Digging a little deeper into McCain ethical lapses
By Steve Benen Thursday May 08, 2008 7:00pmWhen considering John McCain’s history of unethical behavior, the list usually starts (and ends) with the Keating Five scandal in the 1980s, for which McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for having shown, at a minimum, poor judgment. While McCain took on the role of a “reformer” in the scandal’s aftermath, his ethical lapses have hardly disappeared.
The NYT noted a few weeks ago, for example, that McCain went to considerable lengths in 1999 to help one of his top campaign fundraisers buy the land at an Army base that was being closed. McCain helped his benefactor get the land — and special water rights — for just $250,000, which the donor then sold two years later for $30 million. (The donor, Donald Diamond, was rather candid about buying influence with politicians: “I want my money back, for Christ’s sake. Do you know how many cocktail parties I have to go to?”) It’s the kind of obvious influence peddling McCain swears he never gets involved with.
Today, the WaPo has a front-page item highlighting yet another real-estate controversy in which McCain helped out one of his most generous supporters.
Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.
Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.
When McCain’s legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee.
Betts now claims that he and McCain never discussed the real-estate deal, but there are some real oddities to McCain’s behavior on this one.
McCain initially withheld support for Hayworth’s bill, which failed in 2002. Ruskin saw McCain’s restraint as an obstacle. He said Senate staff members warned him that the senator was wary of a swap because “he spent some political capital and got some bricks thrown at him” over the Tonto National Forest deal.
Ruskin, who is a pediatrician by training, said he realized he needed to hire lobbyists “to open communications with McCain’s office.”
He turned to some of McCain’s closest former advisers. In 2002, he sought out Mark Buse, McCain’s former staff director at the Senate commerce committee, which the senator chaired.
“I had gone to him to see if he had any advice as to how to deal with McCain,” Ruskin said. “We had a couple of meetings and I paid him a little bit.” Buse’s federal lobbying records do not list the ranch as a client.
That year, lobbying records show, Ruskin also paid $60,000 to Michael Jimenez, another former McCain aide. Wes Gullett, who had worked in McCain’s Senate office, managed his 1992 reelection bid, and served as deputy campaign manager for his 2000 presidential run, also lobbied on the bill, documents show. The watchdog group Public Citizen lists Gullett and his wife, Deborah, as bundlers who have raised more than $100,000 for McCain’s White House bid. Ruskin also hired Gullett’s partner, Kurt R. Davis, another McCain bundler and member of the senator’s Arizona leadership team, to work with local officials and “to help with McCain if we needed help.” Buse, Jimenez and Gullett did not return calls seeking comment.
Despite his previous opposition, and despite reports that the government was getting a raw deal, McCain ultimately switched, clearly the way for a land swap that directly helped one of his biggest donors.
Worse, this may be part of a pattern.
Betts is among a string of donors who have benefited from McCain-engineered land swaps. In 1994, the senator helped a lobbyist for land developer Del Webb Corp. pursue an exchange in the Las Vegas area, according to the Center for Public Integrity. McCain sponsored two bills, in 1991 and 1994, sought by donor Donald R. Diamond that yielded the developer thousands of acres in trade for national parkland.
In the late 1990s, McCain promoted a deal in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest involving property part-owned by Great American Life Insurance, a company run by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., a prolific contributor to national political parties and presidential candidates.
First, this is something to keep in mind the next time the media characterizes McCain as pure as the driven snow.
Second, if the Rezko story was considered a big deal by campaign reporters, this sketchy behavior on McCain’s part should be huge.
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This is a huge deal.
Doesn't matter pub people will still flock to vote for him.
Anything but a populist or ex hippy.
It's only a scandal if there's a Democrat somehow invloved, and regardless of whether they make or lose money.
Digging a little deeper into the McCain ethical lapses? Good grief, it already passed the China Syndrome stage a month ago. It's the McCain channel now.
The only way the Dems can win this is overwhelming voter FORCE turning out at the polls in November.
And I mean overwhelming to the point it's impossible for the Cons to hide, tweak, or disrupt everything.
None of this only 56.70% of all US citizens old enough to vote showed up crap.
