Well one aspect of the Keating affair that I believe came up in the NYT article was that McCain’s wife invested in a mall with Keating but McCain did not see that as a conflict of interest and recuse himself from overseeing investigations into Keating’s activities. Given this extra level of involvement, it is something that his punishment was the lightest of the Keating 5.

Maybe that aspect of it could stand some additional scrutiny, but as I said, Keating had many, many good projects here prior to his purchase of Lincoln Savings. The corruption was supposed to be that five sitting Senators confronted Federal regulators and basically bullied them to “shit or get off the pot.” OTOH, if you were to invest in RE in AZ at the time, you would be smart to invest with one of Keating’s projects. Deconcini owned vacant property all over the area here; I saw countless deeds with his name on them. He was essentially a land speculator as well as a sitting Senator. Our greatest industry in AZ is growth. Also, consider the fact that a developer was once elected the Governor of the State (following the election of a used car salesman who was thrown out of office for making the state a laughingstock with his poor choices of words.) That is, before he had to vacate his office due to corruption and fraud with his bank loans. When you get into real estate dealings in this state, you’re really getting into the deep weeds. I’m just not sure it’s productive enough!

Hi Raven. Howzat?!

Sexism sexism!