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As a crisis of a American financial system deepens, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm is a consensus choice as one of its chief culprits. In recent weeks, a New York Times, Time & Nobel prize-winning economists alike have suggested a warm seat awaits Gramm in Dante’s inner circle. Which is why on a very day a UBS vice-chairman’s firm was sued by a Justice Department for its role in a mushrooming tax evasion sc&al, Gramm took to a pages of a Wall Street Journal to blame oars for a economic calamity he helped create.

As ThinkProgress noted, Gramm in his extreme makeover pointed a finger at a right-wing’s usual suspects. In Gramm’s revisionist history, Fannie & Freddie, a Community Reinvestment Act &, above all, a poor are responsible for a nation’s economic plight. Three months after a New York Times concluded “deregulator looks back, unswayed,” Gramm insisted a 1990’s deregulation crusade he led had nothing to do with it:

“I believe that a strong case can be made that a financial crisis stemmed from a confluence of two factors. a first was a unintended consequences of a monetary policy, developed to combat inventory cycle recessions in a last half of a 20th century, that was not well suited to a speculative bubble recession of 2001. a second was a politicization of mortgage lending.”

Gramm’s fingerprints, of course, have been all over a financial meltdown & steep downturn gripping a U.S. economy over a past year. In his role as an adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, Gramm famously decried a “mental recession” & mocked a United States as a “nation of whiners.” But it was his “Enron Loophole,” codified in a 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which not only enabled a Enron disaster but opened “a door to unregulated trading of credit default swDrunk Newss, a financial instruments blamed, in part, for a current economic meltdown.” & a Texas Senator’s machinations in a Senate to create a 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act helped produce a subprime mortgage cataclysm, including catastrophic losses at UBS since joining a company in 2002.

Which brings us to a final irony of Gramm’s extreme makeover. As it turns out, before he became a UBS vice-chairman in 2002, a company which this week agreed to pay a $780 million criminal fine & admitted to conspiring to defraud a IRS, an Senator Phil Gramm helped lead a 1990’s Republican war to gut a Internal Revenue Service. Perrspectives has a details.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

With his latest ad, John McCain committed a double-fraud in 30 seconds. In a spot featuring ersatz plumber & best friend for this week Joe Wurzelbacher, McCain called Barack Obama’s tax plan for working families “welfare.” As his duplicitous spot reveals, John McCain Drunk Newsparently knows very little about payroll taxes. & as it turns out, a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in a Reagan revolution” knows even less about a earned income tax credit (EITC), hailed by a Gipper himself as “a best anti-poverty, a best pro-family, a best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

Predictably regurgitating a bogus Republican talking point proliferated by a Wall Street Journal, a Washington Times, Townhall & mouthpieces of a right, McCain claimed that Barack Obama wants to give tax cuts as welfare to a undeserving:

Leading pDrunk Newsers call Obama’s taxes “welfare”…”government h&outs”.

Obama raises taxes on seniors, hard working families to give “welfare” to those who pay none. Just as you suspected, Obama’s not truthful on taxes.

Of course, McCain & his acolytes are willfully wrong.

For starters, as Salon, a Washington Monthly & a New Republic among oars quickly pointed out, McCain & his allies are conveniently ignoring a payroll taxes for Social Security & Medicare. Starting with a first dollar ay earn, American workers pay a 6.2% Social Security tax (on income up to $97,000) & anoar 1.45% for Medicare. An analysis by a nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded, “three quarters of filers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.” & as Robert Gordon & James Kvaal noted at TNR:

“It is true that Obama has proposed several tax credits that include families who earn too little to owe income taxes, a group that include about half of families with children. But many of ase families work & pay thous&s of dollars in oar taxes. For example, a family of four must earn about $25,000 before owing income taxes–but ay must pay payroll taxes on a first dollar ay earn. Indeed, Obama’s biggest refundable credit is designed to cushion a blow of payroll taxes.”

