McCain's extreme comments against Obama are harmful to our democratic process

Posted by Shyam Moondra

Lately, Sen. John McCain and his running-mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have been using extreme tactics against Sen. Barack Obama that are totally out of line and are very damaging to our democratic process.

Bill Ayers, who is now a university professor, committed terrorist acts to show his opposition to the Vietnam war at a time when Obama was just eight years old. A few years ago, Obama and Ayers had brief association because they both served as board members in connection with community projects in Chicago area. Ayers is not an Obama advisor nor he is in any way involved in Obama's presidential campaign. Given these facts, this is a huge stretch to use this brief association between the two men as a basis to imply that Obama may be a "terrorist." This is a smear tactic, plain and simple.

McCain and Palin have also implied that Obama may be a "corrupt" Chicago politician or he is "dangerous" or he has "character" problems. These are all flimsy charges without any proof to support any of these charges. McCain's surrogates have called Obama "unpatriotic" and they have used Obama's middle name "Hussein" to imply that he may be a Muslim even though they know that he is in fact a Christian.

During the first debate, McCain was visibly angry and disrespectful towards Obama that didn't win McCain any points in the eyes of many voters. During the second debate, McCain referred to Obama, his colleague in the Senate, as "That one," which was totally uncalled for.

McCain has been utterly ineffective in articulating his vision for the pressing problems of economy, jobs, health care, and education that the American people have been dying to hear about. McCain has impulsively offered flawed solutions or said something and then changed or retracted his solutions or comments. That makes him look indecisive and confused.

McCain's erratic leadership and his extremism have in fact hurt him because a majority of Americans believe in fair play and they are not happy at the political terrorism being practiced by McCain and Palin. McCain has run a dishonest and dishonorable campaign, second only to Richard Nixon.

McCain should be careful not to enrage his hard-core racist supporters to the point that one of them may contemplate to assassinate Obama or if McCain loses, Obama may have a hard time to govern. Just because you can't win, it doesn't mean that you unfairly torpedo your opponent's chances to govern and do the good work for the country. Country comes first, which means keeping the political discourse civil and fair.

Most polls indicate that Obama may be headed to a landslide victory, so McCain and Palin should tone-down their extreme rhetoric and be mindful that if Obama wins he should have an environment where all the people could work together to solve tough problems we face as a nation.

Combine top-down and bottom-up approaches to deal with the credit crunch

Posted by Shyam Moondra

The reason the $700 bi bailout bill failed in the House is that it was perceived as a handout to corporations that made unwise decisions. Many people feel that we should never mix public money and the private sector; let the private sector find a solution to the problem it created. Unfortunately, the magnitude of the problem is so big that it is imperative that the federal government be part of the solution.
To make the bailout politically more palatable, perhaps we should approach this problem top-down as well as bottom-up, meaning the government should help the financial institutions to unload the mortgage-based securities (top-down) while at the same time help the homeowners (bottom-up) to halt the wave of foreclosures that is destabilizing the housing market, which, in turn, is making these mortgage-based securities less marketable. Therefore, by approaching the credit issue from both ends will speed-up the process of dissolving the worst financial crisis of modern times in an equitable and fair manner.

The federal government should take a series of steps some of which will require an action by the Congress and others could be dealt with by the regulators on their own authority:

1. Freeze all foreclosures for one year.


2. The government should form a separate entity to financially assist the homeowners, who are in foreclosure or close to it, thereby reducing the number of foreclosed houses that are put on sale. This will help stabilize the housing prices.
3. In extreme cases, where the homeowners can't be helped, this new government entity should buy the houses and sell them at a future date after the housing market has stabilized, hopefully at a profit that will partially pay for the cost of this whole program.
4. The FRB should reduce the funds rate by 0.75% immediately, which will bring down the mortgage rates. This will help increase the demand for houses and thus stabilize the prices and also reduce the number of new foreclosures especially those that involve adjustable mortgage rates.


5. The FRB should provide loans to financial institutions and corporations and small businesses that are not able to get credit even though they have good credit rating, especially if the use of those funds will help create new jobs.

Combining the bottom-up and top-down approaches is beneficial because they both are complementary, meaning by stopping the wave of foreclosures we will be able to stabilize the housing prices which will enable the government to sell the mortgage-based securities at a profit thereby eventually recovering the taxpayers' bailout money.