John McCain is a fraud

(Photo of John McCain and "Foreclosure Phil" Gramm)

Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, in a Washington Post article dated February 22 of this year, describe how Senator John McCain, while claiming to be an "anti-lobbyist," surrounded himself with advisers who were, in fact, lobbyists on active duty.

On his Website, McCain strikes a righteous pose to rant against "the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided."

But that pose is fraudulent. Shear and Birnbaum note that when McCain "huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin ... to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried."

These close advisers included Rick Davis, his campaign manager, who "co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications." Another is Charles R. Black, Jr., McCain's chief political adviser who chairs "one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways. (At the moment Black also represents General Motors and United Technologies.)

"Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O' Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae."


It was back in February that we found out McCain had been flying around the country with a beautiful blonde lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, in a corporate jet owned by the telecom company that employs her.

When questions were raised about the propriety of McCain's jet jaunts, he became angry and said "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust." He must have forgotten the Keating scandal!


As Shear and Birnbaum point out, it would be difficult for any politician to steer clear of all lobbyists. There are more lobbyists in Washington, D.C. than ticks on a West Virginia hound! The problem is that "lobbyists are essentially running his [McCain's] campaign." The fact that many of them are "volunteers" doesn't mitigate the appearance of malfeasance. Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said, "The problem for McCain being so closely associated with lobbyists is that he's the candidate most closely associated with attacking lobbyists."

McCain evidently wants us to listen to what he says and ignore what he does. Thus he hired Mark Buse to be his Senate chief of staff, until recently a lobbyist for ML Strategies which
represented "eBay, Goldman Sachs Group, Cablevision, Tenneco and Novartis Pharmaceuticals."

Tom Loeffler has left the McCain train under pressure but until recently was the top fund-raising official. Loeffler heads up the Loeffler Group, a lobbying company which has worked with the Saudis, Southwest Airlines, AT&T, Toyota and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Public Citizen, a group that tracks campaign fundraising, noted back in February that McCain had "at least 59 federal lobbyists raising money for his campaign." That of course would give all these folks a "leg up on everybody else" when it came to White House favors.

McCain tries to brush this off by saying "I have many friends who represent various interests, ranging from the firemen to the police to senior citizens to various interests, particularly before my committee." Notice how he sloughed off the corporate connections! McCain continued, "The question is . . . do they have excess or unwarranted influence? And certainly no one ever has in my conduct of my public life and conduct of my legislative agenda."

That, of course, is a bold-faced lie. Remember the Keating scandal, Mr. McClean?


We'll take a "commercial break" here to consider whether or not, as suggested by Nico Pitney and Sam Stein at The Huffington Post, Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham may have violated McCain Campaign's ethics rules.

Both Lieberman and Graham "hold chairs" for the McCain camp as well as positions on the board of advisers of Vets for Freedom, an advocacy group that supports the Iraq war."

This advocacy group distributed an attack ad against Senator Barack Obama, which appears to be a violation of "the Arizona Republican's new conflict of interest policy." The policy states that "No person with a McCain Campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate."

No comment was forthcoming from Lieberman, Graham or McCain on this issue.

It should be noted, however, that "Craig Shirley, an influential Republican operative and McCain adviser resigned after it was revealed that the was working for the 527 Stop Her Now -- an organization that was initially dedicated to taking on Sen. Hillary Clinton but had turned its sights on Obama. Other aides have been forced to reign due to lobbying ties."


Then we have the Airbus deal. Back in March, 2008, Hesiod at Daily Kos noted that "three current McCain campaign advisors lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence Company for the US military's $35 billion air refuling (sic) tanker deal."

This is the deal that knocked Boeing out of the park. McCain's been involved in this deal for five years. He "helped block an earlier tanker contract with Boeing and prodded the Pentagon in 2006 to develop bidding procedures that did not exclude Airbus."

As Hesoid says, "McCain intervened in the Pentagon's procurement process in such a way that it gave an advantage to EADS because it is subsidized by European governments -- and could offer a lower price target. In effect, McCain's intervention shipped American jobs to France."

Please read all the details of what this has meant to America's middle-class here and here.


As we mentioned, Tom Loeffler left the McCain campaign. Loeffler was very involved in the Airbus deal as EADS is one of his clients. Doug Goodyear, "who was to run the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Doug Davenport, a regional campaign director for the Mid-Atlantic states, also resigned this month. [May 2008] Both worked for DCI Group, a consulting firm hired to improve the image of Myanmar's military junta."

May was the month when McCain had to let Eric Burgeson go as Burgeson was a lobbyist for energy companies.

Still, some hang on, having taken "leave" from their lobbying jobs to work with McCain. These include "campaign manager Rick Davis, whose past clients have included a Russian industrialist, and Charlie Black, a high profile Washington lobbyist with domestic and foreign clients."

