St. John McCain

He's Such a Maverick!

So it seems that St. John McCain is in a bit of trouble, and his media teflon is wearing thin.

First you had a NYTime story that broke a few days ago, revealing that McCain had a very close relationship with a lobbyist who had frequent business before his committee. This lobbyist, a woman by the name of Vicki Iseman, bragged around town about her extensive influence with McCain, and how she could get access to him for her clients.

His campaign staff, in 2000, seemingly had the same idea, and it worried them. After all, their boss makes a big deal out of his 'independent' image, and his favorite campaign plank is how he, and he alone, has emerged unscathed from Washington's culture of corruption.

At a townhall meeting in New Hampshire last November, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told the audience that he’s never allowed himself to be corrupted by lobbyist money:

Everybody says that they’re against the special interests. I’m the only one the special interests don’t give any money to.

Source: Think Progress

As it turns out? Not so much.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, McCain has taken nearly $1.2 million in campaign contributions from the telephone utility and telecom service industries, more than any other Senator. McCain sides with the telecom companies on retroactive immunity.

McCain is also the single largest recipient of campaign contribution by Ion Media Networks — formerly Paxson Communication — receiving $36,000 from the company and employees from 1997 to mid-year 2006.

Ibid.

But, surely, this was all innocent, right? It's not like he did any illicit favors for the people who gave him large amounts of money....oh, darn.

In 2004, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain reversed a position and took “crucial legislative action” that saved Paxson Communications from “financial ruin.” Drew Clark reports:

McCain initially supported legislation that would have forced Paxson and handful of broadcasters — but not the great bulk of television stations — off the air by December 31, 2006. Bud Paxson himself personally testified about this bill with “fear and trepidation” at a hearing on September 8, 2004.

Two weeks later, McCain had reversed himself. He now supported legislation that would grant two-year reprieve for Paxson — and instead force all broadcasters to stop transmitting analog television by December 31, 2008. Paxson and his lobbyists, including Iseman, were working at this time for just such a change.

Vicki Iseman has represented Paxson since 1998, longer than any of her other clients. The Washington Post reports that Iseman’s clients have given nearly $85,000 to McCain campaigns since 2000, according to records at the Federal Election Commission.

Err, yeah. Saved them from financial ruin. Ok.

But just because he was corrupted once, that surely doesn't indicate a pattern of being a sleazy politician for hire, does it? I mean... wait, what?

-- Rick Davis arranged a cocktail meet and greet with McCain and a Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, so controversial that the US has revoked his visa -- at an economic conference in Switzerland. Davis' lobbying firm was trying to secure business with the Russian at the time, while the firm was already representing a competing political interest in Ukraine.

Seven months later, in August 2006, Davis was present again at a social gathering that was also attended by McCain and Deripaska, this time in Montenegro, another Eastern European country in which Davis's firm was working. The three were among a few dozen people dining at a restaurant during an official Senate trip....

Afterward, a group from the dinner took boats out to a nearby yacht moored in the Adriatic Sea, where champagne and pastries were served, partly in honor of McCain's 70th birthday.

Salter said neither McCain nor Davis recalls Deripaska being on the yacht after dinner.

Rick Davis is McCain's longtime campaign leader, and, as it turns out, a hugely important Republican lobbyist.

He too had rather striking conflicts of interest, working for McCain and people with business before his committee.

Davis is a particularly easy target, having several money-related scandals in his background. A veteran of the Reagan administration, Davis ran McCain's presidential bid six years ago. He also founded a lobbying firm -- Davis, Manafort Inc. -- which has made at least $2.8 million lobbying Congress since 1998.

Over the past eight years, Davis' two roles often overlapped. In 1999, while he was McCain's campaign manager, his firm represented SBC Communications Inc. and Comsat Corp. At that time, both communications companies had controversial mergers pending at the Federal Communications Commission. The Senate Commerce Committee has legislative authority over the FCC, and McCain was chairman of that committee. Both mergers were eventually approved....

