A view from Main Street America by a congenital Democrat and truth-seeking attorney. Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community. Posting on the Internets since 2004.
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.
The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.
I can't WAIT for McCain to bring up William Ayers in the debate. What should Obama say? "Well, at least I didn't hire him to run my transition team, like you hired Saddam Hussein's lobbyist." is one way to go. Or, "I was eight years old when Williams Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground. You were 56 years old when your transition team head was lobbying for Saddam Hussein. What, did you forget about that when you selected him to your team? Or did you just not care?"
yahoo: A 'Palin Bingo' card sits on a counter at a debate watch party at a tavern in Seattle Thursday evening, Oct. 2, 2008. People watched the televised debate there between vice presidential candidates Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden and filled out game cards based on comments made by Palin. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
My real life keeps intruding on blogging!
Read elsewhere:
Palin screwed the pooch on the bankruptcy question last night. She said she and McCain weren't opposed to changing current bankruptcy laws regarding first mortgages. Problem? McCain does indeed oppose changing the law. Current bankruptcy law doesn't allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgage terms on first - primary - residences. But if you're a rich fuck like John McCain, bankruptcy judges have the power to protect your 2nd house, your 3rd house, your 4th house, your 5th house, your 6th house, your 7th house, your plane, your yacht -- but not the primary residence for millions of ordinary Americans. Palin basically adopted Obama's position in her answer, and McCain's camp is flailing. Smell the hypocrisy. Team of mavericks, my eye.
Washington Post reports that McCain has hired a new aide: Mark Buse, who was hired by Freddie Mac in 2003 and 2004 to lobby.....wait, this gets better....to lobby John McCain! Jane Hamsher skewers Wrinkly/Winky '08:
She does not know what "achilles heel" means. Watch it. She Does. Not. Know. What. It. Means.
Forget the tight stripper skirt, forget the metallic eyeshadow inappropriate for anyone over the age of 40, forget the cloying sitcom delivery, the lies, the cruel and calculated needling of Biden by calling his college professor wife a "school teacher" and saying "she'll get her reward in Heaven" (to a man whose first wife died in a car accident) -- she's an idiot.
I cannot believe that we are seriously thinking of placing this dodo bird within reach of the Presidency.
John McCain stated flatly on Sunday night that his campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with Freddie Mac for the past two years. Yesterday the NYTimes reported that this statement was a lie as Rick Davis's firm was paid $15,000 a month UNTIL LAST MONTH to lobby for the mortgage giant.
John McCain is a liar. I am sick of listening to Democrats wax on about how heroic he was 40 years ago (Bill Clinton did it on The Daily Show last night) without out pointing out the basic fact that the John McCain who is running for President in 2008 is a habitual liar.
NYTimes: A 2004 photograph from a report by the Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy group for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, shows John McCain with Ken Guenther, a former chairman of the group, left, and David Lereah of the National Association of Realtors.
Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.
But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
"In the past few weeks, Wall Street’s been rocked as banks closed and markets tumbled. But for many of you – the people I’ve met in town halls, backyards and diners across America – our troubled economy isn’t news. 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Paychecks are flat and home values are falling. It’s hard to pay for gas and groceries and if you put it on a credit card they’ve probably raised your rates. You’re paying more than ever for health insurance that covers less and less.
"This isn’t just a string of bad luck. The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities Washington has not. That’s why we need change. Real change. This is no ordinary time and it shouldn’t be an ordinary election. But much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track.
"Here’s what I believe we need to do. Reform our tax system to give a $1,000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs. End the ‘anything goes’ culture on Wall Street with real regulation that protects your investments and pensions. Fast track a plan for energy ‘made-in-America’ that will free us from our dependence on mid-east oil in 10 years and put millions of Americans to work. Crack down on lobbyists – once and for all — so their back-room deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans.
