Robert Scheer from Creators Syndicate

How About 'Tough Love' for Bankers? for 07/16/2008

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Sen. John McCain's campaign co-chair Phil Gramm is right: We have "become a nation of whiners." But who is whining more than the bankers that former Sen. Gramm's financial deregulation legislation benefited? The very bankers, like those at UBS Investment Bank, where Gramm found lucrative employment, who now expect a government bailout.

As chair of the powerful Senate Banking Co ...

Updated: Wed Jul 16, 2008

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A Campaign Driven by Fear for 07/24/2008

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.

Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush's "war on ter ...

Updated: Thu Jul 24, 2008

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Banking Expertise We Don't Need for 07/30/2008

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the "expertise&q ...

Updated: Wed Jul 30, 2008

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Weapons Too Dangerous for Others for 08/06/2008

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The terrorists find all sorts of reasons to hate us. On Tuesday came word that the deadliest biological assault on the United States may be linked to the rejection of the terror suspect by a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sister decades ago. That is offered as an explanation of why the accused U.S. Army bio-warfare scientist made a seven-hour roundtrip from his home to mail anthrax-laced letters fr ...

Updated: Wed Aug 06, 2008

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Georgia War Is a Neocon Election Ploy for 08/13/2008

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government, ending ...

Updated: Wed Aug 13, 2008

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This Old Soldier Never Learns for 08/20/2008

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the imminent government nationalization of much of the U.S. mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny ...

Updated: Wed Aug 20, 2008

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McCain Can Win Only as a War President for 08/27/2008

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Just great! Nuclear-armed Pakistan is falling apart, Iran's nuclear program is unchecked, and congressional legislation on cooperation with the Russians on controlling nuclear proliferation is now dead in the water. Horrid news except for Sen. John McCain, who thrills to a repeat of the danger lines of the Cold War, and now stands a good chance of being our next president.

A very good ch ...

Updated: Wed Aug 27, 2008

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Palin's State Reaps the Windfall Profits McCain Decries for 09/03/2008

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Welcome to the People's Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the state's Republican governor.

That's $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palin's. Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who h ...

Updated: Wed Sep 03, 2008

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She's Clueless; He's Worse for 09/10/2008

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation's mortgage market. But what is Sen. John McCain's excuse? Both act as if the financial meltdown of the U.S. economy has nothing to do with the policies of the political party they represent — but she at least may not know any better.

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Updated: Wed Sep 10, 2008

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McCain's Sudden Conversion to Economic Populism for 09/17/2008

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Gag me with a spoon, as Valley girls used to say. Did you see that McCain-Palin ad promising "tougher rules on Wall Street to protect your life savings; no special interest giveaways?" Just how dumb do they think we are?

Seriously, 20 minutes of Google searches should be sufficient to convince all but the dimwits among us that McCain has been a master of the special interest gi ...

Updated: Wed Sep 17, 2008

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A Fox to Protect the Henhouse? for 09/24/2008

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Does it really matter which party is in charge when it comes to bailing out the Wall Street hustlers whose shenanigans have bankrupted so many ordinary folks? Not if the Democrats roll over and cede power to the former head of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank at the center of our economic meltdown.

What arrogance for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — who the year before Presiden ...

Updated: Wed Sep 24, 2008

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Pundits Side With Wall Street Over Main Street for 10/01/2008

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

How dare you throw that tea in Boston Harbor! Such is the anti-democratic arrogance of the fearmongering pundits and politicians who tell us if we taxpayers don't instantly give the Wall Street banking bandits a $700 billion bailout, then we are destroying America. Instead of applauding representatives from both parties who, for once, heeded the public rather than the fat cats, the established ...

Updated: Wed Oct 01, 2008

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A Plague Upon the White House for 10/08/2008

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I am not a conventionally religious man, or even a very superstitious one, but I do wish George Bush would stop asking God to bless America.

Every time he does, we seem to be visited with another plague, suggesting divine wrath over our president's evil ways. How else to explain the persistent calamity that has marked this administration: a pointless but very costly war over nonexistent ...

Updated: Wed Oct 08, 2008

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The Hoover-Palin Ticket for 10/15/2008

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

And the winner is … Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Remember him — the great Democratic president who saved capitalism from the capitalists by reining in their exorbitant greed? Forget the Reagan Revolution heralding a new era of small government, which turned out to be nothing more than a fig leaf for legalized corporate crime. The hero of the hour is FDR, as the essential wisdom of his New D ...

Updated: Wed Oct 15, 2008

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The Battle for Obama's Economic Soul for 10/22/2008

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The battle for Barack Obama's economic soul is on in earnest, and it has nothing to do with the "European socialism" that John McCain attempted to use as an epithet against him. The Republican quickly dropped that line of attack, perhaps because the European Union's brand of democratic socialism has proved more effective in regulating the rapacious financial markets at the heart of th ...

Updated: Wed Oct 22, 2008

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White Male Voters for McCain -- Why? for 10/29/2008

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Let me now defend white males. We can't possibly be as dumb as the polls showing we are McCain's most reliable voting base would indicate. Do we white men believe for an instant that a vote for John McCain would not represent more of President Bush's failed economic policies at home and costly military adventures abroad — and if so, why are a majority of us expected to vote against the po ...

Updated: Wed Oct 29, 2008

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Obama Harkens New Day in America for 11/05/2008

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

It's time to gush! Later for the analysis of all the hard choices faced by our next president, Barack Obama, but for now, let's just thrill, unabashedly, to the sound of those words. Heck, both he and we deserve a honeymoon, at least for a few paragraphs of this column.

It is "Morning Again in America," to reclaim and revise the slogan from the 1984 campaign of President Ronald ...

Updated: Wed Nov 05, 2008

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Cold War Hawks Nesting With Obama for 11/12/2008

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

So, Vladimir Putin was right: It was Georgia that started the war with Russia, and once again it was President Bush who got caught in a lie. As The New York Times reported last week, "Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensiv ...

Updated: Wed Nov 12, 2008

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Change We Can Bank on for 11/19/2008

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

This is not change we can believe in. Not if Robert Rubin or his protege, Lawrence Summers, get to call the shots on the economy in President-elect Barack Obama's incoming administration. Both Clinton-era treasury secretaries deserve a great deal of the blame for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that has derailed the world economy. They both should, along with former Federal R ...

Updated: Wed Nov 19, 2008

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Obama Picks Foxes to Guard Henhouse for 11/26/2008

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Maybe Ralph Nader was right in predicting that the same Wall Street hustlers would have a lock on our government no matter which major party won the election. I hate to admit it, since it wasn't that long ago that I heatedly challenged Nader in a debate on this very point.

But how else is one to respond to Barack Obama's picking the very folks who helped get us into this financial mess t ...

Updated: Wed Nov 26, 2008

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