On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:23:06 -0700, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:
snip
Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a
Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly
maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown."
Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are
plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil
Gramm.
snip
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Phil Gramm makes a good poster boy, but he was only 1 of 100
senators, and bills require at least 51 votes to pass.

A more basic cause is a legislative body that permits 12,000 page
bills to be considered, and consists of senators and
representatives that vote for these bills which they [or their
staff] could not possibly have review, as in many cases these
were available in final form only hours before the vote.

The standard argument is that this is "must pass" legislation. I
would suggest that it became "must pass" only because of the
failure to conduct business on a reasonable basis, i.e.
considering the most important issues *FIRST*, and such delay may
well have been a deliberate ploy by the "leadership" to ram their
entire package through.

In any event, even though failure to enact the budget bill would
have shut down the Federal government, the cost of such a
shut-down would be *MUCH* less that the damage inflicted on the
US national economy.

Until we elect enough legislators that will vote *NO* and keep
voting *NO* on these massive bills with no opportunity for review
and evaluation, that no one understands, we will have these
problems.

What did we get? Investigations into the use of "performance
enhancing drugs" by professional athletes. How about an
investigation into "performance enhancing accounting" by the
professional scam artists?


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).