McCain's "Inappropriate Intervention" - Buy Vicki Iseman and you get McCain

[kpete]

McCain’s Favors for Iseman Involved Helping Far Right-Wing Families to Sustain their Shell Companies
By: emptywheel Saturday February 23, 2008 6:10 am

When I noted that John McCain's lobbyist gal had represented the two networks that would, in 2004, show the anti-Kerry propaganda piece, Stolen Honor, I admitted I didn't know precisely whether or how John McCain had helped the second of these two networks, Sinclair Broadcasting's shell company, Glencairn Broadcasting. Today, the NYT makes it very clear that McCain used the same kind of inappropriate, pushy tactics for Sinclair as he had with Paxson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/politics/23lobby.html?_r=2&ref=us&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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Labaton suggests--but doesn't say it--that companies with business interests before McCain could hire Iseman as the best way to get entre to him. Buy Vicki Iseman and you get McCain. No wonder she was bragging about her access to him.

There are two things that Labaton doesn't say, but that are fairly clear. McCain intervened to help Sinclair keep its shell company. This was no mere marketing agreement to help a struggling broadcaster survive, this was an attempt to get around the law.

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This is the kind of activity that--if its purpose were to channel money, rather than broadcast signal--would be called money laundering. McCain helped a company evade the clear intent of the law, and in so doing, really concentrate its reach for such a moment when it might want to use its stations as a propaganda vehicle.

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As the NYT shows, Sinclair only achieved that concentration thanks to McCain's inappropriate intervention.


more at:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/02/23/mccains-favors-for-iseman-involved-allowing-far-right-wing-families-to-sustain-their-shell-companies/#more-1851

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1017-01.htm

[Botany]

1. And thanx to McCain Sinclair was able to gain huge market shares

from which the could broadcast the filth of "Stolen Honor" aka
the "Swiftboating of John Kerry." John McCain friend of the vets
my ass.

[lynnertic]

2. She's the Devil with a Blue Dress on!

That should be McCain's new campaign song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2i11MQS2fQ
(there were other versions of the song to choose but this one featured the prettiest legs!)

[hedda_foil]

3. This is the money quote.

McCain helped a company evade the clear intent of the law, and in so doing, really concentrate its reach for such a moment when it might want to use its stations as a propaganda vehicle.

And then there's the sheer hypocrisy of it. Five years later, when Sinclair used its concentration to smear a military hero, McCain blamed that smear not on the motivations of the family running Sinclair or those bankrolling the propaganda, but on the concentration of Sinclair's company.

"I do have an opinion that this is an issue that results when you have media concentration, which I have been opposed to," he said at a fund-raiser for Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.). "When you have media concentration - this is the largest TV owner with 62 stations - this is something that happens."

[johnfunk]

4. New McCain campaign slogan...