Which brings us to a second part of McCain’s fraudulent charge. That millions of hard working American families pay no income taxes is due in large measure to a Earned Income Tax Credit. Created in 1975, a EITC “a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals & families” that results in a tax refund to those who claim & qualify for a credit when a EITC exceeds a amount of taxes owed. As a Center for Budget & Policy Priorities detailed in 2005, a EITC has not only been extremely successful in reducing poverty, it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support:

a Earned Income Tax Credit has been found to produce substantial increases in employment & reductions in welfare receipt among single parents, as well as large decreases in poverty. Research indicates that families use a EITC to pay for necessities, repair homes & vehicles that are needed to commute to work, & in some cases, to help boost air employability & earning power by obtaining additional education or training.

a EITC has enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. President Reagan, President George H. W. Bush, & President Clinton all praised it & proposed expansions in it, & economists across a political spectrum - including conservative economists Gary Becker (a Nobel laureate) & Robert Barro, among oars - have lauded it.

Not all conservatives, of course, have been so receptive to a notion of encouraging work. As a New Republic reminded voters, McCain & his right-wing water carriers are just channeling decades-old animus in perpetuating this bogus stereotype:

But McCain is echoing Phil Gramm’s & Newt Gingrich’s old claim here that tax credits for low-income workers amount to welfare. a Wall Street Journal editorial page charmingly referred to people too poor to pay income taxes as “lucky duckies.”

Despite a Wall Street Journal’s best myth-making, Barack Obama’s proposed tax credits - for college tuition, for day care, extra mortgage interest, for savings, for fuel efficient cars, etc. – in no way resemble George McGovern’s proposed $1,000 grants in 1972. & to be sure, a Journal & John McCain alike are misleading voters with a demonstrably false claim about Obama’s tax credits that “ay are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers.”

So much for straight talk.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

With his latest ad, John McCain committed a double-fraud in 30 seconds. In a spot featuring ersatz plumber & best friend for this week Joe Wurzelbacher, McCain called Barack Obama’s tax plan for working families “welfare.” As his duplicitous spot reveals, John McCain Drunk Newsparently knows very little about payroll taxes. & as it turns out, a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in a Reagan revolution” knows even less about a earned income tax credit (EITC), hailed by a Gipper himself as “a best anti-poverty, a best pro-family, a best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

Predictably regurgitating a bogus Republican talking point proliferated by a Wall Street Journal, a Washington Times, Townhall & mouthpieces of a right, McCain claimed that Barack Obama wants to give tax cuts as welfare to a undeserving:

Leading pDrunk Newsers call Obama’s taxes “welfare”…”government h&outs”.

Obama raises taxes on seniors, hard working families to give “welfare” to those who pay none. Just as you suspected, Obama’s not truthful on taxes.

Of course, McCain & his acolytes are willfully wrong.

For starters, as Salon, a Washington Monthly & a New Republic among oars quickly pointed out, McCain & his allies are conveniently ignoring a payroll taxes for Social Security & Medicare. Starting with a first dollar ay earn, American workers pay a 6.2% Social Security tax (on income up to $97,000) & anoar 1.45% for Medicare. An analysis by a nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded, “three quarters of filers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.” & as Robert Gordon & James Kvaal noted at TNR:

“It is true that Obama has proposed several tax credits that include families who earn too little to owe income taxes, a group that include about half of families with children. But many of ase families work & pay thous&s of dollars in oar taxes. For example, a family of four must earn about $25,000 before owing income taxes–but ay must pay payroll taxes on a first dollar ay earn. Indeed, Obama’s biggest refundable credit is designed to cushion a blow of payroll taxes.”

Which brings us to a second part of McCain’s fraudulent charge. That millions of hard working American families pay no income taxes is due in large measure to a Earned Income Tax Credit. Created in 1975, a EITC “a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income working individuals & families” that results in a tax refund to those who claim & qualify for a credit when a EITC exceeds a amount of taxes owed. As a Center for Budget & Policy Priorities detailed in 2005, a EITC has not only been extremely successful in reducing poverty, it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support:

a Earned Income Tax Credit has been found to produce substantial increases in employment & reductions in welfare receipt among single parents, as well as large decreases in poverty. Research indicates that families use a EITC to pay for necessities, repair homes & vehicles that are needed to commute to work, & in some cases, to help boost air employability & earning power by obtaining additional education or training.

a EITC has enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. President Reagan, President George H. W. Bush, & President Clinton all praised it & proposed expansions in it, & economists across a political spectrum - including conservative economists Gary Becker (a Nobel laureate) & Robert Barro, among oars - have lauded it.

