[Cannes, May 20. Image via Splash.]

Phil ‘Nation of Whiners’ Gramm Championed bill that led to collapse of AIG and major financial institutions on Wall Street

McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country’s financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

…

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

McCain stumbled Monday when the financial crisis peaked, first saying the “fundamentals” of the economy were strong. After being hammered by Obama and the Democrats — “What economy is he talking about?” Obama asked — he said that he knows the economy is in crisis, but that the basis of the American economy, the American worker, is strong.

…
By Tuesday, McCain had retooled the message further, and tried to wrap the financial meltdown into his campaign’s greater message about changing “the way Washington does business.”

…
In the 1990s, he backed an unsuccessful effort to create a moratorium on all new government regulation. And in 1996, he was one of only five senators to oppose a comprehensive telecommunications act, saying it did not go far enough in deregulating the industry.

From: WaPo.

GOVgap Editorial Note:
McCain Campaign will probably claim ‘Phil’ meant to destroy Wall Street to test his ‘Nation of Whiners’ theory.

Idea for the McCain Campaign
cc: Tucker Bounds
Did he say ‘Whiners?’- He meant ‘Winners’… Nation of ‘Winners’ -

Front Page Funny-Ha-Ha:

Because the rest of the news is: Funny-I’m-Scared-Sh*tless

News stories mentioning “McCain and BlackBerry” topped 2,300 in a 24-hour stretch ending Wednesday — that’s almost half the number of stories mentioning “McCain and A.I.G.” in the same period. It’s hard to quantify the news value of the McCain campaign’s odd claim that he invented the Canadian technology, of course, but it definitely ain’t half as important as A.I.G. The BlackBerry claim is perfectly symbolic, however, of a campaign that has spun, prevaricated and lied through the summer — drawing protest from opponents and neutral observers alike — led by a candidate who is often out of touch from the economic and technological changes rocking the country.

From The Huffington Post

From NYTimes:

The e-mails include an exchange between Ms. Palin and Alaska’s lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, as well as an associate, Amy McCorkell, who Ms. Palin appointed to a state drug and alcohol advisory board last year. Wired Magazine reported on its Internet privacy blog, Threat Level, that it obtained confirmation from Ms. McCorkell that she did, in fact, send the message to Governor Palin.

Alaskans question Palin’s e-mail secrecy

Governor routinely uses private account for state business

Moments after Gov. Sarah Palin’s first speech as Republican John McCain’s running mate, she sat with her kids backstage, thumbing one of the two BlackBerrys that are always with her. You can see them in photographs from that day on the campaign blog of one of McCain’s daughters.

The tech-savvy governor has one of the devices (which allow users to read and send e-mails) for state business and another for personal matters, but those worlds intertwine.

Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor’s office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too.

The practice raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed during the 2006 campaign to be “open and transparent.”

Even before the McCain campaign plucked Palin from Alaska, a controversy was brewing over e-mails in the governor’s office. Was the administration trying to get around the public records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail accounts?

Activists, still fighting to obtain hundreds of e-mails that were withheld from public records requests earlier this year, say that’s what it looks like.

The governor’s Yahoo account is “the most nonsensical, inane thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Andree McLeod, who is appealing the administration’s decision to withhold e-mails.

“The governor sets the tone and the tone that has been set by this governor is beyond the pale,” McLeod said. “Common sense tells you to use an official state e-mail account for official state business.”
…
Some of her aides also routinely use Yahoo, but even messages sent from one private account to another should be public, if they concern public business, said Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general.

“The difficulty is finding out they exist,” Jones said.

It’s a new twist on an old problem: How to keep an eye on the government. And Palin’s expected absences from Alaska for the presidential campaign add urgency to the debate. Is she going to be running the state long-distance on her BlackBerry?

Some experts on open government say officials around the country escape scrutiny by either quickly deleting e-mails or using private accounts, as Palin has done.

“Where you’ve got a governor apparently using a Yahoo account for state business, that’s kind of a complete inversion of what ought to be happening in terms of public records,” said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and a Missouri journalism associate professor.

“E-mail that’s public business ought to be done on public accounts that can become public record,” he said.

Just how much of the state’s business does Palin conduct through her BlackBerrys? Her chief of staff didn’t respond to that question. But she often is glued to her devices.

Her Yahoo e-mails got the attention of political activists Zane Henning, a Wasilla resident and North Slope worker, and McLeod, a former legislative staffer and Republican who has run for state House and mayor.

In response to similar but separate public records requests, McLeod and Henning this summer received four banker boxes of e-mail and telephone records for two Palin aides: Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. Henning was operating on behalf of the Valley group Last Frontier Foundation, which lists property rights and public records as among its core issues on its Web site.

