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McCain Neck-Deep in K Street Sewer

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McCain's Lobbyists [3]

Earlier this year, John McCain tried to defend the fact that his presidential campaign was jam-packed with lobbyists:

[T]hey’re honorable people, and I’m proud to have them as part of my team.

The right to represent interests of groups of Americans is a constitutional right. There are people that represent firemen, civil servants, retirees, and those people are legitimate representatives of a variety of interests in America.x50 [4]

But the lobbyists holding top spots in McCain’s campaign do not represent firemen, civil servants and retirees. Rather, they represent big corporations and foreign governments. Of McCain’s many lobbyists, here are three prime examples:

The sorry record of his top advisers shows that a McCain presidency would strive to continue the Bush years of disastrous foreign and economic policy — and government that serves those big corporations and foreign politicos that shell out to the sleaziest cronies on K Street.

Sources

50 [17] ‘McCain says his lobbyists are ‘honorable,’ but they don’t work for ‘legitimate’ causes he picks’ by Michael Roston, The Raw Story, February 22, 2008 [18]

51 [19] McCain’s Lobbyists [20]

52 [21] McCain’s Lobbyists – Randy Scheunemann [22]

53 [23] ‘Heartless Phil and ‘honorable lobbyists’ would run McCain’s White House’ – The Hightower Lowdown, August 2008 [24]

54 [25] ‘While Aide Advised McCain, His Firm Lobbied for Georgia’ By Matthew Mosk and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, The Washington Post, August 13, 2008, Page A03 [26]

For months while McCain’s presidential campaign was gearing up, Scheunemann held dual roles, advising the candidate on foreign policy while working as Georgia’s lobbyist. Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.

Since 2004, Orion has collected $800,000 from the government of Georgia.

55 [27] ‘Was the War in Georgia a Neocon Election Ploy?’ By Robert Scheer, Truthdig, August 13, 2008 [28]

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

56 [29] ‘McCain: ‘We are all Georgians’‘ by Adam Aigner-Treworgy, NBC, August 12, 2008 [30]

57 [31] ‘South Ossettia leader says 1,400 killed in conflict’ – Reuters, 8 August 2008 [32]

58 [33] ‘McCain’s Lobbyists In Trouble For Foreign Lobbying’ – Progressive Media USA, May 11, 2008 [34]

59 [35] ‘Phil Gramm on Campaign Trail in SC for McCain’ by Bennett Roth, Texas on the Potomac, January 18, 2008 [36]

60 [37] ‘A Nation of Whiners’ The Washington Post, July 11, 2008, Page A03 [38]

“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.

61 [39] ‘McCain Defends ‘Enron Loophole’ By Jason Leopold, May 19, 2008′ [40]

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm’s wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

62 [41] ‘Could McCain Have Come Up with a More Ill-Suited Economic Advisor Than Phil Gramm?’ By Patricia Kilday Hart, Texas Observer, June 18, 2008.’ [42]

While his distracted peers probably finalized their Christmas gift lists, Gramm created what Wall Street analysts now refer to as the “shadow banking system,” an industry that operates outside any government oversight, but, as witnessed by the Bear Stearns debacle, requiring rescue by taxpayers to avert a national economic catastrophe.

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By Quinn Hungeski [43] – Posted at G.N.N. [44] & TheParagraph.com [45]

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