So much for the well-publicized promises to "set aside partisan politics and festivities planned for the convention opening" and adopt "a more a subdued business-only tone in deference to Gulf Coast residents" due to the hurricane.

ABC's Blotter: As NOLA Residents Flee, Republican Party Officials Don Pink Boas and Swig Vodka Shots

As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and lobbyist-paid parties this weekend in Minneapolis-St. Paul. [...]

[T]he National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin and the American Trucking Association put on a raucus six-hour party at a downtown bar featuring music by the band "Hookers and Blow." There was no evidence of any actual prostitutes or cocaine.

h/t Wonkette

[McCain speaking in front of the NRA in May, 2008]

John McCain's campaign won't say whether he's for or against allowing suspected terrorists to buy guns, as he tries to pander to his lobbyist pals and the Republican pro-gun base but wanders into the "War On Some Terror" minefield by mistake.

Sen. John McCain portrays himself as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. But does that extend to gun rights for suspected terrorists? His campaign won't say where he stands on a bill to eliminate a gun-control loophole that even the Bush administration wants closed: a gap in federal law that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns. The bill was inspired by an official audit covering a five-month period in 2004 which found that, because of the loophole, the Feds had to greenlight 35 out of 44 cases where a gun buyer was on a terrorist watch list. One group opposed to closing the loophole is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun manufacturers' trade association. Until this spring, one of its congressional lobbyists was Randy Scheunemann, now a top McCain campaign adviser on foreign policy.

... Registration documents filed by Scheunemann's company, Orion Strategies, list the terror-gap bill as one of its specific lobbying objectives, and the registrations listed Scheunemann as a lobbyist until he took a leave. McCain's campaign refused to answer questions about whether the senator supports or opposes the White House plan to close the loophole, and it also declined to say if Scheunemann had ever lobbied McCain on gun-control bills. "Randy Scheunemann is a foreign-policy adviser to Senator McCain, and he is on leave from Orion Strategies. We have no further comment," says Jill Hazelbaker, a campaign spokeswoman.

Yes, we know neocon Randy got McCain in over the old guy's head on Georgia. But does McCain really want to keep dancing around issues for the paid man who seems to do all his thinking for him?

The NSSF rightly says that the current bill removes "due process" from gun owners because "anyone can be put on the list". But what about due process for all those non-flyers first? (Or maybe for those held at Gitmo after being handed in for a bounty and tortured to ellicit confessions? What about their due process?) What was that? Randy doesn't get paid to whisper in John's ear about them? Oh, that makes everything clearer.

P.S. And just to add icing on the cake, Scheunemann was himself arrested by Capitol Hill police for a gun violation back in 1997 - possession of an unregistered gun and ammunition - when he was Trent Lott's top advisor. Talk about a conflict of interests.

There were a couple of weeks in May that were rather embarrassing for the McCain campaign. The presumptive Republican nominee had developed a reputation as a politician who had little use for high-priced DC lobbyists, but it quickly became obvious that his entire campaign operation was being run by … high-priced DC lobbyists. In one eight-day stretch, McCain had to fire five lobbyists from key campaign roles because of their lobbying clients.

And that was before Randy Scheunemann was added to the mix. He may very well prove to be the most problematic of them all.

John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions in a 3 1/2-year span while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The payments raise ethical questions about the intersection of Randy Scheunemann’s personal financial interests and his advice to the Republican presidential candidate who is seizing on Russian aggression in Georgia as a campaign issue.

McCain warned Russian leaders Tuesday that their assault in Georgia risks “the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world.”

On April 17, a month and a half after Scheunemann stopped working for Georgia, his partner signed a $200,000 agreement with the Georgian government. The deal added to an arrangement that brought in more than $800,000 to the two-man firm from 2004 to mid-2007. For the duration of the campaign, Scheunemann is taking a leave of absence from the firm.

“Scheunemann’s work as a lobbyist poses valid questions about McCain’s judgment in choosing someone who — and whose firm — are paid to promote the interests of other nations,” New York University law professor Stephen Gillers told the AP. “So one must ask whether McCain is getting disinterested advice, at least when the issues concern those nations.”

This is pretty messy. On April 17, the day that Scheunemann’s firm was signing a lucrative deal with the Georgian government, Scheunemann also prepped John McCain for a phone call with the Georgian president and helped McCain with a public statement of support for Georgia.

