Thursday, October 2, 2008

One reason why I despise Moveon.org

From Factcheck.org:

The MoveOn.org Political Action ad blames a banking deregulation bill sponsored by former Sen. Phil Gramm, a friend and one-time adviser to McCain's campaign. It claims the bill "stripped safeguards that would have protected us."

That claim is bunk. When we contacted MoveOn.org spokesman Trevor Fitzgibbons to ask just what "safeguards" the ad was talking about, he came up with not one single example. The only support offered for the ad's claim is one line in one newspaper article that reported the bill "is now being blamed" for the crisis, without saying who is doing the blaming or on what grounds.


They are a despicable group that only cares about one thing - making sure the Democratic candidate wins. The truth doesn't matter to them at all. It's pathetic. They offer free Obama stuff, but I won't take it because I refuse to display or wear anything with their logo on it. We recently got a car magnet that we did not realize had their logo on it. I think the only way I can stomach having it on my car is if I cross out their name.

2 comments:

Dweeze said...

I'm not sure why either MoveOn or Factcheck couldn't name the piece of legislation. Hell, I can name it - it's the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CMFA) of 2000, of which Gramm was the primary sponsor. The CMFA removed all regulations from credit default swaps. Credit default swaps are generally regarded by economists as the main reason for the financial crisis.

I'm also curious as to why Factcheck referred to Gramm as a one-time adviser - he briefly stepped down after referring to the crisis as being all in people's heads, but he's back with the campaign now. He's also assumed to be the person McCain will name as Secretary of the Treasury if McCain wins.

Matt said...

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

I didn't copy and paste the whole thing. Factcheck says the bill in question is Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which passed in 1999. They don't mention the bill you cite at all. I will email that info to them and see what they say.