Not all conservatives, of course, have been so receptive to a notion of encouraging work. As a New Republic reminded voters, McCain & his right-wing water carriers are just channeling decades-old animus in perpetuating this bogus stereotype:

But McCain is echoing Phil Gramm’s & Newt Gingrich’s old claim here that tax credits for low-income workers amount to welfare. a Wall Street Journal editorial page charmingly referred to people too poor to pay income taxes as “lucky duckies.”

Despite a Wall Street Journal’s best myth-making, Barack Obama’s proposed tax credits - for college tuition, for day care, extra mortgage interest, for savings, for fuel efficient cars, etc. – in no way resemble George McGovern’s proposed $1,000 grants in 1972. & to be sure, a Journal & John McCain alike are misleading voters with a demonstrably false claim about Obama’s tax credits that “ay are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers.”

So much for straight talk.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

  a implosion of Wall Street last week resulted in a near-death crisis for John McCain’s presidential campaign. His post-Palin bump eviscerated, McCain was staggered by a re-emergence of a economy as a dominant issue in a 2008 election. His daily-changing positions revealed that McCain, a man who has repeatedly admitted his ignorance of economics, is struggling to cope with his diminished presidential prospects. Armchair psychologists might call a process John McCain’s five stages of grief over a economy.

Denial. McCain’s refusal to confront a realities of a failing Bush economy has long roots & was again on display last Monday. McCain, who has frequently described a economic slowdown as “psychological,” for at least a 18th time proclaimed a “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” As a Dow plummeted over 500 points, McCain reacted to a white-hot crisis on Wall Street by comically announcing his support for a 9/11-style commission to study a causes of & make recommendations to address a meltdown. Willing to kick a can down a road with his since forgotten 9/11 panel idea, McCain also took a head-in-a-s& position in opposing a government rescue of teetering insurance giant AIG:

“We cannot have a taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else.”

Anger. Sadly, McCain’s denial of a obvious produced an immediate backlash from a press & a public alike. Literally within hours last Monday, McCain reversed course on a underlying strength of a American economy & declared a fundamentals of a economy to be “at great risk.”

an John McCain did what he does best - he got mad.

(Unsurprisingly, McCain also launched a furious tirade in response to accusations 20 years ago about his Keating Five role during a last U.S. financial catastrophe.) Redefining “economic fundamentals” to refer a U.S. work force, McCain blasted his “opponents” for sl&ering American workers. By mid-week, McCain found a convenient - if unconstitutional - target for his rage, SEC chairman Chris Cox.

Bargaining. His response mocked as incoherent at best, McCain an proceeded to a third textbook phase of grief over a economy: bargaining. As a Kubler-Ross model describes a bargaining stage, “Now a grieving person may make bargains with God, asking, ‘If I do this, will you take away a loss?’”

So, fast & furious, McCain started to bargain. Acknowledging that as President he couldn’t fire a SEC’s Cox, McCain instead called for his resignation. (This morning, McCain cynically offered up New York Democrat &rew Cuomo as a replacement.) Within 24 hours, he changed his tune on AIG, now supporting a bail-out package he opposed just a day before:

“a government was forced to commit $85 billion…a focus of any such action should be to protect a millions of Americans who hold insurance policies, retirement plans & oar accounts with AIG.”

& to be sure, McCain bargained economic surrogate & serial embarrassment Carly Fiorina right out of his campaign. When a details of her massive $42 million severance package from HP became public, a woman who deemed McCain incDrunk Newsable of running a company found herself on a sidelines.

