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Monday, October 6, 2008

Obama Campaign Lies About Keating Economics

So I got an e-mail Monday morning [excerpts below] from Obama Campaign puppet master David Plouffe announcing that they would be releasing a 13 minute “documentary”, “Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis.” I was curious how many lies of commission and omission the Obama campaign could fit into a single short e-mail.

Now I didn’t expect Plouffe to mention that Barack Obama has received in three years, five times the political donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that John McCain has received in twenty years. I didn’t expect Plouffe to explain what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought with those payments.


Over the weekend, John McCain's top adviser announced their plan to stop engaging in a debate over the economy and "turn the page" to more direct, personal attacks on Barack Obama.


Okay. According to RealClearPolitics it wasn’t McCain’s top adviser and what he said was "looking to turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's liberal, aggressively liberal, record and how he will be too risky for the Americans." I guess talking about Senator Obama’s record is a personal attack. I mean he did personally establish his record as a hard left liberal.


In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election. Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend.



Well that is demonstrably false as we are not “in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” While we are at risk of it, the worst economic crisis since the great depression is still the stagflation brought on by the Carter economic policies when home foreclosure rates were higher than they are today.

Actually John McCain supported greater oversight and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both in 2003 and 2006. John McCain had the foresight to predict the crisis that led to the Government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama’s buddy, Senator Chris Dodd wouldn’t even let the bill out of committee.



But it's not just McCain's role in the current crisis that they're avoiding. The backward economic philosophy and culture of corruption that helped create the current crisis are looking more and more like the other major financial crisis of our time.
Actually over regulation and misguided regulation caused this crisis.


During the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early '90s, McCain's political favors and aggressive support for deregulation put him at the center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan, one of the largest in the country. More than 23,000 investors lost their savings.


Actually John McCain was never at the “center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan”.
The Senate Ethics Committee probe of the Keating Five began in November 1990 and committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett [a Democrat] recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation. They were not. McCain believes Democrats on the committee blocked Bennett's recommendation because he was the lone Keating Five Republican.

I also find it interesting how Plouffe tries to spin the phrase “investors lost their savings” implying that people with savings accounts lost money (They didn’t as they were FSLIC insured.) and unless Mr. Plouffe knows all the investors personally, I am not sure he can also imply that they lost all of their savings.

Plouffe also doesn’t mention that the policies of Obama, helping to block stricter oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has already cost the government billions of dollars and investors have lost over $60 billion of their savings in the last year alone with the collapse of FNMA common and preferred stock.


Overall, the savings and loan crisis required the federal government to
bail out the savings of hundreds of thousands of families and ultimately cost American taxpayers $124 billion.

Sound familiar?

In that crisis, John McCain and his political patron, Charles Keating,
played central roles that ultimately landed Keating in jail for fraud and McCain in front of the Senate Ethics Committee.


This from wikipedia on the Keating Five Scandal

After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment".

[Plouffe fails to mention that it was only Democratic Senators who were found to have acted improperly and in fact all three chose to not run for re-election.]


And this time, McCain's bankrupt economic philosophy has put our economy at the brink of collapse and put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes.



Actually again, no. It was the policies of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Barack Obama that have put millions of American’s at risk of losing their homes. Of course, most of those people couldn’t really afford those homes in the first place.

If Barack Obama through David Plouffe can tell that many lies about John McCain in a short e-mail, I wonder how many he can tell in a 13 minute documentary.

But of course neither Plouffe or Obama will tell you that. ...Read more!

Friday, September 12, 2008

The Joe Biden Health Watch

Cross-posted from Let's Get This Right.

I had a discussion last night with my good friend Tony GOPrano of PoliticoMafioso during which I suggested that if the health of the Obama campaign doesn't improve dramatically by October 1st, you can be assured that Joe Biden's will decline just as dramatically over the same time frame. Tony disagreed with me strongly. Granted he lives in Arizona, has volunteered for John McCain campaigns for years and has one of the most highly read pro-McCain blogs out there.

However, when I woke up and saw the headline in the Financial Times Democrats on Capitol Hill Fear Obama Fallout I knew that the Biden Health Watch was on.

Let's remember that it was those same Democratic party bosses that selected Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton not because they felt he was more qualified to be President but rather for the dollars and new voters he would bring to the party. Barack Obama was going to lead the charge for "change", 40 more seats in Congress and a filibuster proof Senate.

Well as the saying goes..."Not so much."

"Democratic jitters about the US presidential race have spread to Capitol Hill, where some members of Congress are worried that Barack Obama’s faltering campaign could hurt their chances of re-election. Party leaders have been hoping to strengthen Democratic control of the House and Senate in November, but John McCain’s jump in the polls has stoked fears of a Republican resurgence."

According to an article today on Real Clear Politics, Palin's popularity has trickled down to other races.

