The Biggest Dickhead of the Week

by: blackdog

I really didn't think it would be possible for anyone to top William Kristol, even with most of the week to go, but it has been done, by a guy with a supposed background in economics, no less. None other than:



One of our favorite Texas crooks, ex-Senator Phil Gramm. Sticking his head out of his shell and advising his favorite and most astute pupil, non other than that Presidential contender who has fled to the extreme right, John McSame.



From the Washington Times.

Quoth the turtlehead, ex-Senator Gramm:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.




Courtesy of Democratic Underground.

Obviously candidate, war-hero and Senator McSame learned his lessons well, all we really need are meds and some group therapy, and everything will be OK. Maybe we could get Dr. Phil from TV to conduct the group sessions, yeah, that's the ticket.

I hereby award Phil Gramm the Biggest Dickhead of the Week, along with the Dickhead Economist Award possibly for 2008. With only a few days in the week left, can this possibly be upstaged?

Yep.

Senator Obama agrees.



Now I go crawl back under my rock. Jeez.

UPDATE!!

Contending for Biggest Dickhead Federal Agency, the EPA!

Again, courtesy of DU.

Source: MSNBC.com

How to value life? EPA devalues its estimate
$900,000 taken off in what critics say is way to weaken pollution rules

WASHINGTON - It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be.

The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May — a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.


...
Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted.

...
Dan Esty, a senior EPA policy official in the first Bush administration and now director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, said that "it's hard to imagine that it has other than a political motivation."

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25626294

Methinks the Wraith had a term for this, but it slips my mind now.

But what doesn't slip my mind is that I used to work with these bastards, lots. I've been to EPA conferences dozens of times all over the damn country. What a shame, they used to be pretty good.