Max Blumenthal

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Phil Gramm's recent disparaging of "a nation of whiners" complaining about a "mental recession" did more than offend the sensibilities of economically struggling Americans. His gaffe also served as a reminder that McCain had appointed one of the most reactionary, venal, and destructive political figures in recent times as his top econ man. By Sunday, the damage to the McCain campaign had grown so severe it announced that Gramm's role had been significantly reduced.

Gramm was an accident waiting to happen. Indeed, his gaffe represents little more than a scrap in the massive heap of wreckage he has left in his wake. Gramm's own presidential campaign in 1996 was among his most high-profile casualties. In order to win a whopping total of 8 delegates, the charisma-challenged Gramm had to spend $20 million, or about $2.5 million per delegate. This experience curiously translated into a job as one of McCain's key political advisors.

But first, Gramm returned to the Senate, where he was lobbied intensely by one of his major campaign contributors, Enron. Enron enjoyed easy access to Gramm's office; the senator's wife served on Enron's board of directors and Ken Lay was his 1992 campaign co-chair. Gramm rewarded his financial angels in 2000, slipping the "Commodity Futures Modernization Act" into a omnibus spending bill just as Congress headed off for summer vacation. His amendment instantly enabled the creation of a shadow banking system -- "weapons of financial destruction" in the words of Warren Buffet -- that directly contributed to the current mortgage foreclosure crisis. Millions of Americans have suffered as a result of Gramm's machinations.

While the destruction Gramm has caused is felt across the country, little is known about the seedy business schemes that preceded his political career. Before Gramm joined the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed to call for the defunding of the NEA, before he attacked an opponent for taking money from a gay rights group, and before he was interviewed by the white supremacist Southern Partisan magazine, Gramm was an avidly active investor in soft-core pornography movies.

Gramm's journey into porn began in 1973, when his brother-in-law, George Caton, rushed to tell him about an exciting low-budget soft-core production called "Truck Stop Women." A promo poster for the film boasted of its buxom stars: "No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle." Caton, who was in charge of fundraising for the production, asked Gramm to become an investor. To entice his brother-in-law, Caton showed him scenes of Playboy Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings displaying her bare essentials (she is naked throughout much of the film).

These scenes "really got Phil titillated," Caton told journalist John Judis in 1995. Gramm enthusiastically cut Caton a check for $15,000. Because the film was oversold, however, Caton returned his brother-in-law's money, offering him an investment opportunity in an upcoming feature.

The following year, Gramm sent Caton a check for $15,000, this time to finance the production of "Beauty Queens," a soft-core flick about pageant judges having sex with contestants. But at the last moment, the director of "Beauty Queens," Mark Lester, decided to shelve his production to make the sequel to his "Tricia's Wedding," a comedy starring the drag queen troupe, The Cockettes.

Gramm contributed at least $7500 towards the sequel, a satire of the Nixon White House called "White House Madness" that featured the crazed president wandering around the White House in the nude. Gramm never saw that money again. Shot in ten days on a soundstage crudely modeled after the Oval Office, "White House Madness" tanked at the box office.

Like the rest of Gramm's endeavors, his soft-core porn career was a complete disaster.

The sad thing is that I'm not even slightly shocked at these "revelations".

SOMETHING is wrong with these people, something very, very wrong. Are they all killer sociopaths, serial murderers who lucked into a job where they could do it on a mass scale?

I'm one of those Americans who HAS lost everything -- all but 12 boxes of things, mostly my kid's toys, that I was able to leave in my mother's garage, and I will never in my life feel safe again...its the most scathing, humiliating, scary experience in my whole life. That, of course, was in Ronnie Raygun's second presidency (thank you very much, you scum sucking Reagan Democrats, you destroyed a lot of people, a lot of families, and you've made a thieve's fortune from your "foreign" investments.)

Mr. Gramm, clearly, has never even known someone like me, much less gone through anything hurtful.

I don't know what you're problem with Gramm is. I mean, it's not like he thinks americans are simple folk who cling to god and guns or anything.

I watched a very interesting show about how the efforts of Richard Nixon and Kissinger actually created the current off shoring environment. We set up the Chinese to take over our manufacturing industries for short term political gain and a really bad strategy to contain the soviet union. China played us for suckers.

Obama's statement, that people have turned to God after feeling betrayed by their government and their employers or that there are people who want guns to protect themselves from that government is hardly the same as saying that we are whiners as we watch the values of our homes and investments diminish.

Remember that Phil and his wife had a big part in the failure of Enron and profited while it happened.

