Good Article Re Why McCain Is Bad For The Economy - Mortgage Crisis and Phil Gramm

[Median Democrat]

Some folks have posted about how they have talked to friends and family and have been confronted by people repeating the Fox News talking points about too much regulation. Well, here is helpful article from Mother Jones tracing McCain economic guru's involvement in the deregulation of mortgage industry, which helped lead to the current mortgage crisis. Likewise, he spearheaded deregulation, which lead to the Enron fraud that precipitated the California electricity crisis.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html

/snip

As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

* * *

Gramm's record as a reckless deregulator has not affected his rating as a Republican economic expert. Sen. John McCain has relied on him for policy advice, especially, according to the campaign, on housing matters. The two have been buddies ever since they served together in the House in the 1980s; in 1996, McCain chaired Gramm's flop of a presidential campaign. (Gramm spent $21 million and earned only 10 delegates during the gop primaries.) In 2005, McCain told a Wall Street Journal columnist that Gramm was his economic guru. Two years later, Gramm wrote a piece for the Journal extolling McCain as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln, and he's hailed McCain's love of tax cuts and free trade. Media accounts have identified Gramm as a contender for the top slot at the Treasury Department if McCain reaches the White House. "If McCain gets in," frets Lynn Turner, a former chief sec accountant, "we'll have more of the same deregulatory mess. I like John McCain, but given what I know about Phil Gramm, I wouldn't vote for McCain."

/snip

[Franc_Lee]

1. personally I feel McCain will be worse then Bush he knows what Bush has gotten away with so

the rest is supporting Big business etc...

[oasis]

2. Kick, re-kick and re-kick again with recommendations to boot.

:kick: :kick: :kick:

[depakid]

3. None of this is going to matter if no one knows about it

That's what ad buys should have been for.

[Median Democrat]

4. An Ad Will Be Simplistic, Of Course, DUers Should Know More Detail

I am leary of relying on ad buys. We have to buy the ads. but I think it is a mistake to assume that they are the key, and ignore the ground game. Big Media is biased. They will replay McCain's ads over and over for free, not Obama's, because it is in their economic interest to do so.

The key thing for DUers is to understand the difference between the candidates themselves, so that they can convince people to vote on a 1 to 1 basis, which is more effective than an ad to the extent that you have a good ground game.

So, yes, run ads, but don't assume that some magical media strategy conducted through Big Media is going to win the election. The Big Media playing field is tilted towards the GOP, so Democrats will need to compensate and make up the difference with the ground game and alternative media.

[oasis]

5. kick