John McCain in 2000
"It's fair to say that I did not win Miss Congeniality," Senator McCain said here earlier this week in a debate in South Carolina. "I've taken on the iron triangle: special interests, campaign finance and lobbying. I did not make a lot of friends."
John McCain: Portrayed by himself -- and also by the media, which loved/loves to fawn over McCain's supposed "straight talk" and "independence" -- as a heroic crusader against money in politics, 527s, "pay to play," special interest groups, lobbyists, etc. (Wait a minute, wasn't John McCain one of the Keating Five, accused of corruption as part of the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s? Hmmmmm.)
The public relations executive whom Senator John McCain's campaign had chosen to run the Republican National Convention this summer resigned his post on Saturday after a magazine reported that his firm had lobbied for the military junta that runs Myanmar.The executive, Doug Goodyear, said in a statement that he was stepping down as the coordinator of the convention, which will be held Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, "so as not to become a distraction in this campaign."
"I continue to strongly support John McCain for president and wish him the best of luck in this campaign," the two-sentence statement concluded.
Mr. Goodyear is the chief executive and a founding partner of the DCI Group, which has offices in Washington and Phoenix. He offered his resignation after Newsweek reported that his firm had been paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent the junta.
It's interesting, by the way, that DCI has an office in Phoenix, given that John McCain is U.S. Senator from Arizona. No connection there, I'm sure, just a coincidence.
As far as the Burmese junta is concerned, I think it's fair to say that this is one of the most evil and corrupt regimes in the world -- "illicit narcotics, human rights abuses and political repression," according to former U.N. ambassador John Bolton. Currently, the junta is in the process of allowing tens of thousands of its own citizens to die in the aftermath of a cyclone.
Lots more sordid details on the "flip"
More on DCCI
...DCI has been a pioneer in running "independent" expenditure campaigns by so-called 527 groups, precisely the kind of operations that McCain, in his battle for campaign-finance reform, has denounced. In 2004, the DCI Group led a pro-Bush 527 called Progress for America, which was later fined (along with several other 527s on both sides of the political divide) for violating federal election laws. Goodyear, however, says that DCI is "not in the 527 business anymore."
John McCain's favorite, 527's (what ever happened to McCain-Feingold, the "iron triangle" and all that?): check!
The DCI Group's CEO, Douglas M. Goodyear, used to work on behalf of R.J. Reynolds. Before joining the DCI group, he was a vice president at Walt Klein and Associates, a PR firm whose work for RJR dates back to at least the 1980s. In 1993, Goodyear was instrumental in the creation of Ramhurst Corporation, an organization that received money from R.J. Reynolds to ensure that tobacco industry efforts in Washington were supported by and coordinated with RJR's nation-wide fake grassroots operations...[...]
With Goodyear's expertise at coordinating astroturf activities in all 50 states, Synhorst's on-the-ground field experience combined with his telemarketing work, and Hyde's years of corporate work, the DCI Group offers clients a vast body of experience and contacts. The tobacco industry's efforts in the 1990s to fight regulations, taxes and lawsuits created a money-soaked training ground where dozens of political operatives and strategists learned their craft. Since most of the anti-tobacco efforts were led by Democrats, tobacco industry money began flowing primarily into Republican coffers, further strengthening ties between GOP political advisors and the underworld of fake grassroots campaigning. All these factors have made the DCI Group and its sibling companies a natural choice to help top U.S. companies such as Microsoft and highly-regulated sectors such as the pharmaceutical industry as they, too, have sought to fend off regulators, consumer advocates, and trial lawyers.
Fake "grasstops" activities on behalf of Big Tobacco: check!
A more recent example of DCI's work is a campaign to generate positive press for the contentious Medicare act of 2003. The main force behind the Medicare act was the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America(PhRMA), one of the country's largest and most influential trade associations. PhRMA spent millions of dollars and used dozens of lobbyists including the DCI Group to get the act passed. Even so, the law was so controversial even among Republican legislators that it barely won approval, even after the party's leadership violated normal voting procedures to push it through...
Big Pharma: check!
In August 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported on a short video titled "Al Gore's Penguin Army," which belittled the threat of global warming (suggesting viewers "stop exhaling") and made fun of the former vice-president, whose 2006 movie "An Inconvenient Truth" stressed the need for action on global warming. The video was posted on the video-sharing website YouTube and had a "home-made, humorous quality." Yet the filmmaker's email "originated from a computer registered to DCI Group," reported the Wall Street Journal.
Global warming denial: check!
To summarize, as Jonathan Singer writes on MyDD:
..The sheer hubris of John McCain in believing a) that it's alright to have his campaign almost entirely run by lobbyists; b) that it's alright to continue to employ a lobbyist for the Burmese junta as a regional campaign manager; and c) that he shouldn't be questioned about things like this, just blows me away. I don't know what more I can say now than just wow.
The DCI PAC has given boatloads of money, mainly to Republicans as well, including: Eric Cantor and Frank Wolf.