The Obama campaign, last week, launched a new Web site, McLobbyist.com, to highlight the issues of the 2008 election by examining the special interests and lobbyists tied to the McCain campaign.
The Web site profiles some of McCain's top campaign staff and advisors. While the site will likely cause supporters of McCain to accuse Obama of running a smear campaign, the site highlights the monied interests behind McCain in order to talk about real economics issues to show "what a lobbyist McCain-Palin ticket [would] mean for you."
Readers can find out more information about McCain's controversial campaign manager, Rick Davis, for instance. Davis has lobbied on behalf of several multinational corporations and foreign governments, federal documents show. He has a long relationship with McCain, having run McCain's failed 2000 presidential bid.
But prior to that and in the intervening period, Davis managed the Washington lobbyist firm, Davis, Manafort, and Freedman and served as a paid officer of McCain's non-profit "Reform Institute," which provided well-paid non-profit cover for many of McCain's lobbyist friends in Washington. His friends could both receive salaries while asking their clients to donate to the reform Institute to help influence McCain's vote indirectly.
As this suggests, Davis' relationship with McCain hasn't always been above board. According to a number of media sources, while Davis served as McCain's campaign manager for the 2000 race, his firm lobbied McCain's Senate Commerce Committee on behalf of telecommunications companies who had legislative business pending before the Federal Communications Commission, over which McCain's committee has authority. Davis' clients got what they wanted.
In 2005, Davis solicited two $100,000 donations to the McCain's Reform Institute from Cablevision. While the checks were being cashed, the company's CEO testified before McCain's Commerce Committee on behalf of pricing scheme favorable to his company. Subsequently, McCain wrote a letter of support on behalf of the latest Reform Institute donors to the FCC and and convinced other cable companies to go along with it.
Another of Davis' clients, Deutsche Post World Net (USA), the parent company of DHL Holdings, also benefited from McCain's role in convincing other Senate Republicans to not block the expansion of DHL in the US or its merger with Airborne Express. In both instances, Rick Davis' clients got what they wanted, thanks to McCain's well-paid, hard work.
Within just a few years of this deal to allow DHL to expand, its Germany-based parent announced the closing of its processing facility in Wilmington, Ohio, a plant that employed almost 10,000 workers. The largest employer in six counties closed its doors. Who was lobbying on their behalf?
As McLobbyist.com shows, the point is not just to tie McCain to shady people with their eyes on making cash and on influencing our congressional representatives for their own purposes. Though that is bad enough. While they maneuvered to make big deals for their clients, and while John McCain willingly used his seat in the Senate to help them, he did nothing to save the almost 10,000 jobs lost in Wilmington, Ohio.
This is just one example of how John McCain, McLobbyist.com suggests, worked hard for his lobbyist friends and their multinational clients, but ignored the plight of working families.
No wonder to this day John McCain still thinks the fundamentals of the economy are strong – the lobbyist system still works!
