Palin Options

[Robert]

Just wanted to point out I called Palin as VP over 4 months ago, for all the same reasons the decision was made now.
If McCain wins, I honestly believe this will be what puts him over the top.

Also you couldn't ask for better timing to make this announcement.
The DNC convention ended last night with a huge bang an there's not a single leading news story about it.
The news is 100% about Palin as VP.
Talk about stealing someones thunder.

I hope they win an McCain dies the next day.

[Robert]

Regarding the KOS article you linked to.
As with most of their stuff, it's written in a way which craftily hides the underlying bias of the article.
Peppering it with just enough facts to give it a feeling of honest investigative reporting not the hack piece it actually is.
Short list of my problems with the article.

"In 1982, the same year John McCain entered the Senate, a bill was put forward that would substantially deregulate the Savings and Loan industry. The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act was an initiative of the Reagan administration, and was largely authored by lobbyists for the S&L industry -- including John McCain's warm-up speaker at the convention, Fred Thompson."
An initiative of the Reagan Administration? They point out it was a Reagan Initiative, to try an lay the blame on him. What they forget to mention is.
President Carter made the initial call to do something to help the S&L's as they were heading for financial disaster as early as 1978
The bill was originated by a Democrat
The Act was passed by a democrat controlled house
Was finally passed with a super majority.
While the GSDI Act played a part in the S&L crisis, it was only 1 of a dozens factors.
People also forget thru the 70's an up until the early 80's, close to 90% of the S&L's showed a loss. This is what the GSDI Act tried to help. It didn't directly cause the S&L meltdown but it did make it worse since it allowed them to carry more high risk debt then they previous could. ( 5% increased to 10% )


"However, many savings and loans -- among them Lincoln Savings & Loan Association of Irvine, CA, which was headed by a fellow named Charles Keating -- promptly ignored these rules. A quintet of senators, among them John McCain, began having meetings with both the management at Lincoln and the regulators at the loan board. "
Of course they have to tie McCain to Keating. after all he was part of the Keating 5.
Let just skip right over the fact the only reason he's even part of the Keating 5 is because the Democrat chairmen of the investigation turned down the recommendation of the lead investigator who concluded McCain wasn't involved. The democrat chairmen of the investigation insisted on keeping McCain's name on the list because he was the only Republican, otherwise it would have been a solely Democrat problem.
The Senate Ethics Committee found McCain completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Not only that but during the investigation, one of the other Senators testified Keating an McCain had a falling out because McCain refused to interfere with regulators investigating Keating.

Even so, by 1999 Phil Gramm -- who had entered the Senate two years after McCain and quickly become the economic guru of the Keating Five maverick -- put forward the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This Act passed out of the Senate on a party line vote with 100% Republican support, including that of John McCain.
Again has to bring up the Keating 5 even though McCain was found not to have done anything wrong.
The they feel the need to point out how the GLB act passed with 100 Republican support, in a painfully obvious example of their bias. BTW they do really shitty research on this because it didn't pass with 100% Republican support as they claim.
Richard Shelby ® of Alabama voted againt the bill.
John McCain ® of Arizona didn't vote, yet they imply that he not only supported the bill but also voted for it.
So the final tally is 95% of the R's and 85% of D's supported the Act.
Apparently KOS was in such a hurry to put out their newsest political hack peice they couldn't take 60 seconds to verify the details of their article. Maybe it's some of the new Math, 95% equals 100% if helps them lay the blame for something at the feet of the Republicians. I'm surprised they didn't find some way to make excuses for the 85% of the Democrats who also supported it. They could always fall back on how Bush lied to them, as that has worked for them in the past.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley reversed those rules, allowing not only more bank mergers, but for banks to become directly involved in the stock market, bonds, and insurance. Remember the bit about how S&Ls failed because they didn't have the regulations that protected banks? After Gramm-Leach-Bliley, banks didn't have that protection either. Blatant misrepresentation about the effects on banking regulations.


Gramm wasn't done. The next year he was back with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which was slipped into a "must pass" spending bill on the last day of the 106th Congress. This Act greatly expanded the scope of futures trading, created new vehicles for speculation, and sheltered several investments from regulation.
A few things of interest here. This was actually the 2nd time the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was introduced. The 1st one which Gramm wrote, did NOT include what became know as the "Enron Loophole".
The 2nd bill did include the Enron Loophole but there is nothing saying who out of the 5 sponsors of the bill included the new addition ( may have been Gramm but maybe not ). This does point to one of the issues KoS bring up which is a huge problem. This important piece of legislation was not debated in the House or Senate. Then again that doesn't matter, lets just blame it on Gramm.
This is one of a dozen reasons I would support a presidential Line item veto.
To much crap gets added to bills which have nothing to do with the original legislation.