It’s fair to say the line between Scheunemann’s lobbying and Scheunemann’s role atop McCain’s foreign policy shop were more than a little blurred.

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Senate Guru:

Norm Coleman sides with union-busters, while Al Franken sides with hard-working Minnesotans. Meanwhile, Franken releases a new ad that actually blew my mind with an overwhelmingly simple message - very worth the thirty seconds to watch:

Franken: In Washington they debate whether former members of Congress should wait one year or two years before they can become registered lobbyists. How about never? Right now hundreds of former Senators and Congressmen are lobbying for big oil and special interests. No wonder gas is at $4 a gallon. ...

"No wonder" is right. Franken's vow to work to change the rules to prevent members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists is one other Democrats would do well to emulate.

A 2005 study by Public Citizen found that 43% of Senators and Representatives who left office since 1998 went on to become lobbyists, and that was well before likes of ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and ex-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott abandoned their elected offices before their terms expired to join their ranks. Instead of running for office to serve their country and the public good, politicians (53% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats) increasingly have instead (ab)used their offices as a stepping-stone so they can cash in, and it's no secret we all suffer for it.

One of the big stories with Obama now leading the DNC is that he has announced that not only will his presidential campaign not accept lobbyist donations, neither will the DNC any longer. And while McCain has made some tentative statements about public financing of his campaign, he has yet to commit to anything, other than the sheer number of lobbyists working on his campaign.

The DNC has put out this ad tying McCain to his lobbyists buddies. From the press release:

"While Senator McCain talks about transparency and accountability on the campaign trail, back home in Washington he and the lobbyists in his inner circle refuse to apply those same standards to his own campaign," said DNC Communications Director Karen Finney. "Senator Obama and the Democratic Party have promised to change the way business is done in Washington and are taking real steps to ensure that the American people's priorities dominate the agenda in Washington. If Senator McCain is serious about his call to clean up Washington, he should join us. Otherwise, Senator McCain is once again showing why he is the wrong choice for America's future."

A little fact checking, courtesy of the DNC, on McCain's Lobbyist Brigade below the fold:

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Despite the fact that much of the news coverage for the past few weeks on McCain has revolved around his lobbyist-run campaign, especially Co-Chair "Foreclosure Phil" Gramm's lobbying ties to "the wrong side of the ongoing mortgage foreclosure crisis," Chris Wallace's "last question" about it caught McCain by surprise Tuesday night, and left him stammering, stuttering and fibbing:

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Wallace: Let me ask you one last question. David Axelrod said you talked in your speech today about changing the way Washington does business, but your campaign is run by two of the biggest lobbyists in Washington. How do you respond to that?

McCain (stuttering): "Uh, I di.., look, uh, the, the, those, they are not lobbyists, but th.. the fact is Americans care about my vision and plan of action for the future,"... blah blah bs, blah ... 'Obama is a liberal' blah...

Wallace didn't press any further (of course) on who this "they" is, but it was a lie in any case clearly worthy of a few Pinocchios. Does the McCain campaign really not have a practiced answer at the ready for this simple a question about its mounting lobbyist problems (if so, I'm nearly certain 'um, um, they are not lobbyists' isn't it) or did McCain just get so comfortable on the Republican News Network he blanked on the script?

As John McCain has gone through a series of ideological shifts, so too has his approach to lobbyists. For years, McCain dealt with lobbyists the same way most lawmakers do: taking their money and offering them influence. After McCain’s role in the Keating Five scandal, for which he was admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee, McCain adopted the role of a “reformer,” who railed against the undo access given to lobbyists.

For the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain switched again, embracing lobbyists and hiring a legion of lobbyists to run his entire campaign operation. Now, after a series of controversies and fired aides, lobbyists are looking at the McCain team and asking, “This is the thanks we get?”

It was a small band of loyal lobbyists who stood by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain last August when his campaign went broke and his White House aspirations seemed doomed.

They raised money for him under impossible odds and kept him company in budget hotels during his darkest days.

Now they are under siege as McCain purges active lobbyists from his campaign team in a quest to wrest the reformist title from Democrat Barack Obama, his likely opponent in this fall’s general election.

Five lobbyists were shown the door in eight days, which didn’t help on K Street. “If it was OK to have these people working for you in February, why is it not OK today?” asked one Republican lobbyist.

Another added, “McCain’s self-righteous [expletive] has caught up with him. Now he’s got himself in a jam.”

