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Last month an army of fact-checkers descended on GOP
vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s convention acceptance speech.
But, how many fact checkers pored through the assertions
made at the Democratic National Convention?
How many fact checkers examined the fundamental premise of
the Obama campaign, namely, that we shouldn’t want to go back to the policies
that got us into this mess.
Bill Clinton delivered the message, but considering the
former president’s strained relationship to the truth, you would have thought
that some fact checker would have tried to estimate whether he was telling the
truth.
All the fact checkers were so dazzled by Bill Clinton’s
brilliance that they chose to ignore his truthfulness.
It’s the story of Clinton’s life.
Since good things come to those who wait, the highly
estimable columnist, Caroline Baum has fact checked Bill Clinton. In doing so she offers us a clear analysis for how the financial crisis came
about.
Hint: it had nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts or the
Iraq war or deregulation.
It was “bad loans.”
So, Baum fact checks Bill Clinton’s spin:
And
while we’re on the subject of Clinton, I almost fell off my chair when I saw
his recent ad endorsing Obama.
“The
Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper income people and go back to
deregulation,” Clinton says. “That’s what got us in trouble in the first
place.”
Deregulation?
As in the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999? Didn’t some Obama campaign official
vet the ad before the president gave it his imprimatur?
The
Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, better known at
Gramm-Leach-Bliley, removed the barriers among banks, investment banks and
insurance companies. Banks got bigger and more leveraged. Pretty soon, they were
too big to fail.
Next
came the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted
over-the-counter swaps and derivatives from regulation. It was signed into law
in 2000 by…Bill Clinton.
Leading the deregulatory charge during his administration were Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- who
subsequently landed a plum job with no line responsibility at
Citigroup, which had already merged with Travelers before Glass-Steagall was
repealed -- and his No. 2, Larry Summers. The idea
was to distribute risk; the effect was to magnify it.
That’s just a sample. Baum’s article is well worth a read.
1 comment:
Anyone who actually read Bill Clinton's speeches would know that he was not conversant with the truth. I am not sure what possesses us to think "My what a nice sounding speech," and not pay any heed to what the speech actually states. Why do we seem so easily fooled by words instead of interested in action?
At least Bill Clinton's lies and dissembling were some what based in reality and he could speak extemporaneously. Obama's don't even have that in common. Just what is the substantive foundation for"hope and change?" For that matter what is the substantive basis for almost any action taken by the Obama administration?
What we get is a lot of adjectives, adverbs and a noun or two instead of something that has a concrete basis in action. The pen is mightier than the sword only if the sword is there to be utilized to make the words have substance. Otherwise they have the same value as the word "racist" no has to reality.
It is some what like saying "We are a nation of laws," but aren't the nations run by people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and every tin pot dictatorship a nation of laws? They have their lawyers and judicial systems as well. As there must be substance behind the pen, laws, et al there needs to be substance that a people can trust. Everything depends on the people actually understanding the words and what they portend. Not how they sound.
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