"Not coincidentally, Senator Gramm, the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Enron, was also key to legislating the deregulation of California's energy commodity trading."
KOS tries to lead people to the conclusion, Gramm was in Enron's pocket due to he was the 2nd largest recipient of campaign contributions. I guess they just want everyone to completely ignore the fact Enron was based in Texas so the majority of their campaign contributions automatically go to Texas politicians. This is a simple universal fact, not proof of some conspiracy. Undoubtedly during the time it was previously based in Omaha, the recipients of their campaign contributions would have been the leading Nebraska politician regardless of if they were D or R.

The part concerning the electricity trading in California would be one of the few parts of the story I agree with. BUT, I don't agree with their attempt to lay the blame with Gramm. I guess they think it's fair to skip right over the fact Enron was breaking several State an Federal laws. The part of the story which was accurate would be the effect of "credit default swap". What I don't agree with is their implication it was a foreseeable problem when the CFMA legislation was passed nor would I agree with KOS's characterization that CFMA was meant to block regulatory scrutiny. They purposefully take out of context what Greenspan said about them. It originally was a good thing because it did allow risk to be shared by several companies. It only became a problem when those same companies started cooking their books via credit swapping to enable them to take on more risk then allowed by law.
May as well mention while they condemn Greenspan for his initial approval of credit swapping. KOS purposefully fails to give him credit for early warning about Fannie an Freddie who enabled our current financial disaster.
Greenspan said in 2005
"If Fannie and Freddie continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road. We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''


Overall the article is just as dishonest as the view deregulation is what CAUSED the S&L crisis. The truth is the deregulation involving the S&l's was done in an attempt to SAVE the already failing S&L's.

So besides the obvious political bias, near constant misuse of facts an worse fact checking than a high school newspaper, it was a decent article.

[HammaTime]

Robert, you disappoint me. You must be busy with other things, as your usual outstanding research has fallen short. You failed to provide links to back up your counter-claims, so I'm left having to piece together where you were getting your data

Regarding the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act: the Senate debate and subsequent vote occurred May 6, 1999. McCain voted "Aye," along with 43 other Republican Senators for 100% of the Republican vote. One, repeat, one Democratic Senator voted "Aye", that was Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina. I base this statement on this accounting at the govtrack.us site.

Perhaps you were referring to the conference vote on the bill that combined the House and Senate versions. McCain did miss this vote.

You dismiss McCain's role in the Keating 5, yet you seem to overlook an awful lot of damning evidence. Keating was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.

In John McCain's biography, he called his meetings with Keating and regulators "the worst mistake of my life." He has said his involvement in the scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." McCain accepted at least NINE trips from Keating and didn't disclose those gifts until the scandal was revealed. At that point, he had to pay Keating $13,434 for those flights. Keating donated $112,000 to McCain's campaigns, and yes, he also donated a total of $300,000 to the five senators - the rest Democrats. But, this underlines my point. Both houses are corrupt. We need to clean up our government and drive this corrupt money out of Washington.

In trying to paint Gramm as an innocent Texas Senator who just happened to receive the second highest donations from Enron (Kay Bailey Hutchinson received the most), you chose to completely ignore Gramm's wife's key role in all of this. As chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993, she pushed through a key regulatory exemption in 1993, just as she was about to leave office which exempted Enron and a group of other oil and gas companies from federal regulation on some of their commodities trading. Five weeks later, she joined Enron’s board of directors and served on the board’s audit committee. I'm sure you'll recall that the board of directors were forced to pay $13 million to settle claims of insider trading. So, despite your assertions that Gramm's relationship was only one of physical proximity, I think we can see that the relationship ran much, much deeper than that.

As a side note here, I covered Gramm and his wife as he ran for President in 1996. She was clearly the brains behind the operation. It was the first time I had seen such hands-on work by a future first lady. From my time with them, I would say she is the one who calls the shots in that relationship! She is a very bright woman. As another side note, Gramm was a Democrat until four or five years into his marriage to Wendy.

And now we learn that Gramm's Swiss Banking giant, UBS is seeking the same relief that American banks are getting, and given the relief package that Bush is pushing forward, he is the guy who might end up with the no-strings attached control over the $700 Billion as Treasury Secretary! Unbelievable!!!

You'll recall that when he left the Senate, Gramm was hired as Vice-Chairman of UBS's Investment Banking division. UBS had paid $120,000 to a lobbying firm to lobby in support of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. And, surprise, surprise, UBS was the company that acquired Enron's energy trading operations - no, I'm not making this up!!

I agree with you that the article was slanted. And I expressed my reluctance to put it forward simply because of the source, but I don't think their obvious bias negates the facts as they present them. If you are willing to dig a little deeper into these financial relationships, one begins to see a picture where certain people are taking specific steps to enrich themselves to the detriment of the country.

This post has been edited by HammaTime: 09/22/08 3:59pm