Phil Gramm's power of positive thinking

I knew you weren't voting for Obama, but I'm surprised that you're considering voting for McCain. Do you have something against not voting?

...Mainers are deeply worried about how they're going to pay heating bills this winter

Maybe the Mainers will migrate to warm, sunny Texas and buy our foreclosed McMansions.

Let us not forget that Gramm's wife was on the board that regulated Enron. She left that position and joined Enron. Gramm is still a VP at UBS. That company has, reportedly, lost 37 billion in the mortgage market. This guy is either the kiss of death or totally incompetent. He seems a good example of what Douthat and Salam described as examples of Republicans who are supporting big businesses rather than the free market.

A question that keeps reoccurring to me. Do the financial catastrophes that follow Republicans deregulating specific industries represent incompetence/unintended consequences or is deregulation actually a bad idea?

Steve

Gramm is hopelessly out of touch with reality.

OTOH, I have to admit I actually laughed out loud at the line "David Korn tells the story in Mother Jones." Wasn't there a more objective account available in, say, Pravda?

Well, I can at least vouch for the fact that there is another side to Sen. Gramm.

Back in the day, when I was working my way through school as a waitress, out of the blue, I got a notice from the IRS that they were trying to garnish my paycheck (about $75.00 a week, as I recall) and fine me, like, $500.00 bucks for claiming "exempt" on my W-2. It was a complete screw up on their part - I'd changed the designation as soon as it became apparent that I would be working that year instead of going to school, and I had the documentation to prove it. But no matter who I talked to at the IRS, I could NEVER get anyone to even acknowledge receipt of the exculpatory 'evidence.' Having exhausted all other avenues of redress, I contacted my state senators. Sen. Benson first (who completely ignored me) and then Senator Gramm - whose staff accepted my bundle of 'proof,' reviewed it and forwarded it to the IRS - apparently on congressional letterhead. All this for an absolutely apolitical, impoverished waitress of whom they knew absolutely nothing. About two weeks after I sent off my bundle to Senator Gramm's office, the IRS - the same entity with whom I'd spent probably 20 completely unproductive hours trying to communicate - actually called ME.

And that's why I will ALWAYS come to the defense of Senator Gramm.

So much easier to attack "Mother Jones" than to face the fact that Phil Gramm is an obscenely hypocritical man who became hugely wealthy preaching fiscal tough love -- for everyone but himself and his rich friends. As Slate put it:

He began his career railing against corporate subsidies, but he never pulled the trigger. Instead he became one of the biggest recipients of campaign contributions from energy, banking, health-care, and insurance companies. As an economist, Gramm knows that farm subsidies grossly waste taxpayer money, but he has never moved against them. And Gramm became one of Congress' leading pork dealers: He once bragged that he steered so much government spending to Texas that he was getting trichinosis.

http://www.slate.com/id/114972/

Prediction: Gramm will prove as at least as damaging to McCain's campaign as Wright was to Obama's. The fact is, McCain doesn't know much about the economy, and doesn't care (after all, he's been in government service his entire life). But he didn't have to throw in his lot with a deregulator whose advice has proven utterly disastrous to those who have taken it (Enron, UBS). Gramm is fiscal irresponsibility personified. If he keeps talking, McCain will have to get rid of him. But if he can't open his mouth, what good is he on a campaign?

Americans are whiners. The vast majority of the populace has it good. Even if they do get kicked out of their houses and have to give up Fido and rent, most will do okay. They may have to sell their cars, write off their houses, and move to town and drive a beater car a shorter distance to work, but they'll manage. They're still living better than most anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan. And I hate to point this out, but a dog is only a dog. It is sad if one has to be put down simply because they can't find a home for it, but then we have human beings dying in emergency rooms due to lack of attention, and video footage to prove it. We need to keep things in perspective, is my point.

This doesn't change the facts that the cost of everything is going up, and that it is going to hit hardest among the poorest people, many of whom work in the service sectors of areas they have to drive into. It's deucedly difficult to work where you live, and moreso if you aren't making much in the first place. People on a fixed income counted on prices not going up terribly much when they planned it out, or at least thought they'd have their home financing to fall back on. Our whole system was built on certain assumptions which are looking less and less certain. Of course everyone is reeling. This is no mental recession. It's a painful correction, and it has very real impact on real people, and may well lead to a real official recession.

I'm not trying to gloss over what are very real problems. Just to point out that this isn't the end of the world. However, I'm not running for an office in which people expect me to produce solutions either! Commenting that Americans could have it worse is not exactly demonstrating you have a viable platform for fixing things, now it it?