Democracy Now! - Brad Friedman & Harvey Wasserman (1 of 3)

Brad Friedman of The BRAD BLOG and Harvey Wasserman of Columbus Free Press discuss concerns about Election Day 2008, touch-screen vote-flipping, voter roll purging and the woeful effort by the DNC and Obama Campaign to take steps to correct these enormous problems.
More info here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6590
Text transcript here: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/29/lawsuits_machine_malfunctions_and_miss...

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Democracy
• Now
• Brad
• Friedman
• Blog
• Harvey
• Wasserman
• Vote-Flipping
• Vote
• Purging
• Election
• 2008

[drstench]

The fix is in, Drudge has a huge article about how the exit polls can't be trusted and we should all just trust the actual poll results. This coupled with the most recent Kristol article and the McCain campaign saying they have poll data with them in the lead in battleground states such as PA, OH, and FL, It doesn't get much more straight forward than that. THE FIX IS IN!!!

[Carolab]

Google: "McCain Debated While Gramm Negotiated Deregulation". "McCain's bill" was not authored by McCain. He co-sponsored it after 16 months by giving a speech. By then the bill was essentially dead & Santorum later let it die in committee. The bill died because it lacked support, primarily because it called for "independent (i.e., private banking) regulation" of Fannie & Freddie instead of tighter government oversight. Barney Frank eventually got stronger oversight in 2007 but it was too late.

[Carolab]

It is widely acknowledged that Phil Gramm's legislation was the starting point, in that it wiped out the Glass-Steagall act which was put into place by FDR in order to PREVENT what happened. A similar situation caused the Depression of the '30s--no separation between banking & investment--so Glass-Steagall was designed to re-regulate. When you mix deposits with investments & trade on the same capital to leverage risky securities bundles over & over, you destroy the asset:loan ratio.

[Carolab]

The above is from the 60 Minutes report by Steve Kroft called The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street. The problem with Kroft's report is that they didn't talk about the CFMA & Financial Services Modernization Act. Google these and see how THEY caused the mess!

[Carolab]

Everybody on M$M is talking about the complexities of these financial derivatives & greed on Wall Street but NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THE FINANCIAL SERVICES MODERNIZATION ACT & THE CFMA BOTH SPONSORED BY GRAMM. THESE LAWS DEREGULATED TRADING IN ENERGY FUTURES LEADING TO THE ENRON DEBACLE, COSTING CALIFORNIANS BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND NOW THE CREDIT CATASTROPHE WHICH IS THREATENING TO THROW US INTO A DEPRESSION.

[Carolab]

"Yeah," Dinallo says. "The irony is, though, you're not really buying insurance at that point. You're just placing the bet. Dinallo says CDSs were totally unregulated & that the big banks and investment houses that sold them didn't have to set aside any money to cover their potential losses and pay off their bets.

[Carolab]

"Credit default swaps" were essentially private insurance contracts that paid off if the investment went bad, but you didn't have to actually own the investment to collect on the insurance. "If I thought certain mortgage securities were gonna fail, I could go out and buy insurance on them without actually owning them?" Kroft asks Eric Dinallo, the insurance superintendent for the state of New York on 60 Minutes.

[Carolab]

THE GOP'S BLAME-ACORN GAME

It's in The Nation on line. Google the title and "The Nation".

Go to BradBlog(dot)com and read THE ACORN MYTH

I'd give you links but YouTube won't allow it.

[owchywawa]

"by fighting the legislation that McCain's advisor Phil Gramm wrote that deregulated the mortgage industry and pushed subprimes and created the whole housing mess."

The fact check said that bill did not help to cause this mess. In fact it probably helped the economy. McCain actually tried to get a bill through that would have regulated them, and ACORN fought against regulation.

[owchywawa]

"THERE IS NO ACORN FRAUD. The media & the GOP are LYING."

Evidence?

"ACORN is an extremely effective organization that doesn't just register voters! It helps low- to moderate-income people with many services."

Yeah, by pushing banks to give out sub-prime loans.

"ACORN fought the government against deregulation because they didn't want people victimized by predatory lending."

Sources? From what I saw, they fought against regulation as the republicans fought for it.