And he's related to Charles Keating!
Posted By: nm on 2008-10-16
In Reply to: Joe the plumber not licensed, makes $40,000 a year, - not buying a business, owes back taxes, and...sm
nm
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Charles Ferguson is a hero!
I finally had time to sit down and watch the movie No End in Sight. Finally! The truth is coming out. I encourage everyone to watch it, and considering I read a recent poll that 40% of Americans think that Sadam was behind 911 and that is why we invaded Iraq, tell everyone you know to watch it too.
Like Whorn, I was riveted. It angers me. President Bush, his administration, and Congress should be held accountable for allowing this nightmare to happen and to continue. President Bush in particular is complicit in destroying Iraq and should be brought out to answer a few questions to say the least. This is all at his feet due to ineptness to lead and putting the wrong people in charge of things they had no business being in charge of and not listening to the advice of those who knew best simply because he didn't want to hear it. I am rather surprised that there are not more protests marching on Washington. I think there may be before he exits the White House.
The most important thing for me is it solidified my belief that we need to pull out of Iraq posthaste. I was on the fence about pulling our troops out. I am no longer on that fence.
I could go on and on, it's a passionate subject. It is predicted that this venture will cost 1.5 trillion dollars. That should shoot the conservatives right up the wazoo. How could anyone possibly justify that? Who the heck is going to pay for it? Think our taxes will go up? I'd bet on it. Oh, probably not, they'll budget cut to cover the blunder and leave more of our children poorly educated. Over 3000 Americans dead, well over a half a million dead Iraqi's, the government won't disclose how many Iraqi are currently being detained. I could scream.
You've got to watch it.
Charles Krauthammer is in a wheelchair...
suffers from a demylienating illness. That is why he stutters and has difficulty talking. This is really mean-spirited. I don't like his politics, but I am not going to make fun of someone who is ill.
A wonderful op-ed by Charles Krauthammer...
The Fierce Urgency of Pork
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.
The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.
He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.
At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
That's like saying because I LOVE Ray Charles' music, I must shoot up heroin, as he did???....
Do you guys really believe your own rhetoric in these postings, or is this just delusional, absurd thinking by otherwise intelligent people because Obama won, George is gone hallelujah, and McCain/Palin lost??? Don't get me wrong, I am sick of BOTH parties most of the time, like lying, spoiled children, I would love to see a truly Independent party take hold with a REAL candidate, but when you have to pick on Obama's musical tastes in order to make a point, that is showing DESPERATION.
Sarah Palin to be interviewed by Charles Gibson at the end of week
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Keating Five
History, it is said, is written by the victors. Or alternatively by John McCain, who has proclaimed that his role in the 1989 Keating Five corruption and racketeering scandal -- which led to the Lincoln Savings and Loan (S&L) bailout, part of the larger United States S&L crisis of the late 1980's and 1990's -- is his "asterisk." Excuse me? His asterisk? This writer begs to differ.
But apparently the American corporate media agrees, judging by its all but collective failure to report on McCain's primary role in the one incident in American history where the exact same catalyst, government deregulation, led to a comparable financial shipwreck, albeit not on the same gargantuan scale as the present, historic economic collapse.
This is not to say that the S&L crisis was not big. To the contrary, the immensity of the Lincoln Savings and Loan collapse, indeed of the entire S&L sector--and John McCain's role in it--is impossible to overstate. At this point, a bit of historical context is in order.
It all began when Charles Keating's American Continental Corporation purchased Lincoln in 1984. In the span of five years, with Keating as chairman -- and with the S&L industry newly deregulated -- Lincoln's assets ballooned from 1.1 billion to 5.5 billion. Much of this booty was the result of using customers' federally insured deposits to engage in high risk, highly speculative real estate and junk bond dealings.
By 1986, Lincoln had $135 million in undisclosed losses, and they had surpassed the newly imposed cautionary 10 percent "direct investment" limit of institutional assets by $600 million dollars. It doesn't take a financial wizard to recognize that this did not bode well for Lincoln's individual depositors -- or for the government's insurance fund, the Federal Depositor Insurance Corporation (FDIC). In 1989, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), growing increasingly alarmed by Lincoln's use of FDIC-insured funds for commercial real estate deals, initiated a probe into Lincoln's free-wheeling investment practices.
Once Keating got wind of the investigation, he decided to capitalize on his political investments, his estimated $1.3 million in campaign contributions to various U. S. Senators. And John McCain, the deregulator's deregulator, was the recipient of the most cash, $112,000 -- which may not seem like much by today's standards, but it was a bundle back in the 1980's.
