Washington Babylon — May 12, 2008, 9:16 am
SIGN IN to access Harper’s Magazine
ALERT: Usernames and passwords from the old Harpers.org will no longer work. To create a new password and add or verify your email address, please sign in to customer care and select Email/Password Information. (To learn about the change, please read our FAQ.)
Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!
Create a login here. Forgot password? Forgot email? More help here.
Doug Goodyear, who had been picked by John McCain’s campaign to run the G.O.P. convention this summer, resigned over the weekend after Newsweek reported that a lobbying firm he heads once represented Burma. The DCI Group–Goodyear is its CEO–“was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma’s military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today,” said Newsweek.
Some of McCain’s allies, the magazine added, worried that Goodyear’s selection to run the convention “could fuel perceptions that McCain—who has portrayed himself as a crusader against special interests—is surrounded by lobbyists.” (Since McCain is, in fact, surrounded by lobbyists, it’s easy to see the source of that “perception.”)
I’d reported last September on DCI’s ties to Burma and to the G.O.P. One oddity that I noted back then: One of DCI’s lead lobbyists for the Burmese junta was Charles Francis, chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC), which describes itself on its website as “a relatively new name in gay political circles.” One triumph, the site says, was when Francis “managed to bring Mary Cheney, the Second Family’s daughter and a former gay and lesbian outreach operative for the Coors brewery, out of the shadows of Colorado and on to the RUC advisory board.” As you’ll see, DCI’s ties to the G.O.P. extend well beyond McCain.
More from Ken Silverstein:
Commentary — July 25, 2012, 2:20 pm
Washington Babylon — September 29, 2010, 11:37 am
Percentage by which the risk of type 2 diabetes increases for every two hours a day that a person watches television:
Two bottled ghosts—of an old man and a young girl—were sold at auction in New Zealand.
The practice of sexualized eyeball licking was causing conjunctivitis in Japanese sixth graders.
