Cell reception sucks an elephant dong at John McCain's Arizona ranch. Or it did, until Cindy McCain "embarked on an expensive public process" for Verizon Wireless to build a permanent cell tower at their ranch, reports the Washington Post. That got scrapped, but Verizon did see fit to "navigate a lengthy county regulatory process that hit a snag on environmental concerns" in order to get the McCain's setup with at least a portable tower, absolutely free of charge. AT&T caught word of this, and brought in one of their own towers, also free. Wouldn't ya know, there's a laundry list of ethical concerns?
McCain is a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which happens to oversee the FCC, which regulates the telecom industry—like AT&T and Verizon. Conflict of interest much? And it's not like McCain and Verizon are strangers to each other, anyway. Five of his campaign officials, including manager Rick Davis, have been soul-sucking lobbyists in Washington. A former staffer, Robert Fisher, is now Verizon's in-house lobbyist. Verizon chief Ivan G. Seidenberg, Fisher and other Verizon lobbyists have plowed over $1.3 million into McCain's campaign, and Verizon employees are one of its top 20 corporate donors over the course of McCain's career.
The AT&T situation is as bad, or worse: AT&T lobbyists have raised $2.3 million for McCain, and their employees are his no. 3 corporate donors of all time. His Senate chief of staff Mark Buse, and a whole bunch of others have been AT&T lobbyists.
There's even more in the Post's exclusive story, it's worth checking out if you wanna find out how to get Verizon and AT&T to build personal cell towers at your house if your reception sucks (fair warning, it helps to be a presidential nominee though). [Washington Post]
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Apparently the Washington Post thinks it has an ethics violation to hold against Cindy McCain, wife of GOP presidential candidate John McCain. The Post is trying to claim that Cindy McCain somehow illicitly got a portable cell tower delivered to her remote Arizona ranch so that their phones would work there. The truth is, however, the Secret Service ordered up the portable cell tower, not Cindy McCain.
Even the words the Post uses to report the story prove somewhat weasely because, as the Post can't find any actual wrong doing, the story relies on vague ways of implying wrongdoing without actually saying it. In the end, there doesn't seem to be much there, there, but I suppose the Post had to justify the money it spent by publishing this non-story anyway.
The story starts right in with the vague verbiage of implied wrong doing. After saying that Cindy McCain sought to improve the cell reception around her "remote 15-acre ranch near Sedona, Ariz" and that she did so "just as her husband launched his presidential bid," the Post tried to imply that it was all at undue costs. (bold mine)
"""Over the past year, she offered land for a permanent cell tower, and Verizon Wireless embarked on an expensive public process to meet her needs, hiring contractors and seeking county land-use permits."""
"Embarked on an expensive public process"? what can this be but a weasely way to imply that obscene costs are involved here and that maybe, just maybe these obscene costs are done just because Cindy McCain is privileged? But, let us be reminded that this "expensive" cost would have been at the expense of a private corporation. The government is not paying for this. So, if Verizon wanted to build a cell tower for the McCains, isn't it their right to do so?
This article is also a thinly veiled effort to paint McCain as an elitist. The Post is engaging in class warfare at its worst with this piece. It's the old she's-rich-so-she-gets-more-than-you argument...
http://conservablogs.com/publiusforum/2008/10/16/wapo-tries-to-claim-cindy-mccain-unethical-for-erection-of-cell-phone-tower/
Much ado about nothing, but the Post will STILL try to make it into "something."
Getting a cell phone tower somewhere doesn’t require hugh political connections. Heck, even churches are putting these in their steeples these days to get a little extra revenue.
Cindy offered her land FOR FREE for the cell tower. So, I’m sure Verizon thought that it might be feasible financially to embark on the public approval process (which isn’t that expensive). Cell companies often pay $12K per year in rent to landowners, so Verizon was getting something in the deal. When environmentalists got involved, that’s when it became expensive and Verizon dropped their plans. Now there is a temporary tower because the Secret Service requested it for security reasons.
Any landowner can approach a cell company and see if they are willing to put up a tower on their land. If the company wants to, they will embark on the “expensive” process of getting government approval to place a tower there. Washington Post is just plain stupid because they don’t understand how the real world works.
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