And that doesn't include the other fringe benefits afforded to McCain, like private jet rides to Keating's opulent Bahamas estate, myriad fund raisers for McCain's House and Senate campaigns, or Cindy McCain's (and her father's) involvement with Keating in a "sweetheart" shopping mall deal in Arizona. As the Feds closed in, Keating decided to call in his markers.
Keating orchestrated at least two April 1987 meetings between several San Francisco FHLBB board members, including its chairman Edwin Gray, and five U. S. Senators -- The Keating Five -- including the good John McCain. In spite of this blatant obstruction of justice, the San Francisco regulators found Lincoln guilty of unsound lending practices and recommended its seizure. The Keating Five exerted pressure and the takeover was delayed for 2 years. Gray was replaced. Meanwhile, Lincoln's customers were steered into extremely risky, uninsured investments, junk bonds held by Keating's American Continental Corporation, which ultimately went belly-up in April 1989. Lincoln was finally seized by the FHLBB that same month.
Meanwhile, more than 21,000 mostly elderly depositors lost their life's savings in the sordid affair, to the tune of $285 million, prompting an approximate $2 billion federal government bail-out. Keating was found guilty of fraud and racketeering and served 50 months of a 12-year prison sentence. McCain was cleared of any wrongdoing and chided for "poor judgment" by the Senate Ethics Committee.
In the two decades since this disgraceful affair, McCain has maintained that he did not knowingly do anything wrong. All the money and graft did not influence his actions.
Not so, according to Keating who is quoted in the 2003 book, Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy. When asked if his political donations amounted to quid pro quo, Keating reportedly said "I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so."
No such candor from John McCain. To let the senator from Arizona tell it, he was only helping Keating because he was one of the largest employers in his state. Besides that, Keating's accountants vouched for Lincoln's financial viability. Even Alan Greenspan authored a favorable report commissioned by Keating, McCain routinely deflects. How could anyone blame him for not knowing that Keating was looting Lincoln? (This is kind of like the Bush Administration's circular defense of the massive "intelligence failure" with regard to Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.)
At any rate, that is McCain's story, and he has been sticking to it for almost two decades now. Not that he has had to talk much about it in recent years. He has been too busy straight-talking about ethics and campaign finance reforms, not unlike the burglar who repents and becomes an anti-theft crusader. And lo and behold, so far it has worked. In perhaps the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy, it would seem that McCain has succeeded in making The Keating Five mess his self-proclaimed asterisk. And who can blame him for trying to sanitize this most shameful chapter of his political career? But the so-called Fourth Estate's silence is another story altogether.
It is nothing less that mind-boggling that most of the media establishment, America's supposed "watchdog" is ignoring this crucial chapter of the McCain story. Really, when you think about it, it is obscene; and an objective history will judge them harshly. Particularly when one considers that this is the same media that acted as drum majors in the run-up to the Iraq War, and were enthusiastically embedded with the military in the delusional days of "shock and awe." Or were they in bed with the Bush Administration?
This is the very same media that obsessed over Bill Clinton's sexual peccadilloes and savaged AL Gore for inconsequential things like visiting a Buddhist temple or kissing his wife too passionately after his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Committee...and who barely made a sound when the Supreme Court basically overturned an American Presidential election. And it is the same media that was basically complicit in the swiftboating of the decorated Vietnam veteran, John Kerry.
The same press corps that has rendered the Democrats spineless and, for the last eight years, afraid to act as a true opposition party (and too fainthearted to raise the Keating Five in this election cycle) lest they too be savaged by the Republicans who, with a wink and a nod, constantly rail against the "liberal media" who have now apparently taken a vow of silence about John McCain's "asterisk."
In a clear-eyed, reasonable, straight-talking society, the Keating Five would be the lead of any John McCain biography, second only to the Hanoi Hilton. Some might even argue that the monumental racketeering scandal should take a back seat to nothing in the story of this man who would be president -- particularly at a time when this nation's economic infrastructure is literally crumbling. Count this writer in that number.
Two words... KEATING FIVE!! nm
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The Keating Scandal
Over the weekend, John McCain's top adviser announced their plan to stop engaging in a debate over the economy and "turn the page" to more direct, personal attacks on Barack Obama.
In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election. Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend.
But it's not just McCain's role in the current crisis that they're avoiding. The backward economic philosophy and culture of corruption that helped create the current crisis are looking more and more like the other major financial crisis of our time.
