Phil Gramm Resigns From McCain Campaign

Phil Gramm, economic adviser to John McCain, lobbyist for UBS, and porn financier, is resigning from the McCain campaign. Gramm claims he is leaving because of the firestorm over his comments last week that America is not in a recession, "Americans are just a bunch of whiners." He's also likely leaving before the last few honest reporters connect McCain to Gramm and the UBS scandal, where Gramm's company helped hide $20 billion in offshore accounts so wealthy Americans could avoid paying taxes.

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McCain and Gramm Have History of Tax Evasion

If you've been following the UBS tax fraud story, you're aware that A) UBS is a huge Swiss bank accused of helping rich Americans hide up to $20 billion in off shore accounts to avoid paying taxes, and B) that sleazy Phil Gramm, former U.S. Senator and current economic adviser to John McCain, is a vice chairman for UBS (when he's not investing in porn films).

Yesterday a U.S. Senate subcommittee took their first peak behind the curtains at UBS and did nothing. They did reveal that UBS helped approximately 19,000 of the richest American citizens hide money and jewels in off shore accounts through a series of illegal actions to avoid paying taxes.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin revealed some of the lengths UBS went to, including...

• using code names for clients


• using fake charities to transfer funds


• using shell companies to hide money

Levin said that UBS's U.S. banking license should be revoked, but it's what he said at the end that shows the entire investigation is just a charade..."I don't think that any bank that goes to the extent that UBS has gone through to avoid doing what their agreements with the United States require them to do, should be allowed to continue to do business," Levin said, "unless they clean up their act."

So if UBS promises to stop committing felonies and helping the rich avoid paying taxes, they can keep on keepin' on? Let's point something else out right now, this tax fraud isn't a U.S. isolated incident for UBS - they have been apparently doing the same thing for rich German citizens. UBS has only been caught in the U.S. and Germany, how many other countries are they helping the world's rich elite avoid paying their share of taxes?

It's amazing that when an average working American doesn't pay their taxes, they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law, yet here is a company that helped the elite rich hide $20 billion, even had their own bankers smuggling customer's diamonds into the U.S. in toothpaste tubes to avoid paying taxes, and nothing is going to be done about it, other than a fine?

UBS Chief Financial Officer Mark Branson told the Senate subcomittee, “we have decided entirely to exit the business. UBS will no longer provide offshore banking or securities services to US residents through our bank branches.”

What Branson didn't say, but what investment analysts are saying, is that UBS will continue to offer services to the same law-breaking clients through other U.S. owned companies, including the former Payne Weber (now called Wealth Management USA). UBS was only able to purchase Payne Weber, btw, because Phil Gramm, their former lackey in the Senate, deregulated the banking industry and then immediately quit the Senate to go to work for UBS.

Helvea analyst Peter Thorne says UBS will have the final laugh. UBS will pay a large fine, perhaps $500 million, but, "U.S. offshore private business was not a big business for UBS," said Thorne. Off-shore accounts represented "only" about $40 billion, just 4% of UBS's wealth management division, which is worth over $1 trillion.

If UBS is fined $500 million, that's equivalent to paying a 2.5% tax on the $20 billion they hid. The poorest people in American pay four times that tax rate.

And while Phil Gramm continues on as John McCain's economic adviser, banking and IRS fraud is nothing new to the McCain campaign.

John McNasty himself was one of the Keating Five (see "Is John McCain a Crook?"). McCain's behavior cost taxpayers $3 billion by covering up for his friend, Charles Keating, who was illegally using the savings of his customers to speculate on real estate deals. When the Lincoln Savings and Loan went belly up in the late 1980's, the FDIC had to re-imburse Lincoln investors. The fiasco helped drive the U.S. into a recession in the early 90's.

Keating went to prison after being convicted of 73 counts of fraud - but not before McCain's wife made a $359,000 investment in a strip mall with Keating that was eventually sold for $15 million. McCain also admitted to committing tax fraud by intentionally filing false IRS returns that didn't declare thousands of dollars in gifts from Keating.

So what have we learned this week? John McCain and friends continue to be involved in illegal schemes to deceive the United States Government so the rich, including John McCain, avoid paying taxes or being held responsible for breaking laws. But once again, McCain doesn't even get a single question about it from the mainstream press.

McCain's Faith Adviser's Inappropriate Sexual History

Deal Hudson (seriously, that's a real name?) is John McCain's Faith Adviser, but probably not for long. The Catholic church is asking McCain to fire Hudson because of an event in his past that some would describe as rape.

The allegations centered on an 18-year-old student who said Hudson got her drunk and had sex with her when she was his student at Fordham University in 1994. Hudson resigned from the faculty that year, and again expressed "guilt and regret" this week.

Then we find out he was an adviser for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, and was forced to resign from their campaign over the same 1994 event. And Hudson also resigned as publisher of a Catholic magazine in 2004 because of Catholic protests.

So why did McCain pick him to be an adviser? Doesn't the McCain campaign do even a basic once over of aides and advisers? It's not like they had to run a background check to find this out, people should have remembered this from 2004. Or is it that the McCain campaign is lazy, or do they just think the public won't care? John Hagee, Phil Gramm, Deal Hudson. Three boobs working with a clown.

