Phil Gramm to the Great Unwashed

"This is not the economy you're looking for."


From The Nation:

McCain Man Gramm to America: Stop Whining

Thu Jul 10, 5:04 PM ET

The Nation -- Upset about losing your job, your home or your pension in the Bush-Cheney recession?

Buck up, and stop whining!

So says former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, a top economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

McCain is honest enough to admit he does not know much about economics.

For years, he has taken advice from Gramm.

So what is Gramm saying about the current economic circumstance?

Here's what the McCain man told the Washington Times: "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, arguing that there is no economic downturn in the U.S.

The problem, says Gramm, is that, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

That sort of talk has no place in the America of John McCain and Phil Gramm, argues the veteran Republican point man on economic matters.

And, despite the fact that McCain has today attempted to distance himself from his high-profile supporter (suggesting that, instead of considering the former senator as a potential treasury secretary, he is now entertaining the notion of dispatching Gramm to a diplomatic post in Minsk), this Republican economist may be on to something.

After all, things are fine in Phil Gramm's America.

He's got a great pension as a former member of the House and Senate and, because the federal government manages the money, his income's secure from raiding by corporate swindlers. In addition, Gramm has found plenty of work since leaving the Senate as a lobbyist for the firms he once aided as a legislator.

Plus, his wife's bringing in plenty of money.
...

Redneck Plutocrats look at America and see a lovely, private, gated-community adjoining a member's only country club that has been bequeathed to the GOP by Sweet Baby Conservative Jebus.

And because that is their absolutely genuine assessment of the Heavenly Purpose of the Land of the Free – and their God-ordained position of preeminence in the Celestial Order of things -- they always have and always will be congenitally incapable of understanding why the field hands grumble about their lot in life when they should fucking well be sitting happily around on the porch, singin' spirituals, and praising the Boss Man.

Don't the peons understand how good they have it?

Of course I for one am thrilled that, to flesh out his flimsy credentials, Senator McSame went right back to the Wingnut Well (out of which he had already fished bleating disasters like John Hagee, Ron Parsley and the mortal remains of Jerry Falwell) to manifest before our very eyes an old, while, Southern, male, dyspeptic multi-millionaire political insider. Who then proceeded to yell at the unwashed 98% of us (who foolishly refuse to live in the opulent comfort afforded by our trust funds or the interest on the interest of our investments) for being insufficiently grateful that the Grand Old Party continues to allowed us to live and labor in their fucking country.

And yet I must acknowledge that it may actually work.

After all, if the last 30 years of GOP politics has proven anything, it’s that Conservative horse-shit has a "strong influence on the weak-minded".