Lobbyists - in McCain's 2008 Campaign Corps

(2008 Oct blog post)

! Preliminary ! Names are to be added, when time permits.

Reportedly, McCain has about 177 lobbyists working on his 2008 presidential campaign. And, reportedly, about 84 of those lobbyists, including his campaign manager, have lobbied for the financial industry. As McCain likes to say about "pork-barrelers", let's make 'em famous. Here are some of the names that bear looking into. These are about half of the financial industry lobbyists working for the McCain campaign --- which means that they are only about one-fourth of the lobbyists working for the McCain campaign. (If I had the names of the others and the time, I would gladly add them.) Anderson, Phil (2,550 Google hits on 21oct2008) Berman, Wayne (23,800) Black, Charlie (90,100) Black, Judy (3,830) Blalock, Kirk (4,150) Buse, Mark (24,900) Calio, Nicholas (1,740) Campbell, Ben (1,010) Courter, James (2,030) Crane, David (16,800) D'Amato, Alfonse (12,400) Davenport, Doug (4,940) Davis, Ashley (2,260) Davis, Rick (486,000) (campaign chair - "uber-lobbyist") Edwards, Melissa (2,970) Fidler, Chris (1,150) Geduldig, Samuel (1,030)

Gramm, Phil (197,000) Gramm was the leader, in 1999, of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which required depositor banks to be separate from investment institutions. This repeal was no doubt one of the major reasons for the laxness that led to the 2008 financial "meltdown". And now, in 2008, we have the Bank of America and other depositor banks being allowed, even encouraged, to combine with investment banks, like Merrill Lynch, as part of the "rescue". What a country! What a bailout/rescue! It's more shenanigans NOT waiting to happen. The investment bankers will not be able to resist the temptation to gamble with depositors' money. <sarcasm>Thanks, Paulson and Bernanke.</sarcasm> Surely, the CEO's and boards REALLY thank you --- for neither requiring replacements of executives and boards, nor requiring oversight of these people. Now the same abuses can continue. Hance, Kent (3,020) Hart, Vicki (1,820) Hohlt, Richard (2,510) Hull, Kate (2,390) Hyland, James (1,210) Jarvis, Alexis (4) Jenner, Greg (1,050) Loeffler, Thomas (5,300) Madigan, Peter (4,490) Metzner, David (1,890) Molinari, Susan (10,900) Moran, John (3,060) Napier, John (1,940) Pfotenhauer, Nancy (16,900) Pitts, James (81) Powers, Tim (10,700) Price, Walter (827) Rappoport, Sloan (1,350) Rickhoff, Hans (787) Shore, Andrew (998) Stahl, Katie (1,130) Terpeluk, Peter (1,400) Timmons, William (87,300 - head of McCain's presidential transition team)

Weber, Vin (25,400) Weber is a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The fact that he is on McCain's team is rather puzzling, because during McCain's debates with Mitch Romney, during the Republican primaries, McCain indicated that abuses by the pharmaceutical industry should not to be allowed to continue, while Romney insisted the pharmaceutical industry was not to be criticized. Apparently, McCain has changed his tune. I used to wonder if McCain, somewhat like in the case of Obama's grandmother whose health insurance was 'retracted' while she was dying of cancer, had a relative or friend who was on the receiving end of pharmaceutical industry abuses. I now wonder if, in the throes of a difficult presidential campaign, when he needed more funding, McCain flip flopped --- again --- in a way that works to the detriment of the health of the citizens of this country --- and, hence, against the overall strength of this country. I am always amazed that McCain and most other Republicans --- and lobbyists and their industries --- give frequent lip service to the concept "strength of the nation". But, at the same time, they are undermining the health of their fellow citizens for the sake of making additional-bucks. My only solace is that many of these people are overweight and out of shape --- an indication that many of these politicians and lobbyists will be on the receiving end of the health issues that result from the practices of the pharmaceutical and food industries --- practices that these lobbyists and politicians helped promote and accelerate. This is small comfort though. Some of them will escape such justice. Meanwhile, millions suffer the consequences of irresponsible, and downright traitorous, lobbyist actions.

Comments on the list above : I hope to eventually add the names of most of the other lobbyists in the McCain campaign to this list. CLICK HERE for my initial source of these 40-plus names of lobbyists --- and the total numbers of lobbyists. I hope to find time to do follow-up web searches on these names --- to post information that would be helpful in determining what specific damage, if any, these people may be doing to our nation and our planet --- similar to my comments on Gramm and Weber above. For now, each name above is a link to a Google search query on the full name --- example: "vin weber" --- and the word "lobbyist". Simply click on the link to get a list of articles, blog posts, and other such web pages in which the name is mentioned, in conjunction with the word "lobbyist". Of course, you can then refine the Google query, in case you get too many extraneous "hits" from the query. I tried each query and posted the number of "hits" that I got, on 21 Oct 2008. As you can see from the numbers in parentheses above, for most of these people, there are at least 1,000 documents for perusal. So there is really too much reading for a busy person to pore over to find out what all these people are up to. This is what they count on, to escape public scrutiny. Unfortunately, even the government cannot follow up on these people --- not only because the lobbyists have 'friends' in federal agencies who help them escape scrutiny, but also because, even if federal agencies WANTED to investigate them and had a mandate to do so, it would require a lot of time and expense. Like a bunch of cockroaches when the lights are turned on, the lobbyists can scurry out of sight and count on the low odds of their being one of the few that gets caught. The problem really gets out of hand when regulators are told not to regulate.

Personally, as I indicated above in the comments on Vin Weber, I think most of these people are traitors to this country and they do not deserve to be called "fellow citizens". By their actions, they have given up their right to citizenship. They should be given a parachute and a canteen of water and a plane trip to an Aleutian island, over which they will be required to bail out. Then it is Survivor time, for the rest of their sociopathic lives. They deserve to have their names and pictures posted on walls-of-shame all over this country. In my mind, their images are to be classified along with such historical personages as Hitler, Stalin, Sadam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and various serial killers. In fact, I will add images (or links to images) beside the names above --- as I find time to find photos of them. It is very sad to think that there is a very real chance that these people may be in control of the federal government for another 4 years. The last 8 years have been a debacle. I do not see how history could judge the Bush administration to be anything other than the Worst Of All Time (WOAT).

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