Originally Posted By: whomod
"You're either with us or against us"

 Quote:
Now, it appears Gramm's association with the aging Republican senator's campaign is doing far more harm that previously known. UBS, a bank for which Gramm lobbied, is now under investigation for alleged use of overseas tax havens to hide assets of its wealthy clients from U.S. authorities while in office, Gramm also supported these tax havens after 9/11, which hampered the government's ability to track Osama bin Laden's financial network before 9/11.




Oh yes, the GOP is sooooo tough on terror.

I really don't know what MEM is so worried abut. McCain is neck deep in lobbyists. Some who support terrorists finances. Another campaign manager, Rick Davis has lobbying ties to Iran.

Not only that but McCain decided to ridicule Obama in a speech before APAC yesterday about talking with Iran and then unveils his own plan to enact sanctions.... a plan that Obama co-sponsored in the Senate a year ago. The Obama campaign notes that John McCain failed to support Iran sanctions legislation sponsored by Obama in 2007, a bill currently rumored to be “on hold” by Alabama Republican, Richard Shelby.

So much for consistency. If McCain can't even remember what bills he was against a year ago and thinks that finally coming around a year after Obama did and embracing his plan is considered having better judgement than Obama, I don't think the Democrats have a thing to be worried about.




 Originally Posted By: the G-man
The "quote" you gave us is an anonymous blogger posting at Newsweek, not an actual Newsweek article.


You want corroboration? You know I enjoy it, G-Man....

1)
 Quote:
Some rich UBS clients risk tax fraud exposure

U.S. investigators believe some of these clients may have used offshore accounts at UBS to illegally hide as much as $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service. Doing so may have enabled these people to dodge $300 million or more in U.S. taxes, according to a government official connected with the investigation....

Using offshore accounts is not illegal for U.S. taxpayers, but hiding income in so-called "undeclared" accounts is. At issue is whether the UBS clients disclosed securities and assets held offshore to the IRS, as required by law. Switzerland does not consider tax evasion a crime, and using undeclared accounts is perfectly legal there.

The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner, the chief executive at UBS and the former head of its private bank, as well as for Phil Gramm, the former Republican senator from Texas who is now the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the Swiss bank's investment-banking arm. It also comes at a difficult time for UBS, which is reeling from $37 billion in soured investments, many of them linked to risky U.S. subprime mortgages.....


and

2)
 Quote:
Banking On Secrecy

By ADAM COHEN TIME Magazine
October 2001

The U.S. was all set to join a global crackdown on criminal and terrorist money havens earlier this year. Thirty industrial nations were ready to tighten the screws on offshore financial centers like Liechtenstein and Antigua, whose banks have the potential to hide and often help launder billions of dollars for drug cartels, global crime syndicates--and groups like Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. Then the Bush Administration took office.....

Long before the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government tried to declare war on tax havens and dirty money. After the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa--attacks blamed on bin Laden's network--the Clinton Administration began drafting legislation designed to "strategically change the environment that allowed the money of criminals and terrorists to flow freely," says William Wechsler, a special adviser to Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. And the Administration began sounding out the banking industry......

Just days prior to Summers' announcement that he was cracking down on the OECD's tax havens, Dennis Nixon, chairman of the International Bank of Commerce in Laredo, gave $20,000 to the Republican National Committee. Already a Bush Pioneer, who had raised at least $100,000 for the primaries, Nixon gave the R.N.C. another $100,000 as the post-election contest for Florida ballots began. Summers' bill passed the House Banking Committee 31 to 1 in July 2000, but it got no further. Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, refused to let it come up for a vote in his committee.......

It took the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history to turn the Bush Administration around.


That would be the part where Richard Clark says "i told you so"

3)
 Quote:
A NATION CHALLENGED:
THE PAPER TRAIL; Roadblocks Cited In Efforts to Trace Bin Laden's Money

By TIM WEINER AND DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: September 20, 2001 The New York Times

Congress is now reviving a proposal killed last year by Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who was then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. The bill, introduced by the Clinton administration, would give the Treasury secretary broad power to bar foreign countries and banks from access to the American financial market unless they cooperated with money-laundering investigations. It was strongly opposed by the banking industry and Mr. Gramm.

''I was right then and I am right now'' in opposing the bill, Mr. Gramm said yesterday. He called the bill ''totalitarian''


4)
 Quote:
Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts

Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden's network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton's 1996 omnibus anti-terror legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion. The following is a partial list of the initiatives offered by the Clinton anti-terrorism bill:

* Screen Checked Baggage: $91.1 million
* Screen Carry-On Baggage: $37.8 million
* Passenger Profiling: $10 million
* Screener Training: $5.3 million
* Screen Passengers (portals) and Document Scanners: $1 million
* Deploying Existing Technology to Inspect International Air Cargo: $31.4
million
* Provide Additional Air/Counterterrorism Security: $26.6 million
* Explosives Detection Training: $1.8 million
* Augment FAA Security Research: $20 million
* Customs Service: Explosives and Radiation Detection Equipment at Ports: $2.2 million
* Anti-Terrorism Assistance to Foreign Governments: $2 million
* Capacity to Collect and Assemble Explosives Data: $2.1 million
* Improve Domestic Intelligence: $38.9 million
* Critical Incident Response Teams for Post-Blast Deployment: $7.2 million
* Additional Security for Federal Facilities: $6.7 million
* Firefighter/Emergency Services Financial Assistance: $2.7 million
* Public Building and Museum Security: $7.3 million
* Improve Technology to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling: $8 million
* Critical Incident Response Facility: $2 million
* Counter-Terrorism Fund: $35 million
* Explosives Intelligence and Support Systems: $14.2 million
* Office of Emergency Preparedness: $5.8 million

The Clinton administration poured more than a billion dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community, into the protection of critical infrastructure, into massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack, into a reorganization of the intelligence community itself. Within the National Security Council, "threat meetings" were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure.

Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The news networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag the Dog" while reporting on his warnings, to accentuate the idea that everything the administration said was contrived fakery.

In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al-Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Senators Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.

Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of Clinton's bill dealing with this matter, calling them "totalitarian."

In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.

Just before departing office, Clinton managed to make a deal with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to have some twenty nations close tax havens used by al-Qaeda. His term ended before the deal was sealed, and the incoming Bush administration acted immediately to destroy the agreement.

According to Time magazine, in an article entitled "Banking on Secrecy" published in October of 2001, Bush economic advisors Larry Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard were urged by think tanks like the Center for Freedom and Prosperity to opt out of the coalition Clinton had formed. The conservative Heritage Foundation lobbied Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, to do the same.


I can go on if you want more corroboration......



[quote]stand]President wants Senate to hurry with new anti-terrorism laws[/stand]