Deregulation

Government is the not the solution! Government is the problem! That has been the mantra of the Republican establishment since Ronald Reagan ascended to the Presidency. It has been the cry of George Bush and McCain and all Republicans since their icon reigned in the White House and when they gained power they proved it. Yes, during the years of Republican ascendancy government was the problem, for they treated the levers of power as though they were there to serve them and their rich cronies. The powers of government were to be used to achieve a permanent Republican majority and to enrich their supporters in industry and in the financial sector in return for which these supporters would lavish upon them a small portion of their gains, enriching many members of the Republican establishment, and giving them the campaign funds with which they hoped they would achieve a permanent majority.

They have railed against a redistribution of wealth while systematically redistributing wealth from the middle class to the top 2% of the wealthiest of the wealthy.

They kept accusing Democrats of a policy of “tax and spend” while always spending at least as much as Democrats proposed, only the priorities were different, spending always being directed toward their goal of wealth redistribution upwards. They didn’t tax and spend, no, they borrowed and spent, and they borrowed more and more and more until our deficit has exceeded all previous deficits.

But their greed was so great that they caused the wheels to come off.

There is a basic axiom in economics. “The Greater the Risk the Greater the Reward.” And so our financial moguls took great risks and they enriched themselves. And so they took greater risks and more money flowed their way. This is what led to the Great depression of 1929 and after that depression Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Democratic Congress put in place safeguards that did not allow the moguls to gamble with our money. For it is our money that they gamble with. It is the money that we deposit in their banks that they gamble with.

And Republicans for a very long time made no attempt to decimate the regulatory network set up in response to the depression until Ronald Reagan. Then an onslaught on the regulation that made reckless risks illegal began and where they could not persuade Congress to repeal these protections they proceeded to appoint to the regulatory agencies people who they knew would not enforce the law. They put the fox in the henhouse. Thus they made sure that the reckless risk takers would have a free hand.

Now they have discovered that government is the solution. To save their billionaire supporters they want the government to rescue them and there may be no choice because these moguls can bring our whole economy and the world economy to its knees and McCain is one of the main architects of this deregulation. As he said in 2003, ‘I have a long voting record in support of deregulation.’

Canada’s conservative daily “Globe and Mail” in today’s edition summarizes the situation as well as anyone could and so I quote their article in full:

“How is it now possible for a reasonable voter to cast a ballot for John McCain?

“The total cost of rescuing the financial services sector, including past and proposed actions, exceeds $1-trillion, more than twice the record $438-billion deficit projected for this fiscal year.

“American taxpayers are being asked to spend thousands of dollars per person to prevent the collapse of Wall Street. A whole lot of people who made an awful lot of money by taking enormous risks they couldn't afford will benefit, at the expense of everyone else.

“John McCain and platforms are ashes. They can forget about cutting taxes - for the middle classes, the upper classes or anyone else.

“And all those grandiose plans for health care and education and the military? Forget it. The next federal government, unless it abandons all pretense of responsibility, will have to focus exclusively on raising revenue and cutting spending, in an effort to bring the budget back into something remotely approaching balance.

“Mr. Obama acknowledged half as much yesterday. While insisting that many of his key promises were self-financing, he added the caveat: "It would be irresponsible of me to say I am not going to take into account what things look like should I take office." Voters have every reason to be nervous at the thought of this freshman senator, who has no experience at running any level of government, becoming president in a time of acute fiscal crisis.

“But now there really is no practical alternative. John McCain helped create this emergency. He's partly to blame for it. Under the circumstances, rewarding him by voting for him would be perverse.

“If there has been one constant in Mr. McCain's legislative record through decades in the House and Senate, it has been his unequivocal support for deregulation. He championed it during his years as chairman of the Senate commerce committee. He campaigned actively and successfully for the very act that scrapped the regulations whose absence created this cascade of bank and insurance-company failures.

“‘I have a long voting record in support of deregulation,’ he said back in 2003. It was no idle boast.

“Mr. McCain's election platform proposes allowing taxpayers to divert part of their social security payments into private investment accounts. It would deregulate the health sector, so that people could shop around for the best available health plan, rather than relying on their employer to provide it.

