Friday, February 22, 2008

Dean: Still Right

Remember back when the press was treating Dean like a leper because he had the termittity to suggest that capturing Saddam wouldn't make America safer? Yeah. Me too.

Anyway, you've probably heard about this whole McCain/Iseman scandal. The original article in the NYT was either needlessly salacious or had the real substantive salaciousness lawyered out of it. But Dean makes the exact right point about the whole story in a National Journal On Air interview:

Dean: I have no idea whether the affair story is true or not, and I don't care. What I do care about is John McCain -- and this has been well-documented -- is talking all the time about being a reformer and a maverick, and in fact, he has taken thousands of dollars from corporations, ridden on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them and get projects approved. He has tons of lobbyists on his staff. This is a guy who is very close to the lobbyist community, a guy who has been documented again and again by taking contributions and then doing favors for it. This is not a guy who is a reformer. This is a guy who has been in Washington for 25 years and wants to give us four more years of the same, and I don't think we need that.


This is the issue. It's gotten press on the sexy time angle, but really the story here is corruption. He got thousands from a lobbiest's clients, he was ferried around in the client's jet, he spent lots of time with said lobbiest, and, SURPRISE, he wrote letters to the FCC encouraging them to approve a regulatory decision that would earn said client lots of money.

Any questions as to how much in campaign donations it takes to get one Sen. McCain on your side should be directed to Ms. Iseman. Also, please note that McCain was on the committee that had oversight authority over the FCC, so communication companies knew who to lobby.

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