Popeye
Well-Known Member
For those of you all worked up over Tony Rezko, I thought it was time to put things into perspective. That means a short refresher course on the Keating Five scandal:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080613/OPINION12/806130310/1002/OPINION
The actions of the Keating Five cost many their life savings, nothing John McCain can do can change that. This man has demonstrated a distinct lack of ethics and morals throughout his public and personal career. Nothing can change that either.
Charles Keating was a savings-and-loan kingpin from Phoenix who befriended John McCain during his earliest days in politics. While McCain was a congressman, he regularly flew on Keating's private jet, and for three years in the mid-1980s their families vacationed together at Keating's opulent Bahamas resort. When McCain ran for the Senate in 1986, Keating, his family and friends raised $112,600 for the campaign.
Then, in 1987, just a few months after McCain was elected, his pal Charles Keating came knocking at the door. Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association was in trouble, facing a probable criminal referral from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to the Justice Department. Keating requested -- actually demanded -- that McCain join four other senators (all Democrats) to pressure banking regulators to ease up on Lincoln. Unwisely, Sen. McCain attended two meetings on Keating's behalf. When Lincoln finally tanked, it cost taxpayers $3.4 billion along with the life savings of many of McCain's elderly Arizona constituents.
Keating faced 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud, and his friend John McCain faced the ordeal of a highly public Senate ethics investigation. For a man whose honor is the core of his identity, McCain was deeply humiliated. The Keating Five scandal became national shorthand for the kind of political influence money can buy. Robert Timberg, McCain's biographer, says that for three years his Senate office was paralyzed by paranoia and an ever-deepening despondence. McCain said of the eight weeks of televised Senate Ethics Committee Hearings: "This is the worst thing, the absolute worst thing that ever happened to me." Reminded of his years of captivity and torture during the Vietnam War, McCain said, "No, this is worse."
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080613/OPINION12/806130310/1002/OPINION
The actions of the Keating Five cost many their life savings, nothing John McCain can do can change that. This man has demonstrated a distinct lack of ethics and morals throughout his public and personal career. Nothing can change that either.