Charles R. Black, Jr., deserves a closer look. He has asserted "I have personally had a policy that, if I'm working in somebody's campaign that I do not lobby they and their staff, since 1984."
Media Matters for America points out that Mr. Black is not being truthful. Mike Allen of Politico, reported that while "'Black served as an informal adviser to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004,' '[l]obbying filings show that in 2003 and 2004, Black's firm lobbied the Defense Department, State Department and Executive Office of the President on behalf of' Fluor Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. According to a search of the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, in 2003 or 2004, Black's firm lobbied the Executive Office of the President for 12 companies or individuals in addition to those Allen cited. Moreover, during the period that Black was lobbying the Bush administration, he and his wife were 'Pioneers' for the Bush/Cheney campaign, raising more than $100,000."

It gets much worse. This from P.M. Carpenter at The Fifth Columnist on May 23, 2008:

"Claude Rains shock had nothing on John McCain's when the latter found that lobbying had been going on amongst his most cherished advisers. This innocent maverick of nearly 30 Washington years had no idea that K Street extended so far and its influence ran so deep. But be that as it may, he'll have nothing of it now.

"So he's cleaning his campaign house of this execrable avocation, retaining only the worst of its practitioners -- namely Charlie Black, veteran lobbyist largely for a little shop of foreign horrors once inhabited by the collective likes of Angolan guerrilla Jonas Savimbi, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre.

"Mr. Black had quite the profitable racket going. He'd scoop up buckets of overseas cash from bloody tyrants and dictators and then turn around, as the Washington Post tells the tale ... to help 'elect a slew of lawmakers -- including Sens. Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms, Charles McC. Mathias, Jr., Arlen Specter, Paula Hawkins and David F. Durenberger -- who worked on legislation that directly impacted [his] firm's clients' both abroad and at home, such as the Tobacco Institute.


Another pol and lobbyist friend of Mr. McCain is none other than Phil Gramm, or as David Corn calls him, "Foreclosure Phil."

"Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown."

Mr. Corn explains: "Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm co-chairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win....

For all the details on the perfidy of Phil Gramm, read Mr. Corn's entire article here.


Just recently, Mr. Gramm has again made the headlines. In another article, David Corn refers to a report in The New York Times, that "federal authorities are investigating UBS to determine whether the bank helped thousands of wealthy Americans hide their assets from the IRS in UBS offshore accounts. Without mentioning that Gramm is a top McCain ally, the paper notes:

"'The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner, the chief executive of 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 bad investments, many of them linked to risky American mortgages.'

"So it's not too early to ask, What did Phil Gramm know about UBS' offshore practices, and when did he know it? And reporters ought to ask McCain if he has asked Gramm about this investigation."

If he did know about it, former Senator Gramm would appear to have criminal culpability and should end up behind bars.

We do know this much: While he was still in office, Senator Gramm "supported these tax havens after 9/11, which hampered the government's ability to track Osama bin Laden's financial network before 9/11."

In fact, on June 4, Chris Wallace did ask McCain about Gramm. Crooks and Liars reports that Wallace's question "caught McCain by surprise ... and left him stammering, stuttering and fibbing."

Wallace: Let me ask you one last question. David Axelrod said you talked in your speech today about changing the way Washington does business, but your campaign is run by two of the biggest lobbyists in Washington. How do you respond to that?

McCain (stuttering): "Uh, I di.., look, uh, the, the, those, they are not lobbyists, but th.. the fact is Americans care about my vision and plan of action for the future," ... blah blah bs, blah ... 'Obama is a liberal' blah...


Two last quotes to sum up. The first is from Mr. Carpenter's article. He cites Joe Conason, of the New York Observer:

"The question is why, at this late date, the Republican nominee-in-waiting is pretending to be shocked by 'conflicts of interest' in which he stands neck deep and why he dismisses four or five lobbyists while keeping dozens of others, including his top advisers [such as Charlie Black], because they claim to be 'retired' or on 'leaves of absence' from their businesses. He knows that a press release won't change the habits of a lifetime in Washington's corrupt corporate culture, but apparently he hopes we will think so."

And finally, Chris Hayes from The Nation who speaking with Keith Olbermann on Countdown, noted the "stench of lobbyists that continuously plagues John McCain's campaign and how this and other devastating scandals completely blows his anti-lobbyist, tough-on-terror campaign theme."

Here's what Mr. Hayes said:

"What this reveals is actually a really profound contradiction at the heart of the Republican coalition, the conservative coalition, and McCain's campaign, which is on the one hand, it's home to the most sort of, chest-beating, self-righteous moralists about foreign policy - we can't talk to Ahmedenajad because he's an anti-Semite, at the same time it's a party who's agenda is run by global conglomerates that pursue dollar and profit with no regard for any kind of sense of morality..."

John McCain is a fraud.


The choice in November becomes clearer and clearer.