Okaaaaay.....

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
Okaaaaay.....
214
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 11:22pm

Crazy:


 


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/mccain-on-banking-and-health/


 


September 19, 2008,  7:24 pm
McCain on banking and health


OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.


Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:



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.


So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!>>>

Sopal


Sopal

<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 3:05pm

Whoa. Nice try in trying to change the subject to Obama. We can deal with him separately - and I will, later. Right now the topic is McCain. You keep citing to a bill from 2005 to address a blow up back then that was relatively small compared to the current economic crisis. You either will not or cannot answer the question as to why McCain dropped the bill and then said as recently as late last year that he didn't see the current economic crisis coming.

I repeat my general criticism, nothing to do with you, that Republican politicians have no credibility. They refuse to acknowledge reality to the point where even Karl Rove, the king of prevarication, says McCain his crew are lying. It's worse than Bush, if that's possible. The American public doesn't trust Republicans anymore for good reason. They have gone beyond the usual pale in DC in lying greed, incompetence and corruption.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2007
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 3:23pm
You are missing the point.

Sopal

<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 3:26pm

I did not change the subject at all. McCain did not drop the bill. Since you refuse to read his speech on the floor, I will copy it here.

"Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation."

It sounds to me like he had a handle on what could happen and tried to stop it.

Obama hasn't tried to stop anything. He just kept his hand held out for more and more campaign contributions. Then either due to incompetence, or ignorance, or just good 'ol Chicago style gangster politics... looked the other way.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 3:32pm

As I have said before, I blame the old Republican congress (You know, the ones that WE Republican voters threw out) even more than I do the Democrats, because they should have stopped this. Once the Democrats were in power, they weren't going to halt anything Bill Clinton put into effect.

That doesn't change the fact that John McCain did try to do something before it was too late. I guess that's why he's known as a "maverick".

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 4:09pm
That's great, but what did he do with the bill? You say he didn't drop it. Do you have any facts to back up your assertion. Because that bill is long gone, gone with that little blow up, and now McCain himself says he didn't see this financial crisis coming. So tell us please, what happened to that bill? And how come McCain doesn't even know what he sees (he says he didn't even see it coming yet somehow you say he did), according to you?
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 4:18pm

The fact remains that he saw a crisis ahead and tried to stop it. IT looks like it died in committee, but that doesn't bode badly for McCain, no matter how badly you may wish that it does. He tried. Obama didn't. In fact, he actually accepted what really seem to be bribes, didn't he?

Off topic. There is a great band here in Texas called "Duck Soup". Ever heard of them?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-16-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 4:41pm

I am reminded of a commercial I saw on television - not sure what the product being advertised was. There were two people at a dam and there was a small crack in the dam. The man took the gum out of his mouth to plug the hole. Then walked away. Now when the dam bursts he can claim he saw it coming and tried to stop it - but how effective was his effort?

In your scenario McCain - if we allow that he saw 'it coming' at all given his anti-regulation history - is the man with the gum. He can 'say' he tried to stop it in a technical sense. But as he is running for president if he really and truly did see it coming and made such a feeble attempt at stopping it then I would argue he is most unfit for the job. It sounds like the 'I know how to capture Bin Laden' boast - if he knows he had better go along and do it, if he knew he should never have given up.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 4:44pm
No, but I have heard of Clandestine, they have played in our area, and at the Muckey Ducks in Texas. They are BTW from Texas.
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-19-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 4:47pm

*** In reading your blog post, I did find the places to go to look for this S.190 proposed legislation, and it seems that it was just a proposal to take the regulatory authority over the likes of Freddie and Fannie away from the government and giving it to a new proposed corporation. It never got voted on by anyone as Congress went into a new session.

Right...blocked by the Dems. And the point was that McCain recognized the problem and tried to address it. Obama says that he recognized the problem too...but did nothing. You should watch the video to hear his list of lies and propaganda.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtKTUsHrcm4

*** As far as your blogger making this statement: "Meanwhile, Barack Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the lobbyists McCain mentions in this speech, making him the #2 recipient of Fannie/Freddie money:" That has already been debunked in another thread by factcheck.org.

Thanks for the links supporting that allegation. 'Til then, I'm afraid I'll go with the many, many reports supporting that fact.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2008
In reply to: sopall1953
Sat, 09-20-2008 - 4:47pm

So you think the man who took the bribes is more fit to be president? Imo, taking campaign contributions in exchange for looking the other way is the same thing as taking a bribe. I say "no thanks' to old style Chicago mob politics.

Most reasonable people would think the man who had the foresight to see a problem and try to fix it is a better leader. Even if he was outnumbered, he did make a stand.

Pages