McCain: Examining Keating
Posted: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 9:08 AM by Domenico Montanaro
The AP looks at Keating. "The Republican senator's lawyer in the case, John Dowd, told reporters in a conference call Monday that McCain had been the victim of 'a political smear job' by Senate Democrats. When a reporter noted that McCain himself has spoken contritely about his role, Dowd responded, 'I'm his lawyer and I have a different view of it.'"
More: "Once close to Keating, McCain received $112,000 from him, his family and associates. The senator and his family also flew in Keating's plane to the Bahamas and -- in the events that triggered the Senate investigation -- took up his cause with financial regulators as they were investigating the businessman. Keating eventually went to prison. McCain eventually repaid $112,000 to the U.S. Treasury and reimbursed Keating for the trips. The irony of the Keating case is that McCain received the mildest ethics committee rebuke of the five senators in 1991, and was kept as a defendant because he was the only Republican. The special counsel in the case had recommended that McCain and one of the Democrats be dropped as defendants. But Democrats, who controlled the Senate, refused to take all the heat for the scandal and all five remained in the case to the end."
And once six-degrees games are brought up, there are more where those came from… AP writes: "McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair. … The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe. The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona."
The New York Times writes that big business is a not a fan of McCain’s health-care plan. “American business, typically a reliable Republican cheerleader, is decidedly lukewarm about Senator John McCain’s proposal to overhaul the health care system by revamping the tax treatment of health benefits, officials with leading trade groups say. The officials, with organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, predicted in recent interviews that the McCain plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits from income taxes, would accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million.”