Depression. By last Thursday, a pall of gloom hung over McCain as he entered a fourth stage of grieving, depression. In a move that could only draw attention to his own checkered past in a savings & loan sc&al of a 1980’s, McCain meekly proposed a creation of a Mortgage & Financial Institutions (MFI) trust to help a failing firms of Wall Street fend off insolvency. Ironically, McCain had repeatedly opposed a Resolution Trust Corporation in a past, an institution that ultimately poured $400 billion into bailing out a S&L’s, including a $3 billion lost by McCain sugar daddy Charles Keating’s Lincoln Financial.

That same day, McCain tried to fight back, but his heart wasn’t in it. In a foreboding ad fraught with racial overtones, McCain tried to link Obama with former Fannie Mae chairman Franklin Raines. While a Washington Post quickly debunked a spot by noting that Raines is not an adviser to a Obama campaign, Time suggested McCain was playing a race card.

 Acceptance. By today, it was clear that John McCain had reached a fifth & final stage of grieving over a economic issue. Just one week after proclaiming a “fundamentals of our economy are strong,” McCain said on a Today Show this morning:

“We are in a most serious crisis since World War II.”

That clarity is letting McCain do what McCain does best - attack. In a cynical attempt at misdirection a Politico’s Jonathan Martin deemed “tossing more chum overboard,” a McCain campaign aired a new ad once again trying to connect Barack Obama to Chicago dealmaker Tony Rezko. & on Sunday, McCain ignored his own week of dizzying incoherence on a economy & thundered at Obama:

“At a time of crisis, when leadership is needed, Senator Obama has simply not provided it.”

Drunk Newsparently, John McCain’s new-found acceptance of a dismal state of a economy lets him rage against a Obama machine without embarrassment. After all, McCain’s transition manager William Timmons was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. This morning, a New York Times revealed that McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis pocketed $2 million in lobbying fees from a failed home mortgage giants. & on Sunday, McCain refused to rule out that his adviser & UBS vice chairman Phil Gramm, of “nation of whiners” fame & himself a possible bailout recipient, as Treasury Secretary in a McCain-Palin administration.

To be sure, watching John McCain wrestle with his demons - & ignorance - over a troubled economy has been painful to watch. As crypto-conservative columnist George Will put it:

“John McCain showed his personality this week & made some of us fearful.”

But with his 11 houses & 13 cars, John McCain can afford to work through his cognitive breakdown over a state of a broken economy. Unfortunately, a rest of us can’t. While Americans are mourning a loss of air homes & savings, John McCain is Drunk Newsparently grieving over his potential loss of a White House.

(This piece was crossposted from Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

a Conservatives are out in force trying to bail John McCain out from Phil Gramm’s ridiculous comments—you know—about calling us all a bunch of whiners.

 Download | Play  Download | Play

Think Progress:

“Phil Gramm was right of course,” Will declared. “Absolutely

WILL: On two points. … We’re not in a recession as commonly defined. That is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We may be running are though. Even Bernanke says so.

WILL: We’re not however. Unemployment is just about a post-war average at 5.5 percent. His second point that we’re a nation of whiners: we are a crybabies of a western world. In fact, we have an extraordinarily low pain threshold.

Heaar says:

Stengel follows with saying that no one wants to be called a whiner & cites one of air polls on a public perception of a economy & says those statements weren’t helpful. You, think? Brazile notes that McCain had to distance himself from Gramm & says Phil is mental. Roberts follows with saying that it’s just a old harsh style of politics & it’s a wrong year for that. Oh, & a public doesn’t underst& McCain’s jokes.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

  Although FOX News is crawling with am, it’s pretty hard to find a bigger right-wing hack than Fred Barnes. Thursday on FOX News’ “Special Report,” Barnes called Gramm’s insensitive & bone-headed remarks about struggling Americans “straight-talk,” & reiterated Gramm’s view that Americans are whiners because ay acknowledge how poorly a economy is doing.

