Slashdot Mirror
Hollings vs. McCain on Broadband and Copyrights
tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post has a mostly speculative article on the effects of John McCain (R-AR) replacing Ernest 'Fritz' Hollings (D-SC) as chairman of the powerful senate Commerce Committee. Topics in the article include the future of pending broadband and copyright legislation as well as the Senate's relationship with the FCC. Best quote from the article belongs to ITAA president Harris Miller: 'If Jack Valenti had been around at the time of Gutenberg he would have organized the monks to come and burn down the printing press' :-)."
John McCain (R-AR)
AR? I thought McCain was an Arizona senator. That's AZ.
No sig for you.
Neither organization would consider McCain's 2001 year to be "highly conservative." The American Conservative Union rates senators on this page. A higher rating means more conservative. For example, Arizona Republican John Kyl scores a 100 (very conservative) while California Democrat Barbara Boxer scores a 0 (very liberal). Senator McCain scored a 68 in 2001. In 2000 he scored 81 and his lifetime rating is 84. He is obviously becoming more liberal by these ratings.
McCain wasn't the lowest scoring Republican, as Sen. Spector from PA and both the Maine senators scored lower. McCain also scored higher than any democrat, the most conservative of whom is GA's Miller, with a score of 60. For reference, Sen. Lott scored 96 and Sen. Frist scored 100, while Sen. Daschle scored an 8 and Sen. Kennedy scored 4. So, by ACU standards, he is one of the more liberal Republicans in the Senate, though he should not be called a liberal.
The Americans for Democratic Action have a similar system, but they score it oppositely: a rating of 0 = very conservative and a rating of 100 = very liberal. You can see a .PDF file of the 2001 ratings on this page. Sen. McCain scored a 40, higher than the lowest Democrat (Sen. Miller of GA) who scored a 35. By ADA reckoning, McCain was tied for the most liberal Republican Senator (with Spector (PA) and Sen. Snowe (ME)).
His Stances and choices usually support what the Democrats want, and often exceeds their wildest dreams.
Give us some examples.
The McCain-Feingold-Cochran Campaign Reform Act. This act was assailed by many conservatives as being unconstitutional and giving incumbants free reign in their campaigns.
Only 2 things are non republican about him.
1.) He is not aligned with the christian coalition or at least honestly admits that he disagrees with him. Most republicans will say they are christians when they are not so they will get funding from them.
2.) He hates corruption and believes both political parties work for the American people and not special interests or corporations. He only strikes down republican bills if there is alot of pork spending.
Big tobacco tried to oust McCain and even ran very negative campaign ads when no election was around!
Why? Because McCain supported the right of consumers and the government to sue big tobacco companies for increasing health care costs. He did not take this position to be an all lets save everyone liberal but hundreds of millions of taxpayer money is spent on healthcare for smoke related health issues.
McCain voted for a huge tax on big tobacco to make the difference for the costs. Many enemies in the republican party as well as lobbiests for Philip-Moris painted McCain as a big spending liberal. Behind closed doors all of McCains republican colleagues told him that Philip-morris would run negative campaign ads during the current non election year and give money to the democrats if they voted with him. His colleagues had no option but vote in favor of big tobacco. This angered McCain so much that he began to investigate the effects of soft-money had on our government. This is why he used it during the 2000 campaign.
The other time McCain got in trouble was a big pork spending bill that would benefit the then leader Trent Lotts home district. Lott wanted to buy yet more warships that the navy specifically requested it did not want because they had too many ships and too few crewman to run them. McCain attacked Lott as a spender and things got nasty. In the end the ship was built for over 100 million of our tax dollars.
McCain hates special interests and corruption and I am so thankful he will head the committee. He will care about our needs and will not buckle under pressure from the RIAA or MPAA. Republicans stronly believed in individual rights while liberals believed in group rights and big government. McCain I believe is our man.
http://saveie6.com/