Sex-For-Oil Scandal and McCain campaign officials attached at the hip

...but feeding from different toughs. So how does McCain come off as the "Great Reformer Maverick" while taking advise from these slime ball lobbyists? Read about it:

<snip>
Two High-Ranking McCain Campaign Officials Lobbied For Companies At Center of Sex-For-Oil Scandal
By Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld - September 12, 2008, 4:47PM

Here's something that could complicate the McCain-Palin reform message a bit: It turns out that McCain's national finance co-chair, Wayne Berman, is a paid lobbyist, and has been one for years, for two of the oil companies that are at the center of the sex, drugs and oil scandal enveloping the Interior Department.

One of McCain's high-ranking campaign officials also lobbied for the companies for years -- during time periods when the scandal has unfolded -- up until he joined the McCain campaign in the spring.

The lobbyists themselves aren't tied to the scandal in any way, and their activity on the companies' behalf doesn't implicate McCain, either. But it's legit to ask why it is that a campaign that proclaims that it's about reform is taking advice and/or money from lobbyists who were getting paid by companies involved in the scandal, one of whom is still collecting money from them.

Berman, who's McCain's national finance co-chair and one of the Arizona Senator's leading bundlers, is a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations, which has been paid millions of dollars for lobbying by the Chevron and Hess corporations, according to disclosure forms. The second official, John Green, who is McCain's chief liaison to Congress, also was with Ogilvy and worked on those same contracts until joining the campaign.

Chevron and Hess are involved in what is arguably the most sordid scandal in Washington right now.


The short version is as follows: Employees at a number of leading energy companies allegedly gave improper gifts -- including sports tickets, ski trips, illegal drugs and even sexual relations -- to federal officials in charge of a program that oversees a program by which the companies can pay for use of public lands with free energy instead of cash, saving them money.

The office of the Interior Department's inspector General launched a probe in 2006, and this week, it released a report finding that energy company officials serially and flagrantly violated gift rules and went so far as to give drugs and sex to government officials, and the government officials in turn gave contracts to favored companies.

According to Senate lobbying disclosure forms, Ogilvy -- represented by Berman and Green -- lobbied for Chevron and Hess from 2005 to the present, and was paid a total of $2.36 million by the companies. They had enlisted Ogilvy's help in order to influence Congress on such issues as comprehensive energy reform, energy price-gouging, and other issues related to liquefied natural gas.

Both Berman and Green lobbied for the companies for about three years, continuing when the scandals were already public knowledge, and Beman is still lobbying for them. It's legit to ask why Berman wouldn't have cut ties with the companies at a time when he's working for McCain, even merely for appearances' sake.

"You have to wonder why Berman and Green would continue to lobby for oil companies that conduct business with the government in this sordid and sleazy manner," says David Donnelly of the nonpartisan Campaign Money Watch. "Relying on lobbyists like these certainly puts a little more tarnish on McCain's so-called reformer image."

The McCain campaign didn't respond to a request for comment.


http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccain_cleaning_up_lobbying_hi.php

change for the worse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtKGNvJ5u4&feature=user

and every other organ. McSame is an ambitious, greedy pathological LIAR.

you can eat it, drink it, or fuck it.

That's the way it was explained to me anyway.

" ...to federal officials in charge of a program that oversees a program by which the companies can pay for use of public lands with free energy instead of cash, saving them money"

technology.

In addition to invasion, plundering, massacres, torture, torment, suicides, theft of votes, theft of funds, theft of cash, lies, purchase of sham propaganda Republicans are expert at trading for self satisfaction and private gains.