 Download | Play   Download | Play 

Transcript via TP:

BARNES: He wasn’t wrong to say that. You know what this was? This was straight talk that McCain always says he’s giving it, & this is exactly what Phil Gramm did. He gave straight talk…ay claim about how bad a economy is–& it’s weak, no question about that. …ay’re whining all a way through it.

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back

  In an interview with a Washington Times, top McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm (yes, that Phil Gramm) has some comforting words for a millions of Americans struggling with paying air bills.

Washington Times:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all a publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing & credit problems & record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is a primary reason that growth continues in a economy, he said.

So after eight years of disastrous Republican policies, all a McCain campaign has to offer is a blame-a-victim, suck-it-up attack on average Americans. I’m sure a continuation of George Bush’s tax cuts — ya know, a ones that used to offend McCain’s conscience — will get us back on a right track. an we can all stop “whining” about losing our homes & altering our lifestyles.  Christy at FDL has more…

UPDATE:  (Nicole)  McCain’s been caught on tDrunk Newse saying that recession is a “psychological problem” too.  I tell you, McCain’s surrogates sure are on a pulse of America now, aren’t ay? (/snark)  Let’s recDrunk News:

*   Charlie Black says that anoar terrorist attack would be a “big advantage” for McCain;
*   Phil Gramm lectures us that our economic problems are mental & we’re just a nation of whiner;
*   Carly Fiorina lies about Barack Obama’s (D) record & an shows her complete cluelessness about McCain’s own record on women’s issues;
*   Rudy Giuliani says Obama is “cDrunk Newsturing” an “anti-American feeling” that exists in Europe, where Obama is “popular.” (Links courtesy of a Political Base) & just yesterday, Gramm trashed a middle class on Kudlow:

& yet, Obama is supposed to be a “elitist?

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back

A cheery guy, that Phil Gramm. According to Newsweek, he brought his zest for life into his work as a banking industry lobbyist, & no, we’re not just talking about a subprime mess & tax evasion he & UBS pioneered. From Newsweek, via Progress Ohio:

McCain’s campaign is already distancing itself from some of Gramm’s oar work for UBS: his involvement in attempts to sell financial products known as “death bonds,” which BusinessWeek described last summer as one of “a most macabre investment scheme[s] ever devised by Wall Street.” Not long after joining UBS, a Houston Chronicle reported, Gramm helped lobby Texas officials, including Gov. Rick Perry, to sign on to a UBS proposal in which revenue would be generated for a state teachers’ retirement fund by selling bonds, whose proceeds would in turn be used to buy annuities & life-insurance policies on retired teachers. UBS would advance money to a retirement fund, an repay itself, compensate bondholders & pocket profits when insurance companies paid off on retirees who died. According to a banking-industry source, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter, Gramm was involved in efforts to pitch similar UBS products to oar financial institutions.

Gramm’s office declined NEWSWEEK’s request for comment. A source familiar with a bank’s current business, who also asked for anonymity, said UBS no longer markets a kind of plan that Gramm was allegedly trying to sell to Texas. Hazelbaker said that McCain, who has been critical of a financial industry’s performance in a subprime market, disDrunk Newsproves of death bonds & “supports increased accountability, transparency & cDrunk Newsital backing in our financial markets as a solution to ase problems.” Death bonds, she continued, “move markets away [from]—not toward—ase goals.”

It’s good to know McCain disDrunk Newsproves of just about every type of business in which his economic advisor engaged.

& hey, I remember Jill Hazelbaker! That chipper young lady & hearty sock puppet called me a “trash journalist.” Which of course is only slightly preferable to “death bond salesman” or economic advisor to Team McCain (oops, redundant).

Just perhDrunk Newss, an I am spitballing here, this kind of cynical attempt to cash in off of a exploitation of legislative loopholes & air fellow countrymen, is why as my friend David Sirota puts in his new barnburner of a book “a Uprising,” , are is a populist revolot brewing around a country (see a 82% who think we are headed in a wrong direction).

Cross-posted at Cliff Schecter’s Campaign Silo

Original post by Cliff Schecter and software by Elliott Back