Would You Buy a Used Economy From This Man?

Make no mistake about it. This is the Conservative-Bush-McCain-Gramm economy come to fruition, with even more nightmarish consequences lurking on the near horizon. What we're experiencing today is the creation of those who call themselves "conservatives" -- but the only things they seem to want to conserve are their own hides and their own riches. Now they're even failing at that. And we're supposed to want more of the same for the next four years? A used economy based on the failed policies of the tired and discredited, trickle down, deregulation mob that's been calling the shots in Washington for decades? Yeah, that's what I want when I think of "change."

Here's what this bunch believes:

--Government itself and government rulemaking that provides commonsense oversight over any aspect of the economy or any economic players are intrinsically bad.

--The "wisdom" of the markets will prevail if we just remove all meaningful rules and regulations that have been designed to protect consumers, taxpayers, transparency and fairness.

--Global trading and global capitalism should be allowed to run wild without governing rules or protections for workers, the environment or anything or anyone else.

--If you end up struggling in this economy, you deserve no help from the government. Only failing corporations run into the ground by reckless, fraudulent operators should get such help.

--Money will magically trickle down to ordinary folks if we give almost all of it to the very tip top of the investor class.

I could go on, but you get the picture. This anything goes value system, to use the term loosely, is what got us to this place. Even worse, now that all the sleazy maneuvers and underhanded dealings have produced a free fall in our economy and the world's, these greedy bastards are demanding that they all be bailed out by -- you guessed it -- the taxpayers. What a deal. They socialize all the risks and privatize all the profits, and when things go badly they blackmail the government by claiming if they don't get our cash, the entire economy will crumble.

McCain, Gramm and the Deregulators
So what does all this have to do with John McCain? For starters, he chaired the Senate Commerce Committee when a significant amount of this "deregulation" BS was injected into the economy. He loved it. He pushed it. He believed in it. He trumpeted it. As the ProPublica reported today,

This morning's New York Times probed the candidates' actual records. It concludes that McCain "has never departed in any major way from his party's embrace of deregulation." Indeed, the Times says, McCain "has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms."

Now consider that McCain's best friend and ally has long been former Senator Phil Gramm -- you know, the moral misfit economy professor who claims that the recessiion we're having is only a "mental" aberration and that we're simply a nation of "whiners."

Gramm, the former Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was one of the biggest cheerleaders and legislators of the "deregulation" movement, ever ready to do the bidding of those who make their "living" by sucking capital out of institutions, companies and markets using underhanded, pushing-the-envelope means. Gramm thinks all the money should go to the investor class with as little as possible "wasted" on those who actually work for a living. Workers are mere, replaceable widgets -- and the costs of their wages, benefits and working conditions need to be held down at any price to human dignity and fairness. He's quite a guy.

Gramm was McCain's top economic advisor until he made a fool of himself with the "whiners" remark, and he has long been touted as McCain's choice to serve as Treasury Secretary in a McCain administration. Even though he has officially withdrawn from the McCain campaign, he's clearly still providing advice and he's still the odds on favorite to head the Treasury Department if McCain manages to lie his way into the White House.

Read this excellent piece by Joe Conason about Gramm's history, which includes close connections with the savings and loan debacle, Enron and the huge deficits run up by Reagan's misguided tax cuts for the rich. And check out Gramm's parting shot:

Before he retired from the Senate in 2002, he wrote the Gramm-Bliley bill, an act broadly deregulating the financial industry -- and now blamed by many economists for the epidemic of speculation and fraud that has shaken the global economy.

... Over and over again, from the savings-and-loan fiasco to the Enron shock to the global banking meltdown, the golden promises of deregulation have turned to leaden ruin. Perhaps nobody cares about the lobbyists surrounding McCain, but someone should ask him why he would cherish the advice of a man whose devotion to ideology has already done us so much damage.

What Specific Changes is McCain Proposing?
It might also be useful to ask McCain exactly which policies he proposes that would mark him as a "reformer" or "maverick." He should be asked specifically how and why he would rock the boats of the vipers who have run Washington and our economy into the ground under his party's rule. And why, exactly, he's still loyal to one of the top honcho vipers who engineered the fall -- Phil Gramm.

McCain is a definitive part of the problem, which is why it's so awful (and dangerous) that he's willing to say anything now to try to sell himself as part of the solution. The operative words in McCain's campaign? Lie. Sell.

This is what we have to get across each and every time we knock on a door or make a phone call for Obama. Pass it on.

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