For a guy who has allegedly spent his political career trying to make and do right – after his being named in the late 1980s Keating Five scandal – Arizona Republican Senator John McCain certainly still likes to do a whole lot for high-donating cronies.
“The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators – Alan Cranston (Democrat of California), Dennis DeConcini (Democrat of Arizona), John Glenn (Democrat of Ohio), John McCain (Republican of Arizona), and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (Democrat of Michigan) – were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).”
Sounds an awful lot like cronyism to me – old school, vintage edition.
McCain’s being named made him hyper-sensitive to the charge – and hyper-and-over-re-active trying to play catch up.
McCain was the lead (and just about only) Republican in the anti-First Amendment “campaign finance reform” movement. Allegedly about rooting out political corruption, this almost exclusively Leftist movement looked to unconstitutionally prevent We the People from speaking about political campaigns – during political campaigns.
It was McCain’s name on the thankfully-Supreme-Court-overturned McCain-Feingold “campaign finance reform” law.
All of this McCain anti-constitutionality – all in the name of rehabbing his name from the cronyism stain.
A better move – would have been for McCain to cut out all the cronyism. And all of his other political-coin-related activities.
Soros, Clinton-Linked Teneo Among Donors to McCain Institute: “The institute is intended to serve as a ‘legacy’ for McCain and ‘is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.’…Conservative and liberal critics, however, believe the institute constitutes a major conflict of interest for McCain….
“Critics worry that the institute’s donors and McCain’s personal leadership in the organization’s exclusive ‘Sedona Forum’ bear an uncanny resemblance to the glitzy Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) that annually co-mingled special interests and powerful political players in alleged pay-to-play schemes.
“The institute has accepted contributions…from billionaire liberal activist-funder George Soros and from Teneo, a for-profit company co-founded by Doug Band, former President Bill Clinton’s ‘bag man.’ Teneo has long helped enrich Clinton through lucrative speaking and business deals.”
The 2008 Republican presidential standard bearer – establishing a Democrat-Clinton-esque foundation and taking coin from a Clinton bag man and global uber-Leftist Soros. If that doesn’t epitomize the overlapping bipartisanship of the DC Establishment Party’s anti-We-the-People nonsense….
And then there’s this:
McCain Urges House to Pass Russia Sanctions Bill Immediately
Of course he does. His anti-Russian over-exuberance is more than a little legendary.
But wait – McCain tried to slip some cronyism into said bill.
McCain Fails to Pass Musk Earmark in Russia Sanctions Bill: “Elon Musk’s SpaceX took a huge hit in the Senate this week – a bang comparable in scope to those of his failed rockets crashing down on the Cape Canaveral launch pad.
“The Senate rejected an attempt by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to sneak language into a protectionist Russia sanctions bill that would have benefitted SpaceX by stopping the use of Russian rocket engines in NASA space exploration launches.”
Ahh, Elon Musk – the $5-billion-government-money-recipient king of all welfare kings. McCain seems to think that all of that gi-normous government Musk favoritism – isn’t yet nearly enough.
McCain wants to all-but-mandate Musk rocket use. Except that, as indicated, Musk’s rockets tend to behave much more like land mines and surface-to-barely-above-surface missiles – than they do rockets.
SpaceX Rocket Explodes at Launchpad
SpaceX Rocket Explodes After Launch
We need rockets that…don’t explode quite so readily:
“(Y)ou can’t actually end our reliance on Russian rockets – unless you have a viable alternative ready to go….Today, approximately two-thirds of our military, intelligence community, scientific and weather satellites are launched into orbit on the Atlas 5, which uses the Russian RD-180 rocket engine.”
Two-thirds…is kind of crucial. It’s also crucial that – before we replace them – we have an actually viable replacement. Musk’s SpaceX ain’t it.
Oh – and this isn’t the first time McCain tried to help Musk in just this fashion. Flashback to May 2016:
Behold Senator John McCain’s Terrible Military Amendment: “Sen. McCain pushed these restrictions in close coordination with SpaceX, which stands much to gain by eliminating competition.”
Well isn’t that special. So is this: “SpaceX has yet to undertake any form of national security launch. Yet without changes to the restrictions pushed by Senator McCain, virtually all of America’s military space missions will depend on SpaceX’s grounded rocket and its problematic launch history.”
This is a WHOLE LOT of anti-national-security cronyism – from the man allegedly known for his national security and anti-cronyism bona fides. Why, I wonder?
John McCain Bought and Paid For by Elon Musk: “Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and businessman Elon Musk, creator of SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and SolarCity, have enjoyed a long and close business and political relationship that has helped support the senator while enriching Musk at taxpayer expense. Musk and his companies have support McCain and his McCain Institute while the senator has consistently supported and advanced the legislative interests of Musk’s companies in the Senate.”
Yet again – how very DC and consistently-crony of John McCain.
This first appeared in Red State.