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Blogfest 2005 - Sep 12, 2008 - Printable Version
- John McSame’s Campaign to Nowhere
by Mark Faulk
Last week’s convention was the most remarkable and yet bizarre disconnect from reality yet for Republicans trying vainly to grasp at anything that will help them maintain faith in a party that has sold them, and the rest of America, down the river. After cheering every word from their newest star, Alaska Governor Sarah “Bridge to Nowhere” Palin, the party then bought into John McCain’s brand new message of change. Never mind that half of Palin’s speech was immediately discredited as half-truths and outright lies, or that McCain’s theme for the day was stolen directly from his opponent, the Republicans did what they always do when things look grim, they retreated into a land of fantasy and rhetoric. First came Palin, who retold her by-now near legendary fairytale of how she turned down money from Washington to build a bridge linking an island of 50 residents to the mainland of Alaska. Who cared that she had actually campaigned on promises of helping to secure financing the ill-fated bridge project, or that she actually did take taxpayers’ money and just diverted it to other state highway projects, or that she accepted even more federal money to build a road to nowhere that was supposed to link to the bridge, but instead will stop abruptly on a deserted beach. Forget the fact that while McSame was touting her credentials as a maverick who fought against wasteful spending, she actually requested more federal money per capita than any state in the Union. Palin said what Republicans wanted to hear, and that’s what really counted.
Even the media was caught up in the euphoria, and the phrase “A star is born” echoed on nearly every network and in every newspaper across America. Her speech was hailed as nothing short of brilliant, a refreshing call to change from a political outsider. It left the country feeling fluttery and patriotic, and it should have. Her speech was written by Matthew Scully, who was Bush’s speechwriter during his first term. Change, indeed.
But enough about Palin. In reality, she is nothing more than a sideshow designed to divert attention from the maverick himself, John McCain. While Democrats repeat the party line that McCain has voted with President Bush 95% of the time, they (and the media) have largely ignored the more chilling facts that make McCain nothing more than a clone of Bush. After nearly eight years of Bush’s cronies in the White House leading our country to its lowest point since the Great Depression, they have infiltrated McCain’s camp as well.
Let’s start with McCain’s foreign policy adviser. He has aligned himself with the same people who helped orchestrate the war in Iraq. Randy Scheunemann, who is McCain's top foreign policy advisor, was a president himself...of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), whose job it was to help sell the war to the American public and Congress using misinformation. The CLI was created by Project for a New American Century (PNAC), who was lobbying Washington to bomb Iraq even before Bush was president, years before 9/11 gave them a ready-made (although invalid) excuse to push their agenda on Bush and America. Scheunemann was a board member of PNAC, and Trent Lott's top foreign policy adviser as well.
So who were Scheunemann’s associates at PNAC? Vice President Dick Cheney was a founding member, along with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was the ideological father of the group. And former Ronald Reagan Pentagon official Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, is now an executive for weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Throw in Deputy Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman, State Secretary for Arms Control Richard Armitage, Bush Adviser and PNAC founder William Kristol, and Zalmay Khalilzad special ambassador to the Iraqi War, and it becomes clear that McCain’s foreign policy is Bush’s foreign policy.
And that doesn't even get into the fact that Scheunemann's lobbying firm has received over a million dollars to act as lobbyists on behalf of Georgia, whom McCain has now made a personal agenda of supporting. It’s obvious that McCain isn't getting unbiased advice on the situation from Scheunemann.
Because John McCain is a self-professed hands-off economic leader, he has placed his faith in his trusted advisers. The trouble is, his economic advisers are the ultimate Washington insiders. Former McCain adviser Phil Gramm was the driving force behind the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act, which eliminated regulations enacted after the Great Depression and opened the doors for banks to issue subprime loans. The legislation is largely responsible for the current mortgage crisis that could ultimately cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars and trigger millions of home foreclosures. Gramm was also instrumental in deregulating the savings-and-loan industry during the 80’s, which eventually bankrupted the entire S&L industry. Every major change that Gramm initiated was a financial disaster.
After Gramm resigned from the campaign in July over his “nation of whiners” comment, he was replaced by economists John B. Taylor and Martin Feldstein. According to Taylor’s bio on the Hoover Institution website, where he is a Senior Fellow:
"He served as senior economist on President Ford's Council of Economic Advisers in 1976, as a member of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 through 1991, as economic adviser to the Bob Dole presidential campaign in 1996, and as economic adviser to the George W. Bush presidential campaign in 2000. He was also a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 2001. For four years from 2001 to 2005, Taylor served as Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs where he was responsible for U.S. policies in international finance, which includes currency markets, trade in financial services, foreign investment, international debt and development, and oversight of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank."
Taylor was also a member of the board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which has helped funnel hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to Boeing, General Electric, ENRON, Shell, Exxon, BP, Microsoft…to finance the outsourcing of American jobs to other nations.
Marty Feldstein was a leading candidate to replace outgoing Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan in 2005, but is believed to have been passed over because he was a board member of AIG, which restated five years of financial reports by $2.7 billion the same year. AIG paid a $126 million fine to the SEC and a $1.6 billion settlement to the state of New York for soliciting rigged bids for insurance contracts from insurers. (Author's note: On Monday, September 15, AIG's stock dropped another 60% amid serious financial troubles, from a high of over $70 a share to a close today of $4.73) Former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers R. Glenn Hubbard and President Bush's top economic official Lawrence B. Lindsey, both worked as assistants for Feldstein at Harvard.
Feldstein is also a member of the Group of Thirty, self described as an “international body of leading financiers and academics which aims to deepen understanding of economic and financial issues and to examine consequences of decisions made in the public and private sectors related to these issues.” Among the organization’s members are former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, AIG Vice Chairman Jacob A. Frenkel, JP Morgan Chase President Andrew Crockett, Morgan Stanley Senior Advisor David Walker, Goldman Sachs Managing Director E. Gerald Corrigan, Citigroup Senior Vice Chairman William R. Rhodes, Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development Chairman Abdulatif Al-Hamad, and a host of top ranking officials from the Bank of Israel, the Bank of England, Banco de Mexico, People’s Bank of China, Bank of Japan, the Bank of India, and the European Central Bank.
Like Scully, Scheunemann, and Gramm, Taylor and Feldstein are ultimate insiders in Washington. They represent the same old guard politics that McCain publicly condemns. If voters don’t wake up from the trance they have been lulled into by both McCain and Palin, they will find themselves making excuses for yet another disastrous Republican regime. It should be clear that John McCain is really just John McSame, and that he will continue down the treacherous road to nowhere that has lead our country to the brink of ruin. Only this time, there will no turning back.
And that’s the Faulking Truth.
(Mark Faulk’s awesomely wonderful first book, entitled The Naked Truth: Investing in the Stock Play of a Lifetime, is now available at www.thenakedtruthbook.com. Tune in with Mark and Paul Faulk every Saturday from 1-2 PM CST on The Faulking Truth X2 Show at www.toginet.com)
Contact Mark Faulk at faulkingtruth@gmail.com
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