It turns out that since they are building a Disney Park on that piece of land that the main stream media won't even cover it.
Things are going swimmingly
perhaps we could appoint a special prosecutor and spend a gazillion dollars running this down.
uhm, sure.
Let us not forget flying all around on wifey's private corporate jet (something he swore he'd never do). He's just a peach, a very old and wrinkled one, but a peach just the same.
Tommy Hussein @ 7:
How bout a Pro like 38th United States "Solicitor" General Kenny Boy Starr?
Chicken "Hussein" Little - Not!! @ 8:
No doubt the cons have that covered with some kind of loophole clause.
Time to start emailing. Lts start here:
democraticparty@democrats.org
caffertyfile@cnn.com
MTP@NBC.com
KOlbermann@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com
hardball@msnbc.com
letters@msnbc.com
Colmes@foxnews.com
mtpquestions@nbc.com
MTP@NBC.com
Nightly@NBC.com
thom@thomhartmann.com
theyoungturk@yahoo.com
MSNBC
Meet the press
CNN
Of course reich-wingers will excuse the ethical lapses of their reich-winger heros, but they'll implode with fake outrage over flag pins and former pastor distractions.
Chicken "Hussein" Little - Not!! @ 8:
But, Mc100yearwar is just one of the average joe, working class....oops, I mean low class, common folks.
Have you noticed the new Con Buzz Word is Effete.
Effete Liberals, Effete Dems, Effete Obama, etc, etc.
They are hammer McCain on Hardball now. ("Hammering" being relative off course)
Dr. Biitter Hussein (Mission Accomplished) Matt @ 13:
Best be careful there to not forget your place. In the post modern corporate feudal society one will suffer greatly if they don't show great deference to their betters. Start practicing now or there's likely to be a public flogging in your future serf, I mean low class, common person.
L.A. Confidential @ 14:
It won't catch on among the myopic, blood thirsty, reich-wing 28%ers.
Senate ethics is a joke folks.
They police themselves.
Hell, Vitter got off (pun intended) scott free .
Dr. Biitter Hussein (Mission Accomplished) Matt @ 17:
Since most of them can't find their glasses without help probably so.
Chicken "Hussein" Little - Not!! @ 16:
At least we won't have to worry about the reich-wing lord's enacting droit de seigneur since the typical reich-winger has no interest in women.
L.A. Confidential @ 19:
Since most of them won't be able to spell it correctly and it won't make for a nifty bumper sticker.
If the Dems manage to pull this off it's going to take years just to figure out how much damage the Cons have done to the nation we still don't know about.
http://tinyurl.com/6kzljk
L.A. Confidential @ 23:
McCain thinks the housing crisis is the home buyer's problem.
Dr. Biitter Hussein (Mission Accomplished) Matt @ 20:
True, hearing one of our overlords say "Bottoms up" will likely be terrifying for many a young, boyishly charming male serf (oops I mean low class, common lad)
Captain Bitter Elitist Hussein Kangaroo @ 24:
He (McCain)is 100% correct...all the big companies get a fed bail out!...we pay for it!
I think he is most certainly a strait talker (on that one)
Captain Bitter Elitist Hussein Kangaroo @ 24:
And 50 year old Americans who have lost their jobs, thanks to herr dubyah's failed economy, should just go back to college.
milquetoast @ 26:
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses
~Reich-wing mantra
Gone are the days of Honest Abe I wonder what's harder to find hen's teeth or a honest rethug. I do not see why they hate government so whenever they're in office they plunder the treasury and help their friends privitize profits socialize lose wish i could do that
A public research website: http://www.cain2008.org has brought together diverse historical elements of factual proof that Senator John McCain's was the key "point man" introducing, enacting and enforcing law that removed Dineh-Navajo Families from their reservation on the Black Mesa in Arizona. The McCain revised law relocated them to Church's Hill, Nevada (a Nuclear Waste Superfund Site, called "the New Lands" in PL 93-531). The Dineh-Navajo, a deeply spiritual and peaceful people, engaged in only peaceful resistance to being moved off lands they'd owned since 1500 A.D. Nonetheless, the Public Press and UN depicted brutalization, rights deprivation and forcible relocation.