"And yes, bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours. Doing these things won’t be easy. But we’re Americans. We’ve met tough challenges before. And we can again. I’m Barack Obama. I hope you’ll read my economic plan. I approved this message because bitter, partisan fights and outworn ideas of the left and the right won’t solve the problems we face today. But a new spirit of unity and shared responsibility will."
Well, he's taking the high road. I prefer a 10-word telegram, myself, but Obama doesn't have one yet.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. drug manufacturers are reaping a windfall from taxpayers because Medicare's privately administered prescription drug benefit program pays more than other government programs for the same medicines, a House committee charged in a report Thursday.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that taxpayers are paying up to 30% more for prescription drugs under Medicare's privatized Part D program for seniors and the disabled than under the government's Medicaid program for the poor.
"Medicare Part D has given the major drug companies a taxpayer-funded windfall worth billions of dollars," said committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills).
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In the two years Medicare Part D has been in effect, drug manufacturers have taken in $3.7 billion more than they would have through prices under the Medicaid program, committee investigators found.
"The drug companies are making the same drugs. They are being used by the same beneficiaries. Yet because the drugs are being bought through Medicare Part D instead of Medicaid, the prices paid by the taxpayers have ballooned by billions of dollars," Waxman said.
He said Bristol-Myers made an additional $400 million from higher prices for a single drug, the stroke medication Plavix.
flickr: SI Neg. 77-13915. Date: 1977...A close-up of the face and hands of the statue of President Abraham Lincoln which sits in the Lincoln Memorial. Created by American sculptor Daniel Chester French, the sculpture was completed in 1920. ..Credit: Dane A. Penland (Smithsonian Institution)
The Boston Globe reports that military contractor KBR exposed Americans in Iraq to a form of chromium -- the stuff in the wells in the movie Erin Brockovich -- and now they're getting sick. The only small justice here is that KBR has been playing games & claiming their employees were employed by a shell corporation in the Caymans so they didn't have to pay unemployment & social security taxes. As a result, these employees may be able to sue KBR directly rather than being limited to worker's compensation.
The networks are spending two minutes a week covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A near total news blackout.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge (and John McCain top adviser) lobbied for the government of Albania for two years without registering as a lobbyist. Laura Rozen asks, "curious if Ridge knows something about the strange DOD-US embassy-Albanian government-AEY-mothballed $300 million Chinese ammo weapons deal[?]" You can read all about that bizarre $300 million dollar contract being awarded to a bunch of 20-something losers here at TPM.
Phil Gramm is McCain's man on economic issues. Gramm is one of the most loathesome of the former Republican officeholders advising McCain. He's on the board of Swiss bank UBS and was registered as a UBS lobbyist until April 18th of this year. His wife Wendy was on the board of Enron when Enron imploded, stealing millions of tax dollars from California taxpayers. And Phil Gramm pushed legislation that helped Enron steal their money. The Gramms are Republican corporate slime of the highest order. Oh yeah, and they're rich from all the corporate money they've been pulling down.
As Senate Banking Chairman in the 1990s, Phil Gramm authored the bill that repealed the Depression-era mortgage regulations, and allowed basically any kind of corporation to give loans, without regulation, which lead directly to the mortgage crisis. The he quickly left the Senate and sold the remnants of his soul to Swiss banking giant UBS.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was signed by Bill Clinton in 1999, BTW, another of his centrist moves that I have a big problem with, like NAFTA and welfare reform. Why am I to believe that Hillary Clinton will not be just as much of a centrist, despite the very liberal positions she takes in front of Democratic audiences? But I digress. Now we are the middle of the subprime mortgage crisis, loans having being given to people who didn't have the income to pay them or the house not being worth what they were borrowing, and now the government is giving bad actors like Bear Stearns $30 billion bailouts. So what was John McCain's (and his lobbyist pal Phil Gramm's, as Gramm advised him on the speech) solution to the problem? Let the homeowners lose their houses, said McCain in March:
“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers,” McCain said. “Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.”
