The current banking crisis brings up the case of McCain breaking with his party and joining with Democrats to bail out Keating's S&L and hide the fraud that Keating and his investors were perpetuating.

And by the way, among the investors in Keatings S&L were McCain's wife and her family.

None of the Democrats that were working with McCain had financial interests in the S&L. And none were close personal friends of Keating as McCain was.

The S&L regulator who met with the Keating 5 describes McCain as abusive and arrogant, threatening to use his connections against the regulators. The result of the push back of the Keating 5 and others like them was to allow the S&L situation to deteriorate over a span of years until they had created a housing bubble that had to burst, and then the RTC took over, and nationalized over a thousand S&Ls and their losses.

McCain claims to have learned from his mistake of being a Maverick, but he sees his mistake as resisting the nationalization of the industry and the losses, and he is now advocating quick nationalization of the current private unregulated banking losses by the government.

However, most people think the problem with the S&L crisis was the failure to act quickly enough to regulate to head off that crisis expanding by orders of magnitude. And in the past five years, McCain hasn't been a Maverick breaking with the Bush administrations push to deregulate and prevent oversight of banking.

Is McCain the right kind of Maverick?

Do you keep a notepad and pencil handy and sit around and watch Presidential Campaign Commercials?

ROFL...

__________________
"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

I don't need to take notes; around here they are on continuous loop.

yadda yadda yadda - we republican cut taxes and that is all that matters,

...because by cutting taxes we won't provide any government services, no roads, no education, but lots of oil heat you can't afford if only democrats allow us to drill in Georges Bank and destroy the fisheries because oil profits are more important than food, but not to worry, we will leave a rich legacy for your grand children, $100,000 in debt the day they are born....

I heard something the other day that I haven't followed up on, but it is particularly relevant in New Hampshire. A European, not sure if German or Brit, but I think German, noted that in Europe they don't tax personal capital like is so common in the US, and especially in NH. He noted that only the value of the land is taxed, and that isn't taxed heavily, with a $250-300 a year tax being pretty high. And the emphasis is on being landed, to hold onto the land for generations, and so you think of what you put on it as something to be used for generations, so the houses are built to last as long as the family, not mere decades, but for centuries.

So, I hear Sunnu promising to do everything he can to make sure my property taxes are high, stay high, and go higher, because he is for cutting taxes.