McCain's brazen hypocrisy on gambling, lobbyists

As I noted last week, McCain undertook a ruthless personal vendetta against lobbyist Jack Abramoff. McCain's Senate office produced a 373 page report on Abramoff's supposed misdeeds.

His targeting Abramoff is rank hypocrisy and rather disinenguous. Just look at Sunday, September 28's New York Times article by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta, Jr., "For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling." McCain targeted Abramoff, for other things, allegedly stealing from Native American casinos. Gallingly, McCain (a two-time chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee) himself had thick, intertwined relations with Native American gaming outfits and associated lobbyists. He and his lobbyist allies benefited from the Native Americans. Rick Davis,' McCain's chief strategist, walked away with $100,000 from a tribe in the Abramoff organization.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

And, McCain has been swayed by [gambling] special interests, contrary to the maverick myth he and champions in the media have propagated:

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.

And McCain was selective in his investigation. He kept it focused on Abramoff, yet as the Times article reports, he announced that he would not investigate members of Congress, "whom Mr. Abramoff had lavished with tribal donations and golf outings to Scotland."

We are still awaiting greater press and web attention to journalist Gary S. Chafetz's book on Abramoff, McCain, "Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff."

TOP TEN GAMBLING INDUSTRY DONORS TO JOHN MCCAIN
The same issue of the Times reported that McCain received nearly $500,000 from gambling interests since 1990.
As reported in the New York Times, September 28, 2008:

The following is a list of the top ten highest campaign contributors to Senator John McCain since 1992 in the gambling industry, based on analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

1. MGM Mirage
$108,450

2. Mashantucket Pequot Tribe
$56,950

3. Wynn Resorts
$39,800

4. Las Vegas Sands
$32,500

5. International Game Technology
$19,450

6. Harrah's Entertainment
$14,000

7. Station Casinos
$13,800

8. Mandalay Resort Group
$10,000

9. (tie) Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona
$8,000

Stockbridge-Munsee Community
$8,000

THE DNC'S AD REPONSE
The Democratic National Committee, along with the Barack Obama campaign, issued a 42-second video in the late night hours prior to the newsstand deliver of the Times.
The DNC press release, via the Huffington Post:

The Democratic National Committee today released a new web video highlighting John McCain's history of stacking the deck in favor of his favorite gambling industry lobbyists. The video comes on the heels of a new report outlining McCain's pattern of using his position as the chairman of a key Senate committee to tip the scales in favor of casino lobbyists with connections to his family and campaigns -- even if it meant reversing long held positions.

The video, called "Betting on McCain," shows McCain stacking the deck in favor of friends and former campaign aides who lobbied for the casinos with business before McCain's committee. In return, those casino lobbyists organized gambling trips to casinos for McCain (whose reputation as a high roller is well known), steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign, and at least 40 of them went to work for or are helping raise money for McCain's current campaign.

Effects of McCain's lobbyist ties

The New York Times reported on July 27 on the lobbyist contributions to John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. McCain clearly led the three in contributions from lobbyists. His campaign has received $181,000 from lobbyists. Obama has received slightly more than $6,000 from lobbyists; and Clinton received more than $87,000 in contributions from lobbyists.

Document shipper DHL was bought by the German, Deutsche Post World Net in 2002. Then, in less than a year, the firm was bought by Airborne Express. The company is now about to leave a Wilmington, Ohio airport. The human cost of this is a job loss of 8,000 jobs, Stephen Koff reported in The Cleveland Plain Dealer on August 6.
Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was a lobbyist that pushed for this merger

Public Campaign Action Fund has issued a fact sheet Wednesday, August 6, on the very dirty details:

But while McCain has expressed concern about anti-trust issues, and the entire Ohio congressional delegation has called for an investigation (1), a report today in the Cleveland Plain Dealer shows that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in fact played an important role in the merger deal that permitted a foreign-owned company to own DHL in the first place.

“Those jobs are on the chopping block because Sen. McCain and his campaign were involved in a deal that resulted in control of those positions being shifted to a foreign corporation, and there's no getting around that," Joe Rugola, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, told the Plain Dealer.”

Moreover, three lobbyists in significant positions on the McCain camp lobbied for the companies in question, and one of them has lobbied not just for DHL, but much more recently for UPS. This prompts additional questions: Why isn’t McCain joining the Ohio delegation in calling for an investigation into a possible anti-trust violation? How can McCain impartially investigate anti-trust issues when his top advisors recently earned more than $1 million from the companies involved to help them make the type of deal that is under scrutiny today?

Three McCain staffers have lobbied on behalf of the companies involved, and one of them, John Green, has lobbied for both of the companies involved in the anti-trust issue

* Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, and Christian Ferry, McCain’s e-campaign director, both lobbied for Deutsche Post, the company that bought DHL and Airborne in 2002 and 2003, between October 2003 and December 2005. During this time their firm, Davis-Manafort, billed $465,000 in fees.

* Davis and Ferry both also lobbied on behalf of Airborne in 2003, earning an additional $125,000 in fees. Their work involved lobbying the Senate to approve the DHL-Airborne merger, which it did.

* John Green, McCain’s liaison to Congress, lobbied for Deutsche Post from June 2003 to April 2006, earning $600,000 in fees.

* Then, Green recently lobbied on behalf of UPS, earning $40,000 for lobbying work between August 2007 and March 2008.

What does McCain have to say about mergers? What does McCain have to say about job losses (job-killing, to use the right's latest buzz phrase) that result from mergers? Do McCain's financial and professional ties color McCain's economic policy proposals?

Where's the straight talk express on this issue?