“‘Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation,’ he wrote in a magazine article published last week. Presumably, the piece was submitted before Lehman Brothers went belly up.

“Deregulation is not a bad thing. By loosening the restrictions that prevented innovation and risk, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher unleashed a generation of virtually uninterrupted growth that other countries, including Canada, rushed to emulate.

“But the watchman state at least needs to be a watchman. Deregulating past the point of common sense, so tainted food starts making its way onto shelves, municipal water supplies become lethally contaminated and banks take risks so hazardous they imperil the global economy, is an abdication by government of its duty to serve and protect its citizens.

“John McCain could honourably have said that, in retrospect, he might have been too enthusiastic in his support for unlimited deregulation, that he is learning lessons along with everyone else, and that, as president, he will restore a responsible level of federal oversight on Wall Street.

“Instead, he blames the greed of bank executives and accuses Barack Obama of failing to propose a realistic plan to fix the mess he helped create.

“That is base.

“An American might vote Republican because his father did, and so does he, and so will his son. She might vote Republican because John McCain opposes abortion and the right to life is the only issue that matters to her. They might vote Republican because they would never vote for a black man.

“But for a reasonable voter to support the Republican Party, after everything its candidate has done to help bring on the worst financial crisis since the Depression, well, that just makes no sense at all.”

More about McCain

As the campaign for President unfolds I find myself saddened by the devolution of McCain from the “maverick” and “straight talk express” candidate, to one who doesn’t hesitate to lie and who instead of tacking to the middle in the general election campaign, appears to be tacking further to the Right.

In February of 2000 while running in the Republican primary against George W. Bush declared, “Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.” (From CNN transcript 2/28/2000) When McCain ran in this years Republican primary McCain made amends with Falwell. He spoke at Falwell's Liberty University, (MSNBC Feb. 14, 2007) a rather depressing example of tacking with the wind and adjusting ones sails to fit the needs of the campaign, but clearly not one of principle.

But who would have thought that now that we are deep into the general election campaign McCain would continue to tack rightward.

The selection of Palin is a clear manifestation of this trend. Much has been made of Palin’s lack of qualification to be President, and that is certainly true. But what is more important is what it tells us about McCain. In choosing Palin to be his candidate for VP he has chosen a woman who is totally committed to the agenda of Robertson and Falwell, e.g. Palin believes abortion should be illegal “with the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end (not just would be endangered) if the pregnancy continued.” In other words she would outlaw abortion even in cases of rape or incest, which puts her at odds with McCain’s slightly more moderate position. Palin also said that she’d be opposed to abortion even if her daughter had been sexually assaulted. (Anchorage Daily News November 3, 2006)

She favors teaching creationism in public schools, a position that the Supreme Court has held to be in violation of the Constitution’s establishment clause. (Anchorage Daily News October 27, 2006)

She does not believe that global warming is manmade and expressed skepticism that climate change is occurring at all. (ABC News August 29, 2008 and Cavuto interview on Fox)

She opposes proposals to expand hate-crimes statutes to cover sexual orientation, and seems to imply that hate-crimes statutes are superfluous (Eagle Forum Alaska)

She would replace sex-education programs with abstinence-only programs. (Eagle Forum Alaska) Apparently the withholding of such information from her own daughter led to her pregnancy at the age of 17 to be followed by a shotgun marriage to a self-described red-neck.

The result has been to bring McCain the enthusiastic support of the fundamentalist Right without any cost among women and independents. So it appears that political cynicism pays off. The incredible thing is that Palin opposes everything that women who supported Hillary Clinton support, yet she has appeal to them on the basis of identity politics. She is about as good for women as Justice Clarence Thomas is for African-Americans. Issues matter more than identity, as Hillary Clinton herself has pointed out.

But even more frightening is McCain’s temper.