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McCain Adviser Tied To $20 Billion IRS Fraud

Karma is finally catching up to Phil Gramm, John McCain's chief economic adviser. The Swiss bank Phil Gramm works for, UBS, is under hot water after it was revealed today that they allegedly helped hide up to $20 billion belonging to their richest American clients in European and off-shore banks to avoid paying taxes to the IRS.

The news has many in Washington up in arms, and a senate committee has called a hearing for Thursday. They want to meet with UBS representatives, who allegedly "set up sham entities for the US clients in tax havens, such as Panama or the British Virgin Islands, and pose as the owners of the entities." One UBS banker has pled guilty to smuggling cash and diamonds to Europe so U.S. clients could avoid paying taxes.

Phil Gramm has worked for UBS since leaving the U.S. Senate immediately after using his position as a Senator to remove six-decade-old consumer banking protections in place since the Great Depression. The 1999 Gramm law, called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, is the main cause of the subprime mortgage meltdown that has crippled the U.S. economy. Gramm deregulated the banking industry, quit the Senate to leave for UBS, then lobbyied George W. Bush on behalf of UBS to remove remaining state laws that protect consumers from predatory lending.

Scandals are nothing new to the Gramm family. Around the same time Gramm was lining his pockets by laying the groundwork to destroy our economy, his wife Wendy used her power as a government official to delay investigations into Enron wrongdoing. Wendy Gramm then quit to take a position on the Enron board of directors. Wendy Gramm later was sued for her part in insider trading and paid a $13 million fine with her own money.

Phil Gramm is also the same person who last week said that America was not in a recession, that the problem is that "America is a nation of whiners". John McCain tried to distance himself from Gramm after a firestorm erupted over that comment, even going so far as to claim Gramm would take a smaller role in his campaign.

If the mainstream press connect the dots and put UBS and Phil Gramm together it could and should mark the end of any major influence Gramm has on the McCain campaign. Some people from UBS, and some U.S. tax dodgers will likely go to prison as well.

A scandal like this would historically be a crippling blow to a presidential campaign, but don't expect much negative coverage tying McCain to Gramm and UBS. The war profiteering defense contractors who own the media today refuse to eat their own.

Update: A new article posted after the hearings is available here.

Biden Praises Obama's Spine, Tells McCain To Study History

Joe Biden gave a fiery speech on Tuesday, both defending Barack Obama and ripping John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and President Bush, lumping the three together and saying their lack of understanding of history makes it impossible to effectively address Iraq, Iran, or the War on Terror:

"How can we run a sound foreign policy without understanding these decisions? How can we talk about a Shiite-dominated nation cooperating with a Sunni dominated Wahabi sect of Islam as if they had anything in common? Yet listen to my friends, listen to the president, listen to Joe Lieberman, listen to John McCain. Ladies and gentlemen, if they can't define the enemy we are fighting it is very difficult to define whether we have won or lost."

Amen. I've said for months that Biden would be a great choice as Obama's Vice President. Biden has been telling it like it is and is one of the few Democrats not afraid to rip into McCain and Bush in detail.

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GOP Brags That McCain Will Continue Bush's Economic Legacy

The Huffington Post's David Sirota has a scary piece up today about McCain, Bush, and the GOP bragging about their connection:

"Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss the inflammatory comments by Phil Gramm (McCain's economic advisor) and how those comments really epitomize the Republican Party's country clubbish, let-them-eat-cake outlook on the economy. The Republican strategist I'm debating actually acknowledges that McCain is continuing Bush's tax policy -- and that when she's called out for saying that, she tries to deny what she just said."

Hit the link for the video. The woman actually says that and denies it immediately.

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"Scare Tactic" — Obama Slams New Yorker Magazine

The Obama campaign is condemning as “tasteless and offensive” a New Yorker magazine cover that depicts Barack Obama in a turban, fist-bumping his gun-slinging wife. An American flag burns in their fireplace. The New Yorker says it's satire. When did racism become satire?

Then John Mclaughlin, the talking head of PBS news, calls Obama an "Oreo".

How is it that the media can now take racist pot shots at a presidential candidate, and there are no repercussions? If we called our African American co-workers Oreo's or terrorists, we'd not only get fired, we'd probably get punched in the face - and rightly so.

Meanwhile McCain continues to get a free pass on his constant bumbling of foreign countries names, leaders, and policies, the exact same thing George W. Bush was never called out for in 2000. Instead of Bush being called an idiot, he was portrayed as cute and funny. The man turned out to be a treasonous war criminal.

Now McCain, instead of being correctly portrayed as a liar with a long history of criminal behavior, who also doesn't know the names of important countries and their leaders, instead is portrayed as a "war hero" and a "straight talker" despite claims by former POW's that McCain was never tortured because he gave up the names and locations of his fellow soldiers. Not to mention that McCain's entire Naval career was courtesy of his Admiral father (McCain graduated in the bottom 1% of his Annapolis class and would have never qualified to fly a plane unless his father pulled strings and got him onto an aircraft carrier- McCain was so bad of a pilot he even crashed 5 planes - reportedly because he refused to study training manuals). And like Bush, virtually every word that comes out of McCain's mouth is a lie.

Yet the press, who are owned by defense contractors making a killing on fat government contracts, will not bite the hand that feeds them. So we are left with racist shots at Obama and McCain portrayed as a lovable war hero who is above the fray.

I've seen this re-run before and I didn't like it the first time.

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