Yet another said, “I find it a little offensive. It was good enough to get my $2,300 donation. If we’re not good enough, then send my check back. It pisses me off.”

It’s true; the McCain gang just walked into this one. They never vetted aides, they never thought to check client lists, and then when confronted, they started purging lobbyists-turned-aides without thinking about the implications. Now, no one’s happy.

When the McCain quietly acknowledged on Saturday that Tom Loeffler, the national finance co-chairman of the presidential campaign, had resigned over his lobbying ties, advisors probably hoped it would go by largely unnoticed. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff ran with the story, and blogs picked up on it, but would five key campaign resignations in a week become a major headache for the McCain gang?

It sure looks like it. The Washington Post ran a front-page item this morning, with a headline the campaign won’t like at all: “A Fifth Top Aide To McCain Resigns; Finance Co-Chairman’s Lobbying Ties Are Cited.”

[Loeffler] is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee. Last week, campaign manager Rick Davis issued a new policy that requires all campaign personnel to either resign or sever ties with lobbying firms or outside political groups. […]

McCain has built his reputation in Congress on fighting special interests and the lobbying culture, but he has been criticized for months about the number of lobbyists serving in key positions in his campaign. Until recently, his top political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., was the head of a Washington lobbying firm. Black retired in March from BKSH & Associates, the firm he helped found, to stay with the campaign. Davis ran a lobbying firm for several years but has said he is on leave from it.

Black, in particular, remains in the cross hairs of McCain’s critics. Campaign Money Watch, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, yesterday praised Loeffler’s departure but renewed its call for Black’s departure. The group has launched a Web site, http://www.firethelobbyists.com, to urge McCain to rid his campaign of their influence. Loeffler’s lobbying for Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments was revealed over the weekend.

This follows up on developments the weekend, when we learned there have been five resignations in eight days within the McCain camp, and the fact that Black’s client list will continue to dog the campaign.

It’s especially helpful that Barack Obama is helping elevate this controversy, taking advantage of the opportunity.

Continue reading »

Since Friday, McCain has lost two advisors because of their firm's work in Myanmar. Well, it turns out that's just the tip of the iceberg. McCain's campaign is loaded with people who have worked on behalf of some of the nastiest dictators on Earth.

Reform Watchdog Group, dedicated to campaign reform, is asking McCain to fire those lobbyists.  You can sign their petition here. 

John McCain’s website tells visitors, “Too often the special interest lobbyists with the fattest wallets and best access carry the day.”

It’s become an increasingly amusing line as the senator’s presidential campaign has unfolded. We now know, for example, that McCain’s campaign staff is dominated by corporate lobbyists, and he adds new ones all the time.

The subject came up briefly during McCain's “60 Minutes” interview.

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Pelley: You point your finger at other senators and claim that there is culture of corruption on Capitol Hill. But you take money from lobbyists who have business before your committee, as other senators do. So how is it that you call the system corrupt?

McCain: Well, one of the reasons why I call the system corrupt is because we have members of Congress who are in jail, who are former members of Congress. But it’s not the individuals, it’s the system we have today. I believe that I serve with honorable men and women. And I believe the people who bring their case to government, the overwhelming majority of them are honorable people.

Pelley: The lobbyists?

McCain: Retirees have a lobbyist, firemen have a lobbyist. Your business has a lot of lobbyists, a lot of lobbyists.

So, when McCain blasts the role of lobbyists in the political process, he’s only talking about the bad lobbyists (the ones he doesn't like); not the good lobbyists (the ones who give him money and run his campaign operation).

As for McCain's examples, it's true that there are lobbyists for firemen and senior citizens, but those aren’t the folks running his campaign.

Most of us remember the bizarre court case of Judge Roy Pearson versus the Korean dry cleaners who were sued for $67 million for a lost pair of pants. That case was finally thrown out earlier this year with the Chung's winning , but not before they'd almost lost everything they'd worked for their entire lives due to their legal costs. Judge Pearson would later lose his job, in part because "his suit against Mr Chung demonstrated a lack of "judicial temperament." The Chungs withdrew their motion to recover their own costs and impose sanctions when they recovered their money through fund-raising efforts by benefactors.

But now the so-called "Institute for Legal Reform" (ahem) and their website http://iamlawsuitabuse.org/, an offshoot of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is using this case to push a pro-corporation Republican agenda.

