"Senator John McCain, who drew criticism last month after he warned against broad government intervention to solve the deepening mortgage crisis, pivoted Thursday and called for the federal government to aid some homeowners in danger of losing their homes, by helping them to refinance and get federally guaranteed 30-year mortgages.
“There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes,” Mr. McCain said in a speech on economic themes that he gave at a window company in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.
Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, had been painted as uncaring by Democrats, and drew murmurs of concern from some Republicans, after a speech in California last month in which he cautioned that “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers,” and noted that the crisis had been brought on by both lenders and borrowers."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/us/politics/11mccain.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1...
►1. McCain's campaign donors:
JOHN MCCAIN (R) Top Contributors
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00006424&cycle=2008
Blank Rome LLP $221,250
Merrill Lynch $209,050
Citigroup Inc $187,884
Greenberg Traurig LLP $161,937
Goldman Sachs $115,600
AT&T Inc $111,600
JPMorgan Chase & Co $101,650
Credit Suisse Group $96,700
Univision Communications $86,600
Lehman Brothers $85,250
IDT Corp $84,850
Bank of New York Mellon $82,350
Morgan Stanley $80,651
Wachovia Corp $76,750
MGM Mirage $71,500
Bridgewater Assoc $69,900
Blackstone Group $69,250
Bear Stearns $66,800
Irvine Co Apartment Community $66,100
Hess Corp $65,700
How many investment and retail banks are in that list? Oh, yeah: A LOT.
►2. McCain hasn't been too dutiful to the American people when it came to standing tall against corporate crime, a la the "Keating Five":
Keating Five
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
So, pardon me for seeing that McCain really only serves the masters of capital, and NOT YOU.
if you hadn't posted that I would have slept tonight :-)
I think it's a very sad state of affairs that these 3 are the only contenders for the leadership position for the most powerful country in the world.
But we all need to ask ourselves, why is this? How did this come to pass?
It came to pass b/c we don't have the stomach to support a candidate without the money to buy the tv spots and send out the mailers and the autocallers.
A person from the people, be it a man - be it a woman - who cares what color the skin - but a person FROM the people could never afford to be President. I think all of us can agree on that.
What makes us different in our time? We aren't willing to do the work to make a difference. We are lazy.
Greed maybe.
Deregulation and the resulting rush for more profits at any and all costs.
The failure of some to stay within their means and the failure of those lending to try and make huge profits all on a system, that has been shown to be shaky at best.
And now the global economy is being shaken and someone has to act.
Unless of course, we believe that leaders are going to sit idly by and let a global economy tank.
NC said: «Unless of course, we believe that leaders are going to sit idly by and let a global economy tank.»
The global COMMON economy, yes. They are going to let that tank. But the global ELITE economy will continue onward. The rich will end up with enough of the large blocks of working capital, and they're going to buy up everything in sight for literal cents on dollars. Liberty and law will VANISH, and a new world order of Plutocracy will rise.
However, I predict that single-digit-percentage acquisitions won't be good enough for this elite. Now, they will want as much as possible for FREE. Large tracts of land will just be transferred to the rich, purely on PROMISES.
There are other candidates but they do not make the news or have as much standing, as the Republicans or Democrats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#O...
We need public financing of campaigns and instant runoff voting
It's a possible start;
"Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) has introduced the Fair Elections Now Act, legislation that would implement a system of public financing for candidates running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Co-Sponsors include Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tom Carper (D-DE), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and Barack Obama (D-IL)."
http://www.publicampaign.org/fair-elections-now-summary
The Keating five are: Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), Donald W. Riegle (D-MI). Seems to me that there are four Ds and one single R listed here. All of these men finished their terms and Glenn and McCain were re-elected. The others didn't run for re-election.
In the interests of fairness, how about listing Hitlery's top contributors?
HILLARY CLINTON (D)
Top Contributors
DLA Piper $495,550
Goldman Sachs $440,300
Citigroup Inc $388,052
Morgan Stanley $385,420
EMILY's List $323,242
Lehman Brothers $264,610
JPMorgan Chase & Co $258,120
National Amusements Inc $227,800
University of California $223,667
Skadden, Arps et al $218,485
Greenberg Traurig LLP $191,100
Kirkland & Ellis $186,551
PricewaterhouseCoopers $185,000
Time Warner $182,150
Microsoft Corp $175,419
Merrill Lynch $172,900
Ernst & Young $157,575
Latham & Watkins $155,088
Bear Stearns $152,090
Cablevision Systems $148,263
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00000019&cycle=2008
I don't see a meaningful difference between the three candidates.
Maddie said: «I don't see a meaningful difference between the three candidates.»
I agree. There just isn't one. They are all the same when it comes to the only two things that matter for the executive:
Foreign relations.
Domestic economy.
In all three cases (McCain, Clinton, Obama), the candidates want to continue American hegemony throughout the world, and want to continue the process of destroying the middle class in the West.
People can look up Obama's contributors on that site, too. That's left as an exercise for the reader.
While I'm not a fan of McCain (or any of them), I had more respect for him before he backpeddled about bailing out home foreclosures. It is NOT the job of govt. to guarantee the American Dream of owning a home, no more than it is to guarantee investments, be they good or bad, succeeding or failing. America is the country where a person can succeed - and they can also fail, if they make bad decisions. And they should be allowed to fail, harsh as that may sound. Whether it's the Wall Street types or people who just bought up properties to flip that failed, or people who got in over their heads on a bad mortgage - they should be allowed to fall flat on their faces, even if they 'lose it all'. That is how you learn. I"m sure the lending companies were egging them on to a more expensive home in some of these cases then they could afford, some (or many) with adjustable rates & little or zero down payments - and it came back to haunt them. When we built our home 19 years ago, the mortgage co. kept telling us we could afford 'more house', but we had a limit of what we were prepared to spend (and 10 percent down payment) - and nixed the extra 'goodies' the builder kept trying to push on us. Nixed that they said we could afford to buy a more expensive & bigger house, because the assumption was that we'd be doing 'even better in a few years'. We didn't cave to temptation, and it pisses me off that the govt. feels it needs to bail out those who did. And, at what cost? More debt for this country that we will never get out of again. I also don't think the govt. owns the right to 're-work' people's mortgages so they can better handle them.
I do feel bad for the people who'd lose their homes - not so much the investors & Wall Street types. But tough cookies. They need to let these people fail & fall hard on their faces, let it crash & burn - it will recover on it's own. If the govt. bails these foreclosures out, then it sends a message to people that they can be reckless & overspend & the govt. will save them. WHO pays for their salvation?