“I think that it’s total hypocrisy from what she stood for at the beginning of her campaign,” Henning said. “Because she campaigned on open government, and she knew that using a private e-mail account would take it and basically hide stuff that people couldn’t see.”

Excerpts from:
From Juneau Empire.

Palin: ‘I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t.’

AKA: “The Palin Doctrine”

Sarah Palin has been touting herself as fiscal watchdog throughout her political career. But Palin’s tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was characterized by waste, cronyism and incompetence, according to government officials in the Matanuska Valley, where she began her fairy-tale political rise.

“Executive abilities? She doesn’t have any,” said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.

Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor’s office — after scorching the “tax and spend mentality” of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin’s estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin’s own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council’s authorization.

…

Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.

“I braced her about it,” he said. “I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, ‘I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t.’”

“I’ll never forget it — it’s one of the few times in my life I’ve been speechless,” Carney added. “It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That’s Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations.”

 

 

Without a doubt one of the most troubling statements made by Palin.  We’ll soon see if this applies to Public Records of Emails / Troopergate:

Alaskans question Palin’s e-mail secrecy

Governor routinely uses private account for state business

Moments after Gov. Sarah Palin’s first speech as Republican John McCain’s running mate, she sat with her kids backstage, thumbing one of the two BlackBerrys that are always with her. You can see them in photographs from that day on the campaign blog of one of McCain’s daughters.

The tech-savvy governor has one of the devices (which allow users to read and send e-mails) for state business and another for personal matters, but those worlds intertwine.

Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor’s office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too.

The practice raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed during the 2006 campaign to be “open and transparent.”

Even before the McCain campaign plucked Palin from Alaska, a controversy was brewing over e-mails in the governor’s office. Was the administration trying to get around the public records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail accounts?

Activists, still fighting to obtain hundreds of e-mails that were withheld from public records requests earlier this year, say that’s what it looks like.

The governor’s Yahoo account is “the most nonsensical, inane thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Andree McLeod, who is appealing the administration’s decision to withhold e-mails.

“The governor sets the tone and the tone that has been set by this governor is beyond the pale,” McLeod said. “Common sense tells you to use an official state e-mail account for official state business.”
…
Some of her aides also routinely use Yahoo, but even messages sent from one private account to another should be public, if they concern public business, said Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general.

“The difficulty is finding out they exist,” Jones said.

It’s a new twist on an old problem: How to keep an eye on the government. And Palin’s expected absences from Alaska for the presidential campaign add urgency to the debate. Is she going to be running the state long-distance on her BlackBerry?

Some experts on open government say officials around the country escape scrutiny by either quickly deleting e-mails or using private accounts, as Palin has done.

“Where you’ve got a governor apparently using a Yahoo account for state business, that’s kind of a complete inversion of what ought to be happening in terms of public records,” said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and a Missouri journalism associate professor.

“E-mail that’s public business ought to be done on public accounts that can become public record,” he said.

Just how much of the state’s business does Palin conduct through her BlackBerrys? Her chief of staff didn’t respond to that question. But she often is glued to her devices.

Her Yahoo e-mails got the attention of political activists Zane Henning, a Wasilla resident and North Slope worker, and McLeod, a former legislative staffer and Republican who has run for state House and mayor.

In response to similar but separate public records requests, McLeod and Henning this summer received four banker boxes of e-mail and telephone records for two Palin aides: Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. Henning was operating on behalf of the Valley group Last Frontier Foundation, which lists property rights and public records as among its core issues on its Web site.

“I think that it’s total hypocrisy from what she stood for at the beginning of her campaign,” Henning said. “Because she campaigned on open government, and she knew that using a private e-mail account would take it and basically hide stuff that people couldn’t see.”

Excerpts from:
From Salon.
From Juneau Empire.

“…has outright lied, about his opponent”

From Ruth Marcus, Washington Post:

And it is a phony evenhandedness, comfortable for journalists but ultimately misleading, that equates these failures without measuring the grossness of their deviation from the standard of decency.

In the 2008 race, and especially in the past few weeks, the imbalance has become unnervingly stark. Ideological differences aside, John McCain’s campaign has been more dishonest, more unfair, more — to use a word that resonates with McCain — dishonorable than Barack Obama’s.

She continues:

He — the easy out would be to say “his campaign” — has been misleading, and at times has outright lied, about his opponent. He has misrepresented — that’s the charitable verb — his vice presidential nominee’s record. Called on these fouls, he has denied and repeated them.

The most outrageous of McCain’s distortions involve Obama on taxes. He asserts that Obama’s new taxes could “break your family budget,” and that an Obama presidency would inflict “painful tax increases on working American families.” Hardly. Obama would lower taxes for most households, and lower them more than McCain would. The only “painful tax increases on working American families” would be on working families making more than $250,000.