Oops! He did it again!

Source: Firedoglake

So St. John McCain has ties to shady Russian oligarchs, a lobbyist running his campaign, another lobbyist who was so close to him that it made his campaign staff think he was having an affair (since he cheated on his first wife with his current wife that should come as no surprise... what is it with Republicans marrying their mistresses anyway?...).

McCain of course is waging a scorched-earth PR campaign against these allegations, and, err, facts. The problem is, for whatever reason, his lies are no longer going unchallenged...

Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson yesterday contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

This comes after an industrious reporter uncovered a deposition in which St. John McCain had already said on the record that he did, in fact, have inappropriate contact with Paxson, who had business before his committee at the time.

McCain himself in a deposition in 2002 acknowledged talking to Paxson about the Pittsburgh sale. Asked what Paxson said in the conversation, McCain said that Paxson "had applied to purchase this station and that he wanted to purchase it. And that there had been a numerous year delay with the FCC reaching a decision. And he wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business."

The deposition was taken in litigation over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law filed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The contradiction in the deposition was first reported by Newsweek yesterday afternoon.

McCain's campaign, now caught lying, twice in a row, is trying to spin the lies as being little white ones, and thus of no consequence.

Yeah. Try that one out, see how far it gets you.

McCain attorney Robert S. Bennett played down the contradiction between the campaign's written answer and Paxson's recollection.

"We understood that he [McCain] did not speak directly with him [Paxson]. Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?" Bennett said. "McCain has never denied that Paxson asked for assistance from his office. It doesn't seem relevant whether the request got to him through Paxson or the staff. His letters to the FCC concerning the matter urged the commission to make up its mind. He did not ask the FCC to approve or deny the application. It's not that big a deal."

Source: The Washington Post

In short, McCain's campaign is going to hell in a handbasket. It started with one lobbyist, and snowballed from there, revealing that McCain is surrounded by them, and very easily corrupted.

Of course, the story of how this Vicki Iseman got where she is today is equally interesting.

Iseman, 40, was raised on a farm outside of Homer City, Pa., and attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1990 with a degree in elementary education.

She went to Washington and got a job as a receptionist at Alcalde & Fay in Northern Virginia. Within a year, she had risen to special assistant to the firm's president. She was later promoted to lobbyist and was made the youngest partner in the firm in the late 1990s. She specialized in telecom issues, and one of her primary clients was Florida-based Paxson, which was rapidly purchasing a series of broadcast stations to create a national network.

So, fresh out of college with degree in elementary school teaching, she goes to a major lobbying firm, gets hired as a secretary, then quickly gets promoted, then again, then again in quick succession, despite having no training in lobbying in any form.

The fact that she was a blond secretary who is willing to pal up to powerful men for favors had nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

Source: Ibid

Oh, and of course, the guy who bought McCain's influence? Paxson? The name's no coincidence. He founded Pax TV, the Wholesome Christian Network.

In 1998, Paxson launched PaxTV, his national network, which featured reruns of "Touched by an Angel" and other family-friendly fare. There was a major hole he wanted to fill in his network: Paxson had no presence in one top-20 market -- Pittsburgh.

The transaction called for the Christian broadcaster Cornerstone TeleVision of Wall, Pa., to take over the noncommercial license of WQEX, the sister station to public broadcaster WQED. Cornerstone would then sell its commercial license to Paxson for $35 million. The money would be split between Cornerstone and WQED, which was operating in the red.

The proposed station swap was highly contentious in Pittsburgh and involved a multi-pronged lobbying effort by the parties to the deal. Local activists and some community leaders had objected to one of their public TV stations being turned over to a religious channel.

Hah ahahahahahhhahahaha oh God it's good. McCain helped steal a public tv station for a religious whacko network after being paid off by a floozie of dubious credentials 25 years his junior.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS

Source: Ibid