During the savings and loan crisis of the late ྌs and early ྖs, McCain's political favors and aggressive support for deregulation put him at the center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan, one of the largest in the country. More than 23,000 investors lost their savings. Overall, the savings and loan crisis required the federal government to bail out the savings of hundreds of thousands of families and ultimately cost American taxpayers $124 billion.
Sound familiar?
In that crisis, John McCain and his political patron, Charles Keating, played central roles that ultimately landed Keating in jail for fraud and McCain in front of the Senate Ethics Committee. The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts -- and see for themselves the pattern of poor judgment by John McCain.
The point of the film and the web site is that John McCain still hasn't learned his lesson.
And this time, McCain's bankrupt economic philosophy has put our economy at the brink of collapse and put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes.
Watch the video to see why John McCain's failed philosophy and poor judgment is a recipe for deepening the crisis:
http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
It's no wonder John McCain would rather spend the last month of this election smearing Barack's character instead of talking about the top priority issue for voters.
It's long (13 minutes) but information every voter should know.
Why don't you ever mention the other 4 in the Keating 5 were....
Democrats? Three of whom were much more than "rebuked." The Keating 5 was a small part of the article. The lead with the pic of the "indicted" guy has been refuted...and Obama also has an "indicted" friend..Rezko. But you did not bring that up either.
Google and look.....for instance the Keating 5....
one of those was also Senator John Glenn of Ohio, a Democrat. Did we see HIS name prominently in the letter? People love John Glenn and NO ONE ever mentions HE was one of the Keating 5. In fact, all the other 4 were Democrats. John Glenn and John McCain were the only 2 that the senate ethics committee said were NOT centrally involved and cleared of impropriety. Both ran for re-election the next year and both were re-elected. And John McCain has apologized for any involvement, said it was poor judgment, and mentioned that again at the Saddleback interview. At least he admits when he is wrong and takes responsibility. Yet another reason I like him.
THAT is what I mean about getting the WHOLE story.
Let's talk about McCain and the Keating Five or his
Let's talk about how he left his wife who waited for him while he was in prison for five years. Then he dumped her because she was disfigured in an accident. Now he has Cindy who makes life wonderful with $100 mil a year. He needs to be president to bring something to the table for HER because his war vet thing is nice but not really as prestigious as PRES and as PRES he could do a lot for rich people like wifey.
And in a related story...
...*Curious George* wants to know who's visiting porn sites. Hmmmmmm... thought spying was only supposed to be used to catch *terrorists*....
U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business WriterTue Mar 14, 8:16 AM ET
The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.
Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.
It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.
The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.
Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.
The Justice Department has downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.
The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google — and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.
Although the Justice Department says it doesn't want any personal information now, a victory over Google in the case would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.
The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally, Berman said. While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be.
Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines — Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.
Cooperating with the government is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.
Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.
The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department has indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.
Ultimately, the government plans to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.
The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around the filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.
Like JOHN MCCAIN - Keating 5 Scandal
I guess JM is a crook, too
http://www.mahalo.com/Keating_5_Scandal
Keating 5 cost taxpayers $125 billion.
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McCain has spoke ad nauseam about Keating 5
Get over it already!
The corrupt ACORN bunch are still at it and Obama is backing them every inch of the way. They are his push into office don't ya know?
Is someone in this thread related to Senator
 Is that his nick name for McCain supporters? Hey how about McCain sell a few of those houses and give it to the financial companies???? How about the rich do something for a change???? How about that????
This makes me sick, all of it! We need to be addressed by these candidates and not set aside until oil companies and rich folks figure out what happened!!!! We are looking at who is going to be our next President and all Bush cares about are his pockets being lined? Poor thing; did he invest in the wrong stock???
I must be really whacked, but I feel this candidacy is waaaaay more important than IGA, IGM, Wash Mut, Bank of America, Lehman, Looman, Dooman, or dooofus, whatever!!!!! These lenders loaned the money to people who they knew couldn't pay it back and now it has come back to bite them and now its the rest of us having to bail them out. No sympathy here! I stayed within my budget; so sorry others did not!!!!!!!! These candidates are going to run this country. I think Obama is right; let's get it on with the debates.... JMO...
I think not. both related to redistribution of wealth...nm
Oh, c'mon... the low crime was not only related to - s/msg
the HUGE police/secret service presence that was obviously there, but mainly to the mood. It's the first good news that everyday people in the US have had in a long, long time. It was just one day out of many, where people enjoyed the moment, the hope, the inauguration itself, the promise of the new administration, and a feel-good moment. We all know the glow won't last forever, but why not bask in it and enjoy a great moment in history. Even if you voted for the other candidate, you still have to admit that it was a truly great day for African Americans and ALL Americans to see democracy work right for a change, instead of being fixed and rigged. It was truly a magical day that many in this country, Repub or Dem, will remember for a lifetime.
