John McCain and the Company He Keeps

[babylonsister]

http://www.counterpunch.org/farago06102008.html


John McCain and the Company He Keeps

By ALAN FARAGO

snip//

There is nothing, then, coincidental in the emergence of Florida’s Al Hoffman as a top fundraiser for McCain’s presidential campaign or of former Senator Phil Gramm, as top economic advisor.

Hoffman was a major Florida developer: his company, WCI Communities Inc., was a high flyer in the run up to the housing bust. Like other multi-millionaires minted from development, Hoffman salted away enough from platted subdivisions and condo mishaps, cratering now in someone else's balance sheet, to skate through the aftermath. In 2003, Hoffman crowed to The Washington Post that suburban sprawl was "an unstoppable force." Last year, his former company could scarcely find a buyer.

In 1998 and 2002, Hoffman was finance chair for Jeb Bush campaigns as governor. He was also finance co-chair of the 2000 George W. Bush campaign. In 2001 Governor Jeb Bush appointed Hoffman to be chairman of the state’s business planning organization, The Council of 100. Hoffman lead the Council to the outcome that Governor Jeb Bush had decided long before: to promote state policies enabling the transfer of water supply from one area of the state to another.

Of the EPA decision yesterday, an environmental attorney told The Miami Herald: “Instead of stepping in to tighten clean-water protections and clean up the pollution the EPA has now chosen to legalize it. It is shameful.”.

snip//

One of the key players behind the Wall Street greed leading up to the crisis of the US economy is another McCain advisor, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. While Senator and chairman of the powerful US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Gramm presided over and later lobbied for relaxation of supervision and regulatory oversight of the nation’s financial engineers, including hedge funds and the magical confections of debt and insurance arrangements on toxic debt that rained billions in fees and commissions on their originators. Between 1992 and 2000, he received over $1 million in campaign contributions from Wall Street.

Gramm, today, is a vice-chairman of UBS, the European bank hardest hit with untold billions in losses from investments in the US mortgage and derivatives markets. According to Bloomberg, UBS shareholders have lost nearly half their value this year. (“UBS Falls After Saying More Mortgage Losses Possible”, May 28, 2008, Bloomberg)

more...

http://www.counterpunch.org/farago06102008.html

[Stingo]

1. How many industries

does McCain have connections to, and are all the connections to bad actors?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. how well did John McCain know Jack Abramoff?

[babylonsister]

3. VERY well; he's covering stuff up that needs to be unearthed, too...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=McCain+%2B+Abramoff&btnG=Google+Search

Here's a goodie:

http://www.dengre.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/8/222648/0915/57/433195

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. Babylonsister can you post this as a main post this is very important

we need to dig up all bones on this!

[babylonsister]

6. Please, have at it, bambino. We no longer have thread limits here,

so post away. I've already covered lots of this in the past, but it does bear repeating.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

7. I will!

I'll do some more digging

[ErinBerin84]

4. I'm at my mom's house, and she watches ABC news. Their spin was predictable

Said that Johnson was a "HUGE HEADACHE!" for the Obama campaign, since he "PERSONIFIES the very values that Obama's LOFTY RHETORIC campaigns against...I mean, yesterday, Obama said that Johnson was ok!" They also said that many "good government organizations" were concerned about Johnson's role in the campaign, and noted that Obama had criticized Hillary Clinton for her lobbying ties in the campaign (of course, it's pretty obvious why they mention this and not the Obama attacks on mcCain). It was quite the hit job, again predictable, but does that mean I don't get to complain about it? At the end, they had a throwaway "for his part, McCain disapproves of lobbyists but has had ties to lobbying in his campaign". Uh, fair and balanced there, ABC.