What's up with John Mccain's economic advisers?

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For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown, McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped avert the current catastrophe. In 1999, he supported a law co-authored by Gramm (and ultimately signed by Bill Clinton) that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies and investment banks from mingling their businesses. Equally laughable is the McCain-Palin tickets born-again outrage over the greed of Wall Street C.E.O.s. When McCains chief financial surrogate, Fiorina, was fired as Hewlett-Packards chief executive after a 50 percent drop in shareholders value and 20,000 pink slips, she took home a package worth $42 million. The McCain campaign canceled Fiorinas television appearances last week after she inadvertently admitted that Palin was unqualified to run a corporation. But that doesnt mean Fiorina is gone. Gramm, too, was ostentatiously exiled after he blamed the economic meltdown on our nation of whiners and mental recession, but he remains in the McCain loop. The corporate jets, lobbyists and sleazes that gravitated around McCain in the Keating era have also reappeared in new incarnations. The Nations Web site recently unearthed a photo of the resolutely anticelebrity McCain being greeted by the con man Raffaello Follieri and his then girlfriend, the Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, as McCain celebrated his 70th birthday on Follieris rented yacht in Montenegro in August 2006. Its the perfect bookend to the old pictures of McCain in a funny hat partying with Keating in the Bahamas. Whatever blanks are yet to be filled in on Obama, we at least know his economic plans and the known quantities who are shaping them (Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker). McCain has reversed himself on every single economic issue this year, often within a 24-hour period, whether hes judging the strength of the economys fundamentals or the wisdom of the government bailout of A.I.G. He once promised that hed run every decision past Alan Greenspan — and even have him write a new tax code — but Greenspan has jumped ship rather than support McCains biggest flip-flop, his expansion of the Bush tax cuts. McCains official chief economic adviser is now Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who last week declared that McCain had helped create the BlackBerry. But Holtz-Eakins most telling statement was about McCains economic plans — namely, that the details are irrelevant. I dont think its imperative at this moment to write down what the plan should be, he said. The real issue here is a leadership issue. This, too, is a Rove-Bush replay. We want a tough guy who will fix things with his own two hands — lets take out the S.E.C. chairman! — instead of wimpy Frenchified Democrats who just talk. The fine print of policy is superfluous if theres a quick-draw decider in the White House. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21rich.html?_r=2&oref=login&oref=slogin McCain is not the bewildered father who suddenly learned his teenager was nipping in the liquor cabinet — or, like Sarah Palin, the mother who discovered her teenage daughter was pregnant. He is running as the scourge of special interests. For all his talk about the evils of lobbying, lobbyists are key members of his team. In August, Candidate We Are All Georgians McCain took up the cause of the republic when Russia invaded while knowing full well that sooner or later we would all learn Randy Scheunemann advised McCain on the region while earning hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for Georgia as well. In between McCains two presidential runs, Davis represented clients who needed McCains help in the Senate and made millions doing it. But he also had a hand in expensive contracts that helped McCains 2007 presidential campaign go broke, including a Web services company Davis had a stake in that was paid $1 million over a period of months. And therefore, while the McCain team sells a candidate of reform, a crusade against corruption, a cause greater than self-interest, the group is held to a separate standard by its leader. McCain clearly looks the other way while saving his ire for the Me first, country second crowd. Last week McCain said if he were president he would fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, for having betrayed the public trust. Perhaps then McCain would fire Davis, unless of course Davis didnt betray his trust. http://thehill.com/a.b.-stoddard/mccain-keeps-bad-company-2008-09-24.html

Category: News
Uploaded: September 26th, 2008 @ 7:24 pm
Author: AntiConformist911

Length: 10:42
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Tags: barack biden carly davis debate economy fiorina gramm interview john lobbyist mccain obama palin phil rick sarah speech

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