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.

Book: was Jack Abramoff the fall-guy for Washington's ills?

Anytime there is a huge concentration of blame on one person --almost alone-- for the ills of a corrupt institution, one should exercise some skepticism.

Boston-based freelance investigative reporter Gary S. Chafetz began writing his book on Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff with an eye towards his culpability in corrupt lobbying practices. He concluded his research with quite a different perspective.

In his "The Prefect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff" (published last week by Martin & Lawrence Press), Chafetz asserts that Senator John McCain undertook an unduly vengeful crusade against Abramoff. He claimed that "McCain was retaliating against Abramoff for his role in the infamous 'black baby' smear campaign during the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary," as he summarized in the Huffington Post, on September 16, 2008. Abramoff had unwittingly funded the smear, by raising $3 million on short order for Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition. Without Abramoff's knowledge, Reed and George W. Bush advisor used the money to spread a smear by phone calls and flyers on windshields, to insinuate that McCain had an illegitimate black child by a prostitute. (The child actually is Bridget, whom Cindy McCain adopted from a Mother Teresa-operated orphanage in Bangladesh.)
Not only was Abramoff unfairly accused as producing this smear, Chafetz asserts, McCain produced a 373 page report rife with distortions and falsifications. The ills of lobbying and lobbyists' influence are more than one man; singular attention upon Abramoff was unfair. There is a different scandal within this story: the unrelenting abuse of power by a vengeful politician, Senator John McCain.

McCain's lobbyist culture: Georgia

What relationships could prejudice John McCain's pronouncements on the South Ossetia-based Russia/Georgia war? Again, where is the straight talk coming from? Let us see what is in the background of what McCain is saying in his loud talk. Everytime he speaks forcefully on an issue, there is, coincidentally, a conflict of interest: there are staff links or contribution links between him and the issue. (Either there is a major staff advisor that has lobbyist ties or McCain has been getting contributions from an industry, indicating a conflict of interest.) Hence, the Barack Obama campaign spokesperson Hari Sevugan says: John McCain is

"ensconced in a lobbyist culture."

Last week, we addressed McCain's connection to big oil financial contributors.

Now it is revealed today in "The Wall Street Journal" that
McCain's top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann that was on the pay from the government of the Caucasus republic of Georgia, as a lobbyist, until March. However, this interruption in the lobbyist role does not represent a break from Georgia. In April, Scheunemann's consulting company, Orion Strategies, signed a $200,000 contract to represent the country's interest. Scheunemann argues that he is less entwined with the firm, as he is has stopped being a registered lobbyist for the company, yet one should remember that he still owns the company. This bears strong parallels to Vice President Dick Cheney's removing himself from Halliburton's daily operations, and the financial windfalls that he has enjoyed from Halliburton.

Previously, Scheunemann had been a foreign policy aide to Senator Trent Lott (Mississippi). McCain has been inappropriately sociable with Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili. "The Wall Street Journal" article, "McCain Adviser Was Lobbyist for Georgia", adds that McCain on his third trip to Georgia (2006), McCain rode around on jet skiis at the Black Sea villa with Saakashvili.

Should U.S. Senators be practicing sporting activities with foreign leaders? The coziness can lead to an impression of being too amiable and a likeliness to develop policy bias in favor of the foreign state or foreign interests.

Scheunemann's influence should be troubling for anyone, liberal or those conservatives less inclined to neoconservative international adventurism. Scheunemann has been an aggressive voice advocating for regime change. In 2002 he served as the executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He also had close ties with the Iraqi Ahmed Chalabi, dating to Chalabi's pre-invasion exile years. Other parts of Scheunemann's professional portfolio include lobbying for a range of countries --including Georgia-- that wish to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On

The links with energy interests just keep on coming.

July 20, Scheunemann's name arose in a "Times of London" report of the dismissal of the George W. Bush lobbyist Stephen Payne. (Payne had been dismissed after offering to bribe White House officials with a $250,000 contribution to the Bush Presidential Library.) Payne said that Scheunemann was “working with me on my payroll for five of the last eight years.” (Scheunemann worked for the Azerbaijan-based Caspian Alliance in 2005. The Caspian Alliance is a subsidiary of Payne's Worldwide Strategic Energy.) For more discussion of the McCain-Scheunemann-Payne-foreign interest links, see Lindsay Beyerstein's July 22 piece, "McCain campaign continues to obscure the record on Scheunemann and Payne."