"John McCain successfully closed the gap with Barack Obama when he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. But beyond the presidential contest, Republican leaders in Congress see a shifted landscape for their candidates, and for the first time in months, they have reason to be cautiously optimistic about the November elections.

"In the last three or four weeks, Democrats thought, especially after their convention, they thought things were all moving in their direction," National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Ensign told Real Clear Politics. "The momentum has totally changed, and it's on our side."

Real Clear Politics' own polling data shows the Democrat's lead in generic Congressional polling has shrunk to 3.6% from double digits only a few weeks ago. Especially vulnerable are Democratic freshman congressmen defending tradionally Republican seats.

The Democratic party leaders are not going to let all of that slip away without a fight. Given that those who said that the Palin pick was not a "game changer" have been proven totally wrong, the only remaining game changer for Democrats is a sudden illness for Senator Biden and an Obama-Clinton ticket.

The Joe Biden Health Watch is on. ...Read more!

Thursday, August 28, 2008

What Recession?

Cross-posted from McCain Victory 08.

Will the Democrats continue to bash John McCain and President Bush for the awful economy? You know the one that is in recession. Well, not so much.

NEXT WEEK'S GOP Convention should highlight fact that this media "recession" meme is DEAD. Also US average incomes have as of 2006 (last year prior to the Obama-Biden Congressional takeover) officially surpassed that of the Clinton years (2000), according to latest Census & IRS releases.

Standard economic texts maintain anything over 3% is recognized as ABOVE AVERAGE post-war (WWII) US growth rate.

Economy Grew 3.3% in 2nd Quarter,
Much Higher Than Initial Reading

By KELLY EVANS [WSJ]
August 28, 2008 2:57 p.m.

The U.S. economy grew much faster than originally thought from April to June, but the pace is expected to slow over the rest of the year.

Gross domestic product grew at a seasonally adjusted 3.3% annual rate during the second quarter, according to the Commerce Department, which originally put growth at a 1.9% pace. The revision, released Thursday, reflects new data showing that exports were even stronger than first estimated and that business inventories weren't depleted as much as thought earlier.

[ . . . . ]


The report also indicated that inflation remains relatively muted.

Because the GDP data are volatile and revised several times before becoming final, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nonprofit group that is the arbiter of recessions, will likely wait several months before determining if and when a U.S. recession began. The group doesn't follow the popular rule of thumb -- that a recession is two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. Instead, it scrutinizes a range of data, including employment and output.

A smaller trade gap -- due to growing exports and slowing imports -- combined to add 3.1 percentage points to the second-quarter GDP growth rate. Global demand for U.S. goods, bolstered by a weak dollar that makes those goods cheaper to customers abroad, has been a crucial source of strength for the economy.
...Read more!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Different Roads on Tax Policy

This Week at the Tax Foundation

McCain, Obama Take Different Roads on Tax Policy

In a recent Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact, Robert Carroll, the Foundation's Vice President for Economic Policy, examines tax relief proposals from Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. With the economy as one of the top issues among the American electorate this presidential election cycle, both candidates have been using the issues of health care, gas prices, and housing devaluation, among others, to preface their economic proposals. But Carroll explains that the candidates have significantly different tax policies that address these issues.

"Senator Obama has included a set of carefully targeted tax proposals that narrowly aim benefits to specific types of taxpayers, while Senator McCain provides broad tax relief with benefits that are indirect," says Carroll. "In both cases, tax relief is provided to the vast majority of the electorate."

Read the new Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact. More on the presidential candidates' tax plans. ...Read more!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Porker of the month,,,Chris Dodd

Porker of the Month: Sen. Christoper Dodd



Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has named Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) Porker of the Month for accepting a preferential mortgage from a company that stands to benefit from housing legislation the senator is pushing through Congress. Sen. Dodd acknowledged receiving a “VIP” loan from Countrywide Financial Corporation, but denied that he knew the designation meant he would be enjoying special privileges. According to published reports, Sen. Dodd’s special mortgage rate reduces his costs by $75,000 over the 30-year life of the mortgage. Countrywide, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender and the largest lender of sub-prime mortgages, has lost billions of dollars in the mortgage crisis. The unsettling revelations about Sen. Dodd’s sweetheart mortgage deal come as the senator is pushing a bill that offers mortgage lenders an opportunity to offload up to $300 billion of their riskiest loans onto the Federal Housing Administration, which would provide new loans with 100 percent of the liability falling on taxpayers. For accepting special financial discounts from a mortgage company whose actions contributed directly to the current housing mess and then drafting a monstrous mortgage bailout bill that will dump billions of dollars worth of risky mortgages onto the backs of taxpayers while lending a helping hand to his corporate benefactor, CAGW names Sen. Christopher Dodd its June 2008 Porker of the Month. Read more about the Porker of the Month.



And here is the rest of it. ...Read more!