...Gramm, the great crusader against government spending, has spent his entire life on the government tit. He was born at a military hospital, raised on his father's Army pay, went to private school at Georgia Military Academy on military insurance after his father died, paid for his college tuition with same, got a National Defense Fellowship to graduate school, taught at a state-supported school, and made generous use of his Senate expense account. In 1987, a Dallas developer named Jerry Stiles flew a construction crew to Maryland to work on Gramm's summer home. Stiles spent $117,000 on the project but was kind enough to bill Gramm only $63,433. When Stiles got in trouble for misusing funds from a savings and loan he owned, Gramm did him some "routine" favors with regulators. Stiles was later convicted on 11 counts of conspiracy and bribery.
As a member of the Senate Finance Committee and the recipient of enormous banking contributions, Gramm did an even bigger favor for the financial industry in 1999 when he sponsored the Financial Services Modernization Act allowing banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to combine. The bill weakened the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to help meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Gramm described community groups that use the CRA as "protection rackets" that extort funds from the poor, powerless banks. The bill is also a disaster for the privacy of bank customers and weakens regulatory supervision. As Gramm proudly declared, "You're not going to find a single bank, insurance company, or securities company that will say they were hurt financially by this bill."
To be fair, Gramm occasionally found it in his heart to assist the poor -- like the time he suggested that mothers on welfare would be better off working for $2.50 an hour. A more typical Gramm vote, though, came on an energy bill that benefited oil and gas companies at the expense of consumers. "There are winners and losers in every economic decision," Gramm said portentously. He was then getting more oil and gas money than any other member of the Senate....
[Charlie Black's] wife, Judy Black, is a national co-chair of the fundraising group "Women for McCain," and she has a vibrant lobbying practice that includes a foreign client and several companies with business before the Senate Commerce Committee, where McCain is a senior member.
Judy Black works at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a firm that earned $12.9 million in lobbying fees last year. She is listed as an agent of Dubai Aerospace Enterprises, whose partners include the government of Dubai, according to forms filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Since 2004, she has also represented telecomunications companies AT&T and Global Crossing Ltd., which have matters before the Commerce Committee.
McCain adviser Charles Black and his lobbying partners have represented some of the world's most notorious leaders. Now, that work is prompting calls by Democrats for Black's firing from the campaign. Here is a sampling of clients: [UNITA, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Phillipines, Zaire]
Longtime uber-lobbyist Charles R. Black Jr. is John McCain's man in Washington, a political maestro who is hoping to guide his friend, the senator from Arizona, to the presidency this November.
But for half a decade in the 1980s, Black was also Jonas Savimbi's man in the capital city. His lobbying firm received millions from the brutal Angolan guerrilla leader and took advantage of Black's contacts in Congress and the White House.
Justice Department records that Black's firm submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act detail frequent meetings with lawmakers and their staffs and lavish spending by Black and his partners as they attempted to ensure support for Savimbi, whose UNITA movement was fighting the Marxist Angolan government.
Then in his 30s, Black already had established himself as a pioneer of the revolving door between campaign consulting and lobbying, having been a senior adviser on President Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign before returning to K Street. And his clients, as often as not, were foreign leaders eager to burnish their reputations.
In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.
Here is just a little information about some of the bloody dictators Charles Black represented. He made money off blood diamonds, illegal ivory trade, ethnic cleansing, and plain old thievery. No wonder John McCain still has 115 lobbyists working for him. His top adviser would literally take money from anyone, no matter how corrupt, no matter how murderous. He already has. And he's McCain's top guy.
Jonas Savimbi, who has died aged 67, was, for 20 years, a figure as important in southern Africa as Nelson Mandela, and as negative a force as Mandela was positive. For the past 10 years, using the proceeds of smuggled diamonds from eastern and central Angola, he fought an increasingly pointless and personal bush war against the elected government in which hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed, wounded, displaced, or starved to death.
In 1965, Mobutu seized power with the backing of the military and tacit support of Western countries, who saw him as a bulwark against communist expansion in Africa. He established a one-party state, banning all other political organizations but his own.
Over the next three decades, Mobutu led one of the most enduring regimes in Africa -- and, said his critics, one of the most dictatorial and corrupt.
Despite the country's obvious natural resources, including copper, gold and diamonds, much of Zaire's population continued to sink further into poverty. But Mobutu, known for his trademark leopard-skin hat, amassed a personal fortune estimated to be as much as $5 billion, with homes in Switzerland and France.
In 1986, shortly after coming to power, he executed his bosom friend and then minister of the Federal Capital Territory, General Mamman Vatsa, and dozens of other officers convicted of involvement in a failed coup plot against him.
Scores of military officers and civilians convicted of involvement in another failed coup attempt four years later were also executed despite local and international plea for clemency.
For many though, Babangida, with his toothy smile, is synonymous with corruption, the depreciation of the country's currency and general economic mismanagement.
He is widely believed to have syphoned off tens of millions of dollars during his time in office and he looks the most wealthy of all the 2007 presidential hopefuls.
His critics allege he mismanaged or stole the some 12 billion dollars Nigeria made from oil sales during the Gulf War.
"Babangida promoted the culture of corruption into national ethos," one newspaper columnist wrote.
"If God were a Nigerian, Babangida would have attempted to bribe him," said another.
[I]n the early hours of 21 October, Siad led 20 army officers and five police officers in a bloodless coup d'tat.
Significant political figures were detained, the constitution suspended, the national assembly closed, political parties banned and the Supreme Court abolished. The country was renamed the Somali Democratic Republic and on 1 November the conspirators constituted themselves the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC).
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The complex security paraphernalia and the paramilitary organisations so typical of all repressive states, whether of the right or the left (and Somalia was a confused mixture of both), were installed. The new National Security Service (NSS) began to run its own interrogation and detention centres and even courts. Prison conditions for a growing number of political and other prisoners were uniformly harsh and torture was rife.
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To Siad, the mnemonics of liberation fronts merely hid angry clan groupings. Once so identified, whole areas were devastated. Among the first to suffer were the Majeerteen. But it was confrontation with the Isaak, the largest clan in the north, which revealed the depths which Siad and his relative-generals were prepared to plumb. The word ''genocide'' came to be used by international human rights observers.
Yesterday, his fifth campaign staffer was forced to quit in a week. This time one of his most important advisers, Tom Loeffler, self-jettisoned after reports that his lobbying firm had pulled in up to $US 15 million in fees from the Saudi Arabian Government since 2002.
McCain's campaign has also been guided by lobbyists. [Rick] Davis, the campaign manager, is a former lobbyist who represented major telecommunications companies. The campaign's senior adviser is Charles R. Black Jr., chairman of BKSH & Associates, which represents drug companies, an oil company, an automaker, a telecommunications company, defense contractors and the steel industry, among others.
Former congressman Tom Loeffler (R-Tex.) was brought in to shore up the campaign's finances and operations. Yet he maintains his day job as chairman of the Loeffler Group, whose clients include oil, auto and telecommunications companies, as well as a tobacco firm and an airline.
Other occasional McCain advisers include lobbyists Timothy P. McKone of AT&T, Robert S. Aiken of Phoenix-based Pinnacle West Capital, John W. Timmons of the Cormac Group and John Green of Ogilvy Government Relations. Also at Ogilvy is a major McCain fundraiser, Wayne L. Berman.
Their firms' clients have been a significant source of contributions to McCain's campaign. Executives for the clients of Ogilvy Government Relations gave at least $271,000 for McCain's presidential bid. Loeffler Group client employees donated $118,500, according to a Washington Post analysis. BKSH clients' executives gave $24,000.
Five may have resigned, but there are plenty of lobbyists left on the McCain campaign. 115, to be precise:
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