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Sunday, June 1. 2008
Yep! He’s Corrupt!
A: John McCain. Q: Who is the candidate in bed with lobbyists?The man who claims to be a reformer, authored legislation to curb the influence of lobbyists, called the religious fanatics who control the Republican Party agents of intolerance … has not only sought the endorsements and influence of those very same agents, but his entire campaign staff is made up of lobbyists!
The claim is, of course, they are former lobbyists. Fifty-nine of them to be exact. Over 100 if you count the people hired just for fundraising activities.
As if claiming to be former lobbyists makes a difference, but some of them don’t even make that claim. Charlie Black, his chief political advisor, has actually made calls from McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” on behalf of his lobbying firm and Tom Loeffler said he will continue to handle all the work for the lobbying firm he started while working for the McCain campaign.
Black claims to have resigned from the lobbying firm, but that was only two months ago and whether or not he is working “under the table” or not is yet to be determined. His lobbying firm is pretty spectacular in its client list: brutal dictators responsible for the deaths of millions. Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines) and Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire) among the most notorious. Maybe that’s why McCain has backed off his position on torture; it conflicts with the views of his staffers’ paymasters.
McCain even admitted he would look pretty “corrupt” to the voters if they found out about all the lobbyists running his campaign.
The most egregious of the lobbyists running McCain’s campaign is former Senator Phil Gramm, who authored the bill that deregulated the banking industry so it could offer the sub prime loans that have now put our nation so dangerously at risk financially. Phil Gramm, McCain’s economic guru who was a lobbyist for the banking industry just three months ago. Phil Gramm, the man Senator McCain wants to install as Treasury Secretary should McCain win the election.
After Gramm retired from the Senate, he went straight to work for UBS, the Swiss banking conglomerate that bought up a number of U.S. brokerage firms and began the sub prime spree. Now, UBS is about to lay off thousands of employees due to the billions of dollars it is losing as a result of its lending practices, most of them being employed in the U.S. One of those practices, which causes the most harm in the mortgage meltdown, is called “collateralized debt obligations,” which allows banks to bundle mortgages in such a way that their real value can be hidden from scrutiny.How this came to light a few months ago was that an economist, a Professor at the University of Maryland and a former board member of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, Michael Greenberger, testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that the high price of gasoline was not caused by oil shortages, but by oil speculators who had driven up the price of oil.
In fact, oil reserves in the U.S. are at an all-time high.
It was the same deregulation bill, sponsored by Phil Gramm, that allowed energy speculators and mortgage lenders to go hog wild and cause both the lending crises and the cost of gas to go through the roof.
Phil Gramm is John McCain’s main man on the economy. And Gramm is a lobbyist, one responsible for the most severe financial crises in the U.S. since the Great Depression.
This story isn’t new; it’s been kicked around, mostly by bloggers, for several months now. Some of the major news outlets have covered it recently, but so far it doesn’t appear to have gained any real traction. McCain’s sucking up to John Hagee finally caught up with him, he denounced the minister he so joyfully sought for approval and endorsement, but so far McCain is getting pretty much of a pass from the major news outlets.
The only news of interest for the big media conglomerates is still the campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It’s really time for the New York senator to get out of the race. Way past time really. Thankfully, Senator Obama is beginning to campaign against McCain, calling the Arizonan on his views concerning the war in Iraq, the economy and his obvious hypocrisy when it comes to his claim of being a reformer and having his campaign staffed by a coterie of lobbyists. McCain, the condescending prick that he is, said he would take Senator Obama to Iraq and educate Obama on the war. Well senator, we don’t need to be in Iraq to know we still have over 150,000 troops there, still have American men and women dying there; and to know that the most influential government in Iraq is that of Iran. Maybe Obama needs to school McCain.
And maybe the major news organizations will catch up with the news this week.
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