Kentucky Law Review:

The key to all this is the administration of justice, justice for all. And, the purported fair sounding name of a political action special interest group such as the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) does not mask its real intention of protecting insurance and big business, period.

Mother Jones:

The Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform has unveiled a slick new PR campaign to convince Americans that the little guy, and not, say, the enormous corporations that fund the campaign, is at risk of personal disaster at the hands of a greedy trial lawyer.

While the medium is new for the Chamber, the new lawsuit abuse videos consist of the same old corporate propaganda bashing the civil justice system, and most of it is highly misleading. One of the segments features a "victim" that was actually a plaintiff in a lawsuit. Particularly egregious is a video of a Georgia professor who specializes in studying "play." She sweetly contends lawsuits are making children obese because they've taken dangerous playground equipment out of the school yard. The junk food companies that fund the Chamber should be especially pleased with that one. Read more....

Yeah, Republicans are all about states' rights...until it hurts their cronies' stock portfolios.

OMB Watch:

The Bush administration engaged in a broad, multi-agency effort to lobby congressmen and governors to urge them to oppose a California plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent investigation.

In December 2005, California petitioned EPA to let the state develop its own program and standards for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. Under the Clean Air Act, the federal government holds the express right to regulate emissions but may grant waivers to states, which it often does. If EPA grants California's waiver request, 11 other states could follow suit.

In June, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stating EPA would make its decision by the end of 2007. That's two full years after the initial request.

Why so long? Since the Supreme Court decided in April greenhouse gases may be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act, there is no basis for denying California's petition. Therefore, for an administration which holds environmental regulation in contempt, the only remaining choice is endless delay.

But apparently Johnson's obstinacy was not enough for the Bush administration. An investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has revealed a coordinated effort to prevent California from pursuing its state regulations. The effort includes Johnson, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters, and James Connaughton, the Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has written to Connaughton. The letter explains the full details of the campaign.

OMB Watch has been covering this carefully...the ramifications of all the issues at stake are, as they say, "mind-boggling".

Talk to Action:

Kenneth Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio and defeated contender for Governor, has been hired on as a "Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment" at Washington's premiere right wing religious lobbying outfit, The Family Research Council. "He is credited with being part of the team that helped double President George W. Bush's vote count among Blacks in Ohio in 2004, and is charged, by critics, of having tampered with that vote." read more...

WorkingForChange:

I'm just back from the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and wanted to point folks to two YouTube clips of what were the best and most telling moments - by far - of the conference's presidential campaign interchanges. As you will see, after John Edwards pushed Hillary Clinton into a corner about her ties to Washington corporate lobbyists at the debate, he continued on the theme in his town-hall-style breakout session - a sign that, coupled with his history from 2004, shows that he is aiming to use the issue as a way to frame the race as him vs. Clinton. If I were Clinton's campaign trying to, for instance, paint American politics' top recipient of health care industry money and lobbyist cash as the candidate of "change," Edwards' line of attack is exactly what I would be most afraid of.

Edwards frames the race as a choice. "If you believe we're gonna get the change that we need in a system that's rigged, and that that change is going to come working with people who rigged the system, and that's what these Washington lobbyists are - then you have one choice," he says, in a clear reference to Clinton. "If on the other hand you believe we should reform not just the government we should [also] reform the Democratic Party, we should make it clear that we are not with those people, that we are not the party of Washington insiders" then, he says, he's your choice.

Well, if you don't count actual former lobbyists Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani...

  Huffington Post:

John McCain, who made his name attacking special interests, has more lobbyists working on his staff or as advisers than any of his competitors, Republican or Democrat.

A Huffington Post examination of the campaigns of the top three presidential candidates in each party shows that lobbyists are playing key roles in both Democratic and Republican bids --although they are far more prevalent on the GOP side. But, all the campaigns pale in comparison to McCain's, whose rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to his conduct.

"Too often the special interest lobbyists with the fattest wallets and best access carry the day when issues of public policy are being decided," McCain asserts on his web site, declaring that he "has fought the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided."

In actual practice, at least two of McCain's top advisers fit precisely the class of former elected officials he criticizes so sharply. On March 7, 2007, McCain named ex-Texas Representative Tom Loeffler, who has one of the most lucrative and influential practices in the nation's capital, as his campaign co-chair. In the same month, McCain named former Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, now a heavyweight lobbyist, as his honorary chairman for Washington state.