That's an interesting way of romanticizing Obama's views.

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said. “And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

I'm from Pa. I've known enough people from places like Monangahela. I've seen the poverty of whole towns that used to be pretty good places to live until the mill shutdown.

You don't think people are bitter, when the CEO of US Steel makes a fortune while selling the real estate that the mill used to sit on?

You don't think that religion may be the only place to turn for comfort when there are no jobs and no hope of jobs for your kids? These are people who would have told you that they planned to live in the same town where they were born and would die and be buried near their parents. These are not the kind of people you would imagine would be easily uprooted to move someplace else. They are committed to their communities.

You don't pay attention to the 2nd amendment types who think that they need their guns to protect themselves from the government. These are the folks who would support the military, but are pretty sure that the government would send the marines to their home towns.

Feel free to offer your own opinion of what Obama meant, but since I come from there, I figure I understood his words very well.

Wow, you're just all over this place. I suppose it's difficult with Obama to stick with one spin, considering how often he back tracks and "clarifies" his position.

If you feel the same way, then I understand your desire to vote for him. Liberals do tend to look down on Americans and our society, so it's no surprise.

By the way, Gramm is right about the whining. Obama, not so much about the bitter Americans who cling to god, guns and bigotry.

in the worst category column with a lot of others both Dem and Repub

I don't like a lot of Gramms voting record, he seems to take McCain's tack on free speech and global warming.

But calling Americans whiners over the economy considering we haven't had a single quarter of negative growth is warrented.

As Chucky Shumer proved, perception is everything when it comes to the market. On his word, Indymac was devistated.

the press in their coverage of the economy is no different.

Phil Gramm and his wife helped Enron screw consummers, made lots of money from Enron and his wife was even on the Audit committee as a director and so, failed to report the fraud.

Am I whining when I point out the number of banks that have failed, the number of factories that GM has closed, the fact that my investments have lost half of their value in the last two years?

all over the place?

Lame attempt at an answer. Feel free to point out any differences between my posts on the topic.

By the way, nothing in what Obama said or what I have written, in any way, looks down on Americans. Nice try.

middleview:

Am I whining when I point out the number of banks that have failed, the number of factories that GM has closed, the fact that my investments have lost half of their value in the last two years?

Yes.

And if you think Gramm is bad, take a look at the investigation made on Fannie Mae and the old Clinton gang. It makes Enron look responsible, and the effect is far more devistating.

But Democrats like the Clinton gang, so do you think we will have Gorelick up on charges anytime soon?

Jamie Gorelick's ties to Fannie Mae and What She's Doing Now--

In reading this article about Crony Capitalism at Fannie Mae (tip to Instapundit), I noticed that Jamie Gorelick was one of the Fannie executives who benefited from inflated bonuses based on Enron-style accounting. She was Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae from 1997 to 2003 (Fannie’s fraudulent accounting scheme was made public in 2004).

This is the same Jamie Gorelick who was Deputy Attorney General in the mid 1990s and was reported to have been the author of the Clinton Administration’s WALL against sharing intelligence data between foreign and domestic agencies. Without the policies instituted by Gorelick still in place in 2001, officials might have learned more about the 9/11 attacks before the planes hit the buildings.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Attorney General Ashcroft on the possible influence of Gorelick's wall:

"In the days before September 11, the wall specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the FBI arrested Moussaoui, agents became suspicious of his interest in commercial aircraft and sought approval for a criminal warrant to search his computer. The warrant was rejected because FBI officials feared breaching the wall.

"When the CIA finally told the FBI that al-Midhar and al-Hazmi were in the country in late August, agents in New York searched for the suspects. But because of the wall, FBI headquarters refused to allow criminal investigators who knew the most about the most recent al Qaeda attack to join the hunt for the suspected terrorists.

"At that time, a frustrated FBI investigator wrote headquarters, quote, 'Whatever has happened to this — someday someone will die — and wall or not — the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.' "

So what’s Jamie Gorelick doing now? Do we have to fear for the health of any other major US institutions on her account?

Wikipedia tells us:

She is currently a law partner in the Washington office of WilmerHale and a non-executive director of the oilfield services provider Schlumberger Ltd.

I'm relieved to see that at least she’s only a “non-executive” director at Schlumberger.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain....

Nice attempt to change the subject....so factories closing, unemployement up, investments tanking (take a look at the dow)....but anybody who points it out is whining.

Like I said, you're welcome to your opinion.

However, if I have to explain to you how using the second amendment in one post to personal experience in how simple minded and bigoted we Americans are in another post is a change of spin, then you're not being very objective.