In bed with lobbyists
Posted by brvanlanen on April 13, 2008
Let’s take a trip back to the January GOP debate. In that debate the “presumptive” GOP nominee John McCain made the following comment:
“I will allow others to judge me by the company I keep.”
Well we all know the company that McCain keeps. From liberal Democrats to Juan Hernandez to Charles Keating to the New York Times. Now we can add lobbyists to that list of company.
Two of Sen. John McCain’s top advisers and fundraisers are among several Republican and Democratic presidential campaign officials whose lobbying firms have been paid more than $15 million by foreign governments since 2005.
The firms of McCain senior adviser Charlie Black, who until recently was the chairman of Washington-based BKSH & Associates, and campaign co-chairman Thomas G. Loeffler, who heads the Loeffler Group in San Antonio, received millions of dollars lobbying the White House, Congress and others as agents of nearly a dozen foreign clients in recent years.
Say it isn’t so! John McCain doesn’t walk the walk when it comes to his baby? Even if you disagree with that failure of a bill, this speaks volumes about John McCain. Being against special interests is laudable, but isn’t it hypocritical when you have a reputation as anti-special interest guy? And Black and Loeffler aren’t the only lobbyists part of McCain’s team.
Other McCain campaign bundlers, who have committed to raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the candidate, also have received lobbying fees from foreign governments. They include the following:
c Peter T. Madigan, a former top official in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who is a top lobbyist for the Washington-based firm of Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart.
The firm, whose clients include the Colombian government’s trade bureau, reported more than $1 million in fees from foreign clients since 2006.
c Kirk Blalock, national chairman for Young Professionals for McCain, who is a partner at Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, a government consulting and public relations firm established in 1978 and described by Fortune Magazine as the “hottest lobbying firm on Capitol Hill.”
Mr. Blalock’s firm has received at least $700,000 since 2005 lobbying for clients, including Peru, Vietnam and the Korean International Trade Association. The firm also signed a deal to lobby Congress and the White House for “enhancement of the Bahrain free trade agreement,” records show.
c Rob Allyn, head of the Dallas-based Allyn & Co., a public relations, advertising and political media firm, who was paid $720,000 by the Mexican government in 2006 to polish its image and call for a guest worker program for millions of Mexican nationals illegally in the United States.
The lobbying efforts came at a time Congress and the White House were debating comprehensive immigration-reform legislation, which was defeated in June. Then-President Vicente Fox was an outspoken critic of the proposed legislation.
Mr. Black and Mr. Loeffler also are listed by Mr. McCain’s campaign Web site as bundlers, expected to collect thousands of dollars in donations from several sources to bypass federal election laws limiting individual contributors to a $2,300 maximum donation.
As Michelle puts it – “Same old, same old.”
