Are Arizona Virtual Schools Overfunded?
Mule Train Mail: Mark Dayton on Pima County Board to Decide on Appeal of Elelction Integrity Ruling
No Child Left Inside
Vote For the Best of Tucson
RNCC Plays with Oil IED, Blows Self Up
Readers Read: a Tucson School Story
Jon Stewart calls out McCain for his hypocrisy on supporting veterans
John McCain for Sale: The K Street Candidate
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
John McCain has had at least 118 lobbyists running his campaign and raising money for him. For a partial list see: McCain Has Had At Least 118 Lobbyists Running His Campaign & Raising Money For Him Nearly all of his advisers, fund-raisers and top staffers have worked on K Street. McCain’s Team of Lobbyists | The New York Observer
The national news media have latched onto McCain’s lobbyist connections, largely because McCain has portrayed himself as a "reformer" against special interests over the years. If you are going to be a self-righteous reformer, you had better be a saint and not a sinner. The media loves nothing better than exposing a saint as a sinner.
"Perhaps the senator hasn’t been paying attention for the past few decades, for he somehow seems to have surrounded himself with exactly the kind of Washington hustlers he professes to despise."
This may explain why McCain recently adopted a McCain campaign conflicts of interest policy. Unfortunately for him, the policy has already resulted in at least five of his top campaign aids resigning over the past couple of weeks. A Fifth Top Aide To McCain Resigns – washingtonpost.com
"More than a few Republican lobbyists in Washington are scratching their heads these days, asking: So this is the thanks we get?" Lobbyists: This is our thanks? – Jeanne Cummings – Politico.com McCain’s lobbyist supporters are expressing their consternation with him:
“If it was OK to have these people working for you in February, why is it not OK today?” asked one Republican lobbyist who counts a friend among the new McCain outcast class.
“McCain’s self-righteous [expletive] has caught up with him. Now he’s got himself in a jam,” said another Republican lobbyist who asked to remain anonymous because he is a campaign volunteer.
Said another McCain supporter: “I find it a little offensive. It was good enough to get my $2,300 donation. If we’re not good enough, then send my check back. It pisses me off.”
“I frankly don’t understand the policy, and what parts of it I do understand actually don’t make sense,” said Jan Baran, a Republican campaign finance legal expert. “Even though someone has been a lobbyist for the last 30 years, if they are not a lobbyist for the next five months, they are OK for the campaign?”
But McCain’s conflicts of interest policy is not zero-tolerance. It comes with convenient loopholes (like his private jet loophole in McCain-Feingold) which allows his top two advisers, Charlie Black and Rick Davis – both long-time Washington lobbyists – to stay on. Campaign manager Rick Davis in 2006 took a leave of absence from his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort & Freedman, but his name is still a big draw on its shingle. Chief political adviser Charlie Black, is the founder of another of Washington’s biggest lobbying houses.
"Black provides a private voice and a public face for McCain, he also leads his lobbying firm, which offers corporate interests and foreign governments the promise of access to the most powerful lawmakers. Some of those companies have interests before the Senate and, in particular, the Commerce Committee, of which McCain is a member.
Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus." The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists
