The All Spin Zone on John McCain’s offshore drilling flip-flop: “I think that it is important to catch politicians when they are so full of crap their eyes turn brown.” Click through for flip-flop videos.
Archive for June, 2008
Campaign Finance Reform
June 23, 2008McCain did a complete 180 on public financing and the media’s ignoring it:
Isn’t it interesting how, after largely ignoring the issue for the last 30 years, during which the GOP consistently outfundraised and outspent Democrats in election after election, the media are suddenly all atwitter about whether the campaign finance system is “basically fair”? How dare Obama inspire 1.5 million donors, giving an average of $197 apiece, to help him raise more money than McCain?
“This is a big deal,” said McCain of Obama’s decision. “It’s a big deal. He has completely reversed himself and gone back not on his word to me, but the commitment that he made to the American people. That’s disturbing.”
What’s actually disturbing is the Swift Boat Media’s complete indifference to McCain’s bald-faced hypocrisy on the same issue. Amidst all the attacks on Obama’s “flip-flop,” how much have you read in the MSM about the fact that McCain has “completely reversed himself” on public financing — and is currently breaking the law on a daily basis, making a mockery out of a campaign finance system he helped create?
In the fall of 2007, McCain opted into the public financing system for the GOP primaries, which meant he’d later receive just over $5 million in public funds in exchange for agreeing to a fundraising limit of around $54 million for the entire primary process, which ends when he accepts the nomination at the Republican National Convention in September.
By late November, his campaign was practically broke, so McCain took out a pair of $1 million loans, using the public funds he would receive as collateral.
Cut to Super Tuesday, when McCain had the Republican nomination all but wrapped up. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be bound by that $54 million limit, so his campaign did a 180 and opted back out of the public financing system.
Telecom Lobbyists
June 18, 2008More details on all the telecom lobbyists working for McCain:
Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign has strong connections to the high-powered lobbyists employed by AT&T and other telecommunications companies to escape from responsibility for violations of federal law, with paid lobbyists occupying prominant positions in the upper echelons.
Last fall Newsweek reported on the telecom’s “secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs.” The magazine named some of the chief telecom immunity lobbyists:
Among the players, these sources said: powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (who represent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spaulding who is representing Sprint) …
All three are now working with McCain. Charlie Black is now the chief political adviser for McCain. In March, Black left BKSH & Associates, a lobbying firm he helped found. Up until Black left BKSH, he was paid by his lobbying firm, while his firm was paid by AT&T [BKSH Lobbying Disclosure]
Wayne Berman is McCain’s national finance co-chairman, and Managing Director of Ogilvy Government Relations, a prominent lobbyist for telecom immunity in the FISA legislation. [Ogilvy Lobbying Disclosure]. John Green, a founding partner of Ogilvy, and another paid lobbyist on FISA for AT&T, is now “a full-time liaison between McCain’s presidential campaign and Republicans in the House and the Senate.”
Dan Coats is a member of McCain’s Justice Advisory Committee, and has campaigned for McCain, and was joined by former Senator Trent Lott. After leaving the Senate in 2007, Lott became a paid lobbyist for AT&T, seeking immunity for the telecoms.
Accordingly to the Arizona Republic, Bryan Cunningham is a McCain fundraiser. He is also a paid lobbyist at Barbour Griffith & Rogers, working on “FISA reform” for AT&T. [BG&R Lobbying Disclosure]. Kirk Blalock is a fundraiser and chairman of Young Professionals for McCain. He too is a paid lobbyist, working at Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock and lobbying on FISA for Sprint. Blalock’s colleague Kirsten Chadwick is the finance director of Young Professionals for McCain, as well as a lobbyist for Sprint on the FISA Amendements Act. [FI&B Lobbying Disclosure]
What Lobbyists?
June 17, 2008Looks like that flip-flop on warrant-less wiretapping may be related to all the telecom lobbyists working for McCain’s campaign:
If you’ve been wondering where all the telecom lobbyists went to lick their wounds after the House rejected retroactive immunity for wiretapping, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says it’s found a bunch of them smack dab in the middle of John McCain’s presidential campaign organization.
The group suggested Friday that the swell of current and former telecom lobbyists in the McCain camp might have something to do with the candidate’s recent reversal on the legality of warrantless wiretapping. His most recent position “reads a lot like the talking points that a telecom lobbyist might employ,” writes EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl.
McCain has long supported amnesty for telecoms who cooperated with Bush’s warrantless domestic spying, but until recently questioned the legality of the program. After zig-zagging on the issue over the last few weeks, he eventually settled on a position nearly identical to President Bush’s — that presidential war-making powers trump the law when it comes to warrantless wiretapping.
That position further bolsters the phone companies’ arguments for amnesty, since they could argue that they only helped out in a completely lawful surveillance.
Warrant-less Wiretapping
June 17, 2008John McCain “revises his stance” on warrant-less wiretapping:
Mere hours after a McCain spokesperson adopted the Bush Administration’s flawed legal argument that courts have “recognized the President’s constitutional authority to conduct warrant-less surveillance” and that the “courts’ findings supported the Bush Administration’s efforts in the wake of September 11, 2001,” Senator John McCain said that:
“It’s ambiguous as to whether the president acted within his authority of not,’’ he said, saying courts had ruled different ways on the matter.
(emphasis added). Previously, McCain had said that the president did not have the inherent authority to conduct warrantless surveillance.
Ignorant or Lying?
June 16, 2008McCain doesn’t know what Habeas Corpus is:
My father, a lifelong Republican, called and left a message on my voicemail yesterday saying that McCain’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling on habeas corpus and the Gitmo detainees had sealed any chance McCain had for getting his vote in November. And McCain’s statement was so ridiculous that one has to wonder if he is really that ignorant of the law or if he was simply lying through his teeth. Here’s what he said:
We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate, because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases.
That may be the single dumbest thing said in this entire election so far. Habeas corpus suits have nothing to do with dietary restrictions on prisoners or what kind of reading materials they can have. McCain is conflating, either out of mendacity or ignorance, the kind of suits that can be brought by prison inmates and the kind of suits this ruling allows.
Habeas corpus suits only allow someone to challenge whether they are rightfully being detained. That’s it. If McCain knows that, he’s lying through his teeth. And if he doesn’t know that, how absurd is it that he has an up or down vote on every single person nominated for the federal bench? If he doesn’t know that, why should anyone vote for him for president? This is one of the most basic constitutional protections, one of the key components of a free society; if someone doesn’t understand that basic concept, they should be kept as far away from power as possible.
Reproductive Rights
June 12, 2008McCain’s shifting positions on reproductive rights:
Nowhere is the gap between “straight talker” and pandering faker more obvious than on questions of reproductive freedom and sex education. Usually obscured by his image as a “maverick” Republican and (former) critic of the religious right, his actual record infuriates many women when they learn what he believes — and how he has voted.
Late last month, the Democratic National Committee released a memo based on focus group interviews with undecided voters in Minnesota and West Virginia concerning McCain. The female voters in the groups were surprised, dismayed and angered to learn that the Arizona Republican not only favors overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and curtailing abortion rights but is also opposed to requiring contraceptive coverage by health plans and favors abstinence-only sex education.
Even women who described themselves as “pro-life” said that the latter positions cast McCain as a man who is “unrealistic,” “out of touch” and “stuck in the past,” according to the memo. And those same women were especially disappointed because they had expected him to hold the moderate views that the media has so often ascribed to its favorite.
Imagine how disturbed those female voters might become if they read “The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t,” blogger Cliff Schecter’s new book exploring the many moods and mind-sets of the prospective Republican nominee. He shows that McCain used to expound sensible centrist positions on choice — until the senator flip-flopped to please his party’s right-wing base. The evidence is simple and devastating.
Contradiction or Clarification?
June 11, 2008Time catches McCain in a lie. Or is that a clarification?
McCain’s recent statements about warantless wiretapping and FISA have not clarified the seemingly contradictory messages that came out last week. (The Greenwald has a typically exhaustive run-down on the back and forth here.) In 2006, he was definitive (ish):
WALLACE: But you do not believe that currently he has the legal authority to engage in these warrant-less wiretaps.MCCAIN: You know, I don’t think so, but why not come to Congress? We can sort this all out.
Six months ago, he was still fairly certain: “There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.”
Then, as of Monday, he appeared to have joined the administration in the belief that Article II does allow the president authority to grant those wiretaps.
But, over the weekend, he told reporters that “It’s ambiguous as to whether the president acted within his authority or not,’’ when it comes to the wiretaps, and that, whatever their legality, “I’m not interested in going back. I’m interested in addressing the challenge we face to day of trying to do everything we can to counter organizations and individuals that want to destroy this country. So there’s ambiguity about it. Let’s move forward.’’
The most generous interpretation of his position is that warantless wiretapping MIGHT have been illegal when Bush did it, but that it should be legal in the future. From a civil libertarian point of view, that’s pretty much the worst possible position for someone to hold: i.e., not only will we NOT determine if the government overstepped its bounds in the past, but we will broaden its authority in the future, which implies a kind of ever-expanding approach to government power.
Lies About Taxes
June 10, 2008Paul Krugman of the New York Times does some fact checking on McCain:
Another of my disagreements with Senator Obama concerns the estate tax, which he proposes to increase to a top rate of 55 percent. The estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books, and the first step to reform is to keep it predictable and keep it low.
Make permanent estate tax with $3.5 million exemption and 45 percent rate
McCain on business taxes:
Senator Obama’s plans would add to the difficulties of small business in other ways, too. Currently, there are the 21.6 million sole proprietorships filing under the individual income tax. When Senator Obama talks about raising income tax rates on those making over 250,000 dollars — that includes these businesses as well.
Tax units with business income high enough to make them subject to 33% or 35% rates (which Obama would restore to 36% and 39.6%, while leaving lower rates unchanged): 479,000.
McCain Caught Lying to Newsweek
June 10, 2008John McCain told Newsweek that he did not deliver a portion from the prepared text of his speech last Tuesday chiding the media for not giving Hillary Clinton her due. But video from McCain’s address shows him giving the line as written.
“The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans,” McCain said in a nationally-broadcast speech in Kenner, Lousiana. “And she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometime received.”
Asked about this statement in an interview last week with Newsweek’s Holly Bailey and Jon Meacham, McCain interjected, “I did not [say that]—that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it]—I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage.”
Presented with video showing that the GOP nominee did in fact read the remarks as they were prepared, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Newsweek’s account of McCain’s answer is “paraphrased and unclear.”
Rogers said he was not questioning the magazine’s transcription, but pointing out that they included brackets.
But, given that he was responding to a direct question about a portion of the speech, it’s unclear what else McCain could have been alluding to when noting twice that he “did not.” That he also pointed out that the same section had been “in the prepared remarks” only clarifies that he was referring to the passage in question.