Likewise, the McCain campaign has its story about Sarah Palin, and it’s sticking with it — facts be damned. She said “thanks but no thanks” to that “Bridge to Nowhere,” except that she didn’t: She backed the bridge until it was unpopular, then scooped up the money and used it for other projects. More than a year after McCain began railing against the bridge, Palin, then a gubernatorial candidate, said the state should build it “now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

Palin sold the gubernatorial jet, on eBay and for a profit — except that she didn’t. She didn’t take earmarks as governor — except for the $256 million she sought last year, and the $197 million wish list for 2008.

Finally:

Sitting on the couch with the women of “The View” last week, McCain offered a litany of excuses for his conduct this time around: Obama’s ads are hard-hitting, too. The tone wouldn’t be so negative if Obama had agreed to more debates. McCain’s own lipstick comment was different because he was referring to health care.

You had to wonder: Are there any corners left for McCain? Is there any reason to trust that a man running this campaign would go on to be an honest president?

Seems Palin & GOP actually like Pork…

while McCain actually despises it?;
… but not so much that he won’t put a Pork-barrel-guzzling governor on the Ticket.

From TIME:

It turns out that John McCain, while crusading against wasteful spending, specifically objected to three earmarks Sarah Palin had requested as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, including a dubious agricultural processing facility designed to promote local produce. In fact, Palin has a consistent record of chasing the bacon that McCain has fought for years. She pulled in $27 million in earmarks as mayor, requested $450 million in earmarks as governor, and even supported the state’s notorious Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it. There isn’t enough lipstick in Alaska to cover all that pork.

And:

But as awkward as it was to watch Palin try to explain to ABC’s Charlie Gibson why taxpayers should pay to study the mating habits of Alaskan crabs, voters probably won’t mind that Palin doesn’t really hate pork as long as it’s hers. What could be a real problem for the GOP ticket would be voters recognizing that McCain really does hate pork — not only when it’s Palin’s, but when it’s theirs.

And:

McCain’s current economic plan would explode the deficit, mainly by making permanent the Bush tax cuts he once opposed. The Brookings Institution has estimated that it would add $5 trillion to the national debt by 2018; meanwhile, it would eliminate only $18 billion in earmarks, and much less if McCain truly intends to preserve aid to Israel and other worthy programs.

CNN Takes the lead in Debunking McCain / Palin Lies in Back-to-back reports:

Obama wants to teach sex to kindergarteners? Lie.

Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere? Lie.

Palin hasn’t taken earmarks as Governor? Lie.

Alaska produces 20% of America’s energy? Lie.

Palin visited Iraq and Ireland? Lie.

From Darrel West:

Despite these historical precedents, the 2008 campaign has reached all-time lows in the use of misleading and inaccurate political appeals. Even Karl Rove, the architect of negative ads in previous campaigns, has complained about the tenor of this year’s campaign.

And:

And:

This imbalance has caused some soul-searching and second-guessing in newsrooms as reporters realize they are being successfully manipulated by the McCain campaign. “Stop the madness,” said TIME’s own Mark Halperin in an appearance on CNN to discuss the controversy. “I think this is the press just absolutely playing into the McCain campaign’s crocodile tears.”

By the weekend, many news organizations had mounted a backlash of their own, running prominent pieces accusing the self-branded “straight-talking” McCain of deceiving voters. “The ‘Straight-Talk Express’ has detoured into doublespeak,” announced the Associated Press, while the New York Times blared, “McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions.”

And:

The backlash has not yet had an impact on voters’ perceptions of McCain’s credibility, though with the press emboldened, that could change.

And from CNN’s Report on this morning’s Palin-POW-wow in Ohio:

Palin’s claims aren’t exactly accurate: Obama would maintain the Bush tax cuts and offer tax breaks to individuals making under $250,000 a year. According to the non-partisan Center for Tax Policy, Obama’s tax plan would offer greater tax relief than McCain’s for low and middle-income earners, but McCain’s plan would lower the tax burden more across the board.

And this from TIME:

In the heat of a campaign, Schmidt understood that outrage could cut through the news clutter like a buzz saw. It didn’t matter much if the outrage was fueled by fact — better if it was fueled by emotion, which would tweak the fury of his base, leading to exciting exchanges on cable television and fresh chatter around the watercooler. Unlike health care or foreign policy, the emotional charge of outrage has a magnetic effect; voters are forced to take sides and respond, shifting the debate.

Now, four years later, Schmidt and the McCain campaign have returned to outrage, and there is little doubt that the tactic is again having the desired effect.

MSNBC Lets McCain off the Hook

Reporters forgo their journalistic responsibilities to have a POW-wow with Mike Murphy and John McCain: