Palin Blames Wall Street Woes on Lobbyists – The Same Ones Who Now Work for the McCain-Palin Campaign?

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In her third media interview (first two: ABC and People magazine), Sarah Palin talked Wall Street with Sean Hannity. The Fox News host wanted some answers on the current economic upheaval:

HANNITY: How connected is it, though, to Washington? You have 354 lawmakers got money from Fannie and Freddie. 354. If you look at the years from 1989 to 2008, second-top recipient was Senator Barack Obama. Should there be an investigation in terms of the relationship between the political donations and then of course the bankruptcy that ensued and the impact on the economy?

PALIN: I think that’s significant, but even more significant is the role that the lobbyists play in an issue like this also. And in that cronyism — it’s symptomatic of the grade of problem that we see right now in Washington and that is just that acceptance of the status quo, the politics as usual, the cronyism that has been allowed to be accepted and then it leads us to a position like we are today with so much collapse on Wall Street. That’s the reform that we’ve got to get in there and make sure that this happens. We’ve got to put government and these regulatory agencies back on the side of the people.

Set aside the fact that she says nothing of substance about the economy or conditions on Wall Street. She says, “even more significant is the role that the lobbyists play in an issue like this… the cronyism that has been allowed to be accepted and then it leads us to… so much collapse on Wall Street.” There’s some confusing language in there but when you filter it out you get one inescapable conclusion.

Sarah Palin blames Wall Street lobbyists for a major part of the financial industry’s “collapse.”

If that’s the case, why does she let 83 Wall Street lobbyists work for her campaign? McCain and Palin are slamming the “greed” of Wall Street and its lobbying pals on a daily basis, saying that they are hurting average Americans. Wouldn’t you think McCain and Palin owe it to those average Americans to keep the lobbyists in question off the campaign payroll?

Photo by Ryan McFarland used under a Creative Commons license.

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It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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