while placing the entire blame on the white shirts who offered up the ludicrous mortgage terms won't fly too far.
Anybody except the trickle down, voodoo economics republicans. I hope one day YOU never need the government to help you out. You have no idea what thesed lenders did to trick people into getting these mortgages. I am a realtor and the lenders tried to push an adjustable rate or other shakey loans onto my clients all the time. So, do not blame the poor folks who these thieves perpetrated this fraud upon. They know poor people refinance more often so they impose a pre-payment penalty. They knew what they were doing when they lured many, many people into their spider web.
Yes, those white shirts and Bush and republicans who want to deregulate everything. Look at the industries that have been deregulated: Airline, Banking, Telecomm, Cable, Energy, etc. They are ALL a mess. Prices were supposed to go down because of competitio
EXCELLENT POST.
This country is just a huge playground for a few rich people at the expense of 300 million human lives. They come in, grab an industry, deregulate it, break it up, sell off pieces, meanwhile every single one of these business people get a huge piece of the pie as a commission, finder's fee and profit share. It is crime at the heart. True crime.
The funniest part is that the Republicans are all about "reducing big government," yet under all of them the government has expanded beyond belief, throwing the budget into debt so the lowly taxpayer has to bail it out.
The amazing thing is that this cannot go on forever. The taxpayers have no more to give. I refuse to contribute to campaigns - let these wealthy folks fork over the money, I need every dime I can get. They are taxed so low, qualify for so many loopholes, have so many taxshelters, purchase residences in so many places to avoid income tax, all so that the hardworking people of this nation bear the burden.
There's a difference between having the government help you out and having the government own your life. Why doe everyone cry we need to fix medicare, social security, public schools? See, I can write a list of government-run things that need help also.
It is you who have no idea what I know about the shoddy lending practices waged on ignorant people. I am in real estate and my wife is a Realtor and it was indeed amazing how gullible people were while being ripped off. They weren't being ripped off by the GOP, they were being ripped off by mortgage brokers of all political persuasions trying to earn easy money under lax oversight. You mistakenly attribute victimization to the poor. If you were a Realtor, you'd surely have seen the writing on the wall as the middle class clamored greedily for the bigger homes or borrowed against the paper equity from their temporarily increased valuation? The poor do not have a lock on bad financial moves as the average American was duped just as easily.
And I am not directing this at you personally - but some of the greediest investors who suffered some of the greatest losses were Realtors - they thought it would last forever and just kept flipping until the very end. Realtors also share some of the burden of the current crises and took no small part in scamming buyers and sellers with "deals" arranged with mortgage brokers who were just as unscrupulous!
As regards deregulation - I never said I favored it and fail to understand why you are speaking to me about it in this thread.
Hopefully, relief will come from every one's tax contributions. You seem to think taxpayers get to chose what how their specific tax dollars are used. They don't. Personally, I'd rather see my tax dollars be put directly into your bank account rather then be given to Blackwater, KBR, Bechtel, Halliburton, etc. in the form of non-competitive government contracts. If we cut defense spending by 50% we'd have more than enough money to do everything needed to develop domestic and economic policies that ensured equal opportunity for everyone. No one can guarantee equal outcome but government as part of the social contract must provide equal access to opportunity and today our government is failing miserably in doing this. Anyone suggesting a program offering a semblance of equal opportunity will have to cut defense spending significantly so don't expect it any time soon. In the meanwhile, I suggest you ask your political leaders which defense contracts are being funded by your tax dollars. Perhaps is you showed as much interest with this detail as you do with funding domestic economic policy we might not be pissing away $900+ billion a year on defense spending.
You read much into my post that was not there. Was it an attempt to partition my views categorically in contrast to your own? You don't have enough information to do so.
I am aware that I cannot allocate my tax dollars and did not even remotely infer that. I said I don't favor paying for bailing out the individuals who made wrong choices.
While you suggest I speak to my representatives as regards defense spending - you are years too late in your suggestion. I as well do not favor my tax dollars funding much of the defense spending.
So while you assume to be an expert on how much interest I show to various segments of governmental spending - you fail miserably at the task.
Obama has been incredibly specific, you need to go to barackobam
I would dearly love to liberate us citizens from the free press, which is free to follow only its own inclinations. They will carry this old fool clear into November simply because he's their guy, like grandpa at the wedding. I have seen our host questioned once about the validity of bloggery against the resources of the mainscream media and she pointed to the first-page cheerleading of the NYT marching us off to war. But now you cannot find reality anywhere else but in the blogs. Who is this Halperin who is boosting McSame in Time? He lived through a much different week than I did; he says the Republicans won it.
As we level ever downward to the comprehension level of the lowest common denominator, we have a campaign reduced to one word, a simple phrase. It's the only game in town. The Fourth Amendment is jettisoned and the Dems buckle under to the Midland Moron simply because they could never expect the voters to delve deeper than "Democrats vote for terrorists!" It would, after all, require one or more complete sentences, and the public would vote against the Bill of Rights if effectively mislabeled. (It's been proven by surveys back in the sixties!)
Gramm's support of deregulation for the benefit of the rich corporatists is well-planned, calculated, and deliberately evil.
I'll take Obama's alleged inexperience (highly doubtful) over Gramm's well-planned, calculated and deliberately evil, any day of the week.
As for Jesse Jackson's remarks...
Arianna, I don't understand why there is not one talk of all the deregulation that Phill Gramm has had his grubby little hands on! This is shameful that our current media outlets will not report fair and balanced reporting.
Oh and let's not forget to talk about the elephant in the from of the current failure of IndyMac. Oh there is more coming of bank failures with regards to the instrument of the mortgage crisis. And guess who is going to pay for it we are and our future generations. But, McCain does not want us to know that Gramm is a huge part of this problem. Talk about here, continue to write the articles and we will continue to feed it through the internet.
I seem to recall the democratic governor of California, Gray Davis, got recalled in part due to electricity shortages on the west coast. Ultimately, these shortages turned out to have been made possible by Phil Gramm's deregulation legislation and were artificially created by Enron where Gramm's wife Wendy sat on the board of directors. Davis was succeeded by a Repubican governor before it became known how the whole brownout/blackout episodes came to be.
Phil Gramm quote of the week? No Dahling. Jesse Jackson has that honor. Ya'll buried the story but trust me, people will remember it. It's not every day someone publicly admits they want to cut someone elses nuts off.
this country is in an economic crisis and you want to keep reading a story about cutting off someones private parts...ge
You're right. Of course, Jackson said it privately.
It is amazing how these two stories can get even close to the same kind of attention. One person (Gramm) has personally had 1000X more negative influence over the economy, and therefore our lives, than Jesse Jackson ever could. And he still does, as the chief economic advisor to McCain, possibly our next President. And yet, when Jackson says something stupid, it gets far more attention.
Let's keep our eyes on the ball now children.
It does not bode well for the Republic, that a man like this is still prominent,and well-respected:
"He's left his fingerprints on some of the worst economic debacles in U.S. history. He was a champion of energy deregulation, which gave us Enron and blackouts and price gouging. He was a champion of deregulating the savings-and-loan industry, the bailout of which cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. And his leadership on banking deregulation helped create the current sub-prime mortgage crisis.'
Jesse Jackson's aside has gotten more play than this man's "quote of the week".
But what I do I know we have our blog to whine to. Enough said.
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