UN report very long very detailed
Politicians???Ethical lapses?
ahahahahahbwahhhh!
...and school bus are yellow...
...and bears shit in the woods...
...and we breathe air...
...and I (have to go to the bathroom)...
Chicken "Hussein" Little - Not!! @ 8:
I was thinking more like an old prune.
remember kids, forcible relocations of people is done at gun point even in the fair USA.
harsh language and asking doesnt make stubborn people leave their homes and farms.
when the keating 5 went down, mccain had the benefit of a republican a.g.-alan cranston, a dem, lost his career.
Did anyone see this earlier.
http://www.wcltam.com/news/special/articledetail.cfm?articleid=23261
Ron @ 35:
Holy geeze, that's freakin' amazing. I knew Gramps was a loose cannon by man that's just too much. How has this stuff managed to not make it out to the public? Wow.
Chicken "Hussein" Little - Not!! @ 36:
How can it get to the public with the far left media? NOT!
Chicken "Hussein" Little - Not!! @ 36:
More than two lines of text and too many big words and concepts.
justabill @ 1:
Yeah. Right. "Huge deal
Uh, better not look into these "ethical lapses" too closely. Everyone in Congress is "ethically" challenged.
Every. One.
(Oh and here's a word you'll be hearing a lot more of...Rezko.)
ferrofluid @ 38:
and a complicit MSM.
We have some very serious problems in America and there is only one way to get rid of the problems, Get Rid of The republicans!
As long as we have republicans in our government we will have a government thet does not work.
Our infrastructure is crumbling our schools are failing our children, big business owns the republican party and has it’s foot on the throats of the people and the republican would send us all off to gas chambers if it would profit them in any minor way.
The only solution is to get rid of the republicans in government!
Until we get rid of the republican idiots in our government we will continue to suffer crumbling infrastructure failing schools massive job losses faultering economy, class warfare, immoral wars for oil profits and the sell out of America to the multinational corporations.
Wake up America get rid of these republican idiots before it’s to late! Time is running out. Tick tock tick tock!
Mcsane is just another dirty filthy lying republican! They all must go.
A rich old Republican bending the rules for another rich old Republican? The media won't care.
Can't they find a Scary Black Man that McCain has helped?
A lapse in ethics would indicate that John McCain actually possesses some ethics in the first place- which is incredibly inaccurate- the heading should read, "Yet further proof that John McCain lacks ethics".
Please stop implying that this bastard has even one redeeming quality because he does not and nor does any war monger who croaks out tunes like "Bomb bomb bomb- bomb bomb Iran". And lets NEVER forget the idiot camera gaffe-
"Oh, there's gonna be more wars, folks... Sorry I hate to say it- but there is definitely gonna be more wars"
What a fucking idiotic tool- a moronic mess with a millionaire sugar momma to book!
I can see it now- the world's oldest manwhore legitimizes the United States as the worlds most powerful leader and receives heartfelt congratulations telegram from Heidi Fleiss.
At this point in time, is it smart to crap out everything there is about McCain into the media? Is there time for the republicans to reconsider their choice, and pull a surprise at the convention? The more I remember about McCain, the more it seems the republicans will have buyers remorse. But if it gets strong enough, they may consider an exchange within the warranty period - at which point, they could select a pragmatist that appeals to a wider audience (they wouldn't necessarily be beholden to the moral majority at that point).
They weren't enamored with him in the first place, and it's starting to look pretty stark that he won't stand a chance come November, without some bombshell being dropped on the campaigns.
McCain has a history of selling his dignity, but after his fullbody embrace of Bush the Anti-McCain, I can't imagine it's going to be easy for him to sleep in November, after he realizes what he gave up just to lose this election. It nearly arouses empathy in me.
In posts like this and the "campaign slogan" parody, I sense a bit of overconfidence among the Pro-Obama blogs that could be counterproductive.
<...........
In posts like this and the "campaign slogan" parody, I sense a bit of overconfidence among the Pro-Obama blogs that could be counterproductive.
Oops, the above comment was meant for the "don't give me that sh*t" thread, not this one. Nevermind.
did anyone ever know a republican without ethical lapses
mcpain---lying pandering scumbag...
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