You call Keating, Ayers, ACORN et all serious debate?
I don't. How about the economy, the wars, the exploding national debt, unemployment, homelessness. That's the issues I'd like to see discussed and your proposed solutions, not who can sling the most mud. Get it?
Our economy is related to world economics
which IS part of foreign policy. Geez, can't get your head around that?
You related to Michael Moore? You twist
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The Federal Reserve is not government related....
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She made it seem as though religion is inappropriate on this board as related to politics (sm)
and that she was sick of hearing about religion. I am sick of hearing about racism.
My mom died of obesity-related diabetes. I hope we tax food out of
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And perhaps in a related story: Enron Witness Found Dead In Park
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5173228.stm
Enron witness found dead in park A body found in north-east London has been identified as that of a banker who was questioned by the FBI about the Enron fraud case.
Police said they were treating the death in Chingford of Neil Coulbeck, who worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland until 2004, as unexplained.
He had been interviewed by the FBI as a potential witness.
Three ex-workers of RBS subsidiary NatWest are being extradited to the US on Thursday to face fraud charges.
The extradition has sparked a political row, with opposition parties and human rights groups claiming the treaty under which they are being sent to the US is one-sided as the Americans are yet to ratify it.
'Highly regarded'
Prime Minister Tony Blair has rejected calls to renegotiate the extradition terms.
Mr Coulbeck's body was found in a park near Newgate Street, Chingford, on Tuesday.
Mr Coulbeck's wife had reported him missing last Thursday. Police have yet to formally identify the body, which was removed from the parkland on Wednesday afternoon.
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One day when this is all over I'm going to be coming home to my wife and children and some poor guy is not
David Bermingham
Former NatWest banker
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Mr Coulbeck had worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland until 2004, most recently as head of group treasury, the bank confirmed.
Neil was highly regarded by his colleagues here in RBS and was a respected, capable and hard working member of our senior management team.
The fraud case centres on a NatWest transaction under which it sold off part of its Enron unit.
RBS said: There is no evidence that Mr Coulbeck was involved in the approval of the transaction under investigation.
RBS has co-operated fully with all the appropriate authorities and made them fully aware of all the relevant facts in our possession.
The FBI said it would not comment while the case was ongoing.
'Appalling'
One of the so-called NatWest three, David Bermingham, said he had been knocked sideways by the news of Mr Coulbeck's death.
It is awful, appalling. One day when this is all over I'm going to be coming home to my wife and children and some poor guy is not and my heart goes out to his wife and family, he said.
He described Mr Coulbeck as a superstar, a thoroughly decent, honest professional guy and a very experienced banker.
Mr Coulbeck was among NatWest staff who made witness statements about the extradition, Mr Bermingham, of Goring, Berkshire, said.
Neil's statement was no more than a page and a half saying who he was and his role, he said.
Fellow accused Giles Darby, speaking from his home in Lower Wraxall, Somerset, said he was absolutely shocked by the death.
It's an utter tragedy. I'm struggling to take it in, really.
Of course, my thoughts are now with Neil's family and friends.
In 2002, US prosecutors issued arrest warrants for the three men, accusing them of conspiring to defraud their employers and investors in energy giant Enron, which had collapsed a year earlier.
It is alleged that the three British bankers - Mr Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Mr Darby - advised their employer Greenwich NatWest to sell off its stake in an Enron unit at well below its market value.
MPs' protest
They then left the bank and purchased a $250,000 (£135,000) stake in the unit - which they sold on at a much higher price, making a profit of $7.3m (£3.9m).
They deny any wrongdoing.
Their extradition was debated by MPs in an emergency session of Commons on Wednesday.
After a three-hour debate they voted by a majority of 242 to adjourn the Commons early in symbolic protest at the government's extradition arrangements.
On Tuesday, peers had voted in favour of suspending extradition agreements with the US until the UK-US treated had been ratified there.
We are free to express whatever faith-related things we want over there, thanks for your input thoug
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The whole country would crash and burn. Do you know how many jobs in Michigan alone are auto related
Michigan might as well hang a sign on the door saying last one out, turn out the lights. But then if Obama has his way, we won't have any electricity either because the coal companies will be bankrupted too. Domino effect in my opinion.
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