A story this morning detailing the McCain campaign's fraud in misrepresenting the support of McCain's "300 Economists" who signed on in support Monday of McCain's economic plan. This is a scandal waiting to break, and this should really blow a hole in McCain's Straight Talk Express....
Politico breaks the campaign black eye
In interviews with more than a dozen of the signatories, Politico found that, far from embracing McCain’s economic plan, many were unfamiliar with — or downright opposed to — key details. While most of those contacted by Politico had warm feelings about McCain, many did not want to associate themselves too closely with his campaign and its policy prescriptions.
Howard Beales, an economist at George Washington University, explained that he signed the letter as "an expression of support for [McCain], not necessarily each and every detail of his plan, which I may not have had time to study closely."
Straight talk What?
The reason is quite simple; they were signing a simple 400 word statement of support, and those signatures were then attached to the full 15 page plan.
The original statement release
U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today released a statement signed by over 300 professional economists in support of John McCain's Jobs for America economic plan. The list includes Nobel Prize winners, business economists with experience in the private sector, policy economists with experience in government and academic economists from major universities and state and community college
Professional economists, Nobel Laureats, obviously they were trying to paint a clear and significant picture, one which now has a great many problems upon any inspection at all. For instance, there is an Obama supporter listed... I guess when you need 300, you'll take what you can get.
Constantine Alexandrakis, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, expressed second thoughts about signing.
"I would describe myself as an Obama supporter," he explained. "Maybe I shouldn't have rushed into signing the letter."
Alexandrakis said he added his name in order to show his support for certain principles in McCain's plan — such as free trade and a reduction in corporate tax rates. But there are other aspects of McCain's proposal, such as his pledge to make permanent the 2001 tax cuts, that Alexandrakis opposes.
The way this fraud was created is rather simple. They solicited support for McCain's plans in general, then attached that support to a detailed laundry list Monday. Obviously given the entire 15 page plan to sign, many if not most would have balked because of specific provisions which make no sense economically at all.
The McCain campaign’s economic team, led by adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, began collecting signatures from economists several months ago, with the intention of showing support for McCain's broad economic priorities, rather than the specific items in his Jobs for America proposal.
The statement they signed is 403 words long — and there is no mention of the gas tax holiday or the deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office projects will approach $400 billion this year.
To put it in the simplest of terms, this is downright fraud as what the signatures were attached to was a 15 page document full of McCainonomics such as Gas tax holidays and promises to balance the budget by 2013 without any mention of specific measures to reach such a sitatuion, other than the Victory dividends (insert laugh track)
Huffington Post adds
What's more, the statement signed by the economists didn't even mention two critical planks McCain's economic argument: "the gas tax holiday and his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term -- there's literally nothing in the release that mentions the deficit or national debt."
Indeed, the Huffington Post surveyed economists from across the political spectrum and couldn't find a single one who supports two of McCain's signature economic/energy positions: increased off-shore drilling and a gas tax holiday.
Where is the MSM on this story? McCain's repackaged bullshit is quickly becoming a problem; will the Media notice?
UPDATE: Again Politico reports on McCain's 300, this time in relation to a question by the Press on exactly how McCain plans to balance the budget by 2013.
And I am convinced that we can do that. Our economic plan has been supported by 300 economists and five Nobel laureates. Now, they have supported our economic plan. There are those who don't agree with it or don't believe it, who don't believe our economy can improve, who don’t believe that ingenuity and entrepreneurship of Americans can be unleashed. I do.
If the opening to hit McCain on this earlier was a bit small, now its wide open as he's clearly relying on these 300 signatures to defend his economic proposals. Either it stops now or we'll hear about these 300 all the way until October (I'm looking at you Chicago!) Show some OFFENSE PLEASE... where is the Memo/Conference Call?