Here are some examples:

Defending his Amnesty Bill, Sen. McCain Lost His Temper And “Screamed, ‘F*ck You!’ At Texas Sen. John Cornyn” (R-TX). (New York Post, 5/19/07)

At a GOP meeting last fall, McCain erupted out of the blue at the respected Budget Committee chairman, Pete Domenici, saying, ‘Only an a–hole would put together a budget like this.’ Offended, Domenici stood up and gave a dignified, restrained speech about how in all his years in the Senate, through many heated debates, no one had ever called him that. Another senator might have taken the moment to check his temper. But McCain went on: ‘I wouldn’t call you an a–hole unless you really were an a–hole.’ The Republican senator witnessing the scene had considered supporting McCain for president, but changed his mind. ‘I decided,’ the senator told Newsweek, ‘I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.’” (Evan Thomas, et al., “Senator Hothead,” Newsweek, 2/21/00)

Sen. McCain Had A Heated Exchange With Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) And Called Him A “F*cking Jerk.” “Senators are not used to having their intelligence or integrity challenged by another senator. ‘Are you calling me stupid?’ Sen. Chuck Grassley once inquired during a debate with McCain over the fate of the Vietnam MIAs, according to a source who was present. ‘No,’ replied McCain, ‘I’m calling you a f—ing jerk!’

Is this the man we would want in delicate negotiations with friends, or for that matter, enemies? Is this the man whose finger we would want on on the atom bomb trigger?

Which brings us to his integrity and his willingness to tell out and out lies. Here is what Fact Check.org, a non-partisan web-site devoted to tracking falsehoods during political campaigns had to say about McCain’s ads on taxes.

“McCain released three new ads with multiple false and misleading claims about Obama's tax proposals.

“A TV spot claims Obama once voted for a tax increase "on people making just $42,000 a year." That's true for a single taxpayer, who would have seen a tax increase of $15 for the year – if the measure had been enacted. But the ad shows a woman with two children, and as a single mother, she would not have been affected unless she made more than $62,150. The increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his current tax plan anyway.
“A Spanish-language radio ad claims the measure Obama supported would have raised taxes on "families" making $42,000, which is simply false. Even a single mother with one child would have been able to make $58,650 without being affected. A family of four with income up to $90,000 would not have been affected.

“The TV ad claims in a graphic that Obama would ‘raise taxes on middle class.’ In fact, Obama's plan promises cuts for middle-income taxpayers and would increase rates only for persons with family incomes above $250,000 or with individual incomes above $200,000.

“The radio ad claims Obama would increase taxes "on the sale of your home." In fact, home-sale profits of up to $500,000 per couple would continue to be exempt from capital gains taxes. Very few sales would see an increase under Obama's proposal to raise the capital gains rate.

“A second radio ad, in English, says, ‘Obama has a history of raising taxes’ on middle-class Americans. But that's false. It refers to a vote that did not actually result in a tax increase and could not have done so.

“These ads continue what's become a pattern of misrepresentation by the McCain campaign about his opponent's tax proposals.”

In fact, and I believe the Obama campaign has not sufficiently publicized this, McCain wants to place a tax on Americans who get health insurance from their employers which would hurt the people who can least afford it.

McCain is also now misrepresenting Obama record on sex education. Here is what Fact Check had to say on this.

“A McCain-Palin campaign ad claims Obama's ‘one accomplishment’ in the area of education was "legislation to teach 'comprehensive sex education' to kindergarteners." But the claim is simply false, and it dates back to Alan Keyes' failed race against Obama for an open Senate seat in 2004. Obama, contrary to the ad's insinuation, does not support explicit sex education for kindergarteners and the bill, which would have allowed only "age appropriate" material and a no-questions-asked opt-out policy for parents, was not his accomplishment to claim in any case, since he was not even a cosponsor – and the bill never left the state Senate.

“It's true that the phrase ‘comprehensive sex education’ appeared in the bill, but little else in McCain's claim is accurate. The ad refers to a bill Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate to update the sex education curriculum and make it "medically accurate." It would have lowered the age at which students would begin what the bill termed "comprehensive sex education" to include kindergarten. But it mandated the instruction be "age-appropriate" for kindergarteners when addressing topics such as sexually transmitted diseases. The bill also would have granted parents the opportunity to remove their children from the class without question.

There is much more to be said about the man who would be president but some consideration for length constrains me.