One of Barack Obama’s hometown newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times, chimes in with an editorial today inspired by Obama’s half-hour infomercial. The paper notes that the program was the product of the huge funding disparity between Obama (who opted out of public financing) and John McCain (who took $84 million in federal funds).

Most importantly, it joins other papers in calling for a fix to the system: “Public financing of campaigns can give lesser-known candidates a fair shot and, when it’s funded well – as a few states have done – produce more competitive races, more candidates and more newcomers. When Obama broke his pledge to take a public grant, he said he would work to overhaul the political finance system. On Nov. 5, whether or not he’s president-elect, we plan to hold him to that.”

Speaking of the Obama campaign, the New York Times takes a look at how it’s spending its money: 30 minute commercials aside, it spends it quite frugally, it turns out.

The Times joins the Sun-Times in calling for a fix to the system in an editorial that notes this campaign could wind up costing $2 billion. The paper calls for a more aggressive system for dispensing federal matching funds and calls on Congress to limit the power of joint state and national fund-raising committees, which still allow for the writing of huge checks (and granting the access that goes along with them).

Over at Slate, John Dickerson and Chris Wilson engage in an experiment to see how easy it would be for Obama to disclose the source of his small donations: They claim it’s not difficult at all.

Finally, just one reminder of who’s still working hard to pull strings in Washington, according to the Wall Street Journal: “Lobbyists descended on Capitol Hill to push for an economic-stimulus bill that could cost as much as $150 billion…”

MccClatchy Newspapers’ Greg Gordon filed an interesting report yesterday that appears to debunk John McCain’s claim that, after the embarrassment of the Keating Five scandal, he never again pressured regulators on behalf of a friend. In fact, the story says McCain “promoted an Arizona land swap that would’ve benefited a former mentor and partner of the scandal’s central figure.”

The story details McCain’s efforts in the late 1990s to forge a land swap with the U.S. Forest Service that would have benefited the owners of the Spur Cross Ranch, which included a company controlled by former Charles Keating associate Carl Lindner Jr.

Gordon notes that, before the deal fell through, “McCain and an aide pushed for the exchange in more than a half dozen sometimes-testy letters and phone calls up and down the Forest Service’s hierarchy, according to former agency officials and correspondence. McCain’s office even circulated draft legislation that would have overridden the agency’s objection to surrendering national forest land.”

The New York Times’ Larry Rohter reports on a notable absence from McCain’s “economic roundtable” on Monday: lobbyist and former Sen. Phil Gramm. Gramm, along with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, has been “shunted off to Siberia, not because of policy disagreements but as the result of gaffes that reflected badly on the Republican candidate.” In Gramm’s case, of course, the gaffe was the infamous “nation of whiners” comment.

As has been noted, the Republican National Committee’s fundraising and spending is what’s really keeping McCain in the race at this point. Those of you interested in the nitty-gritty of how the RNC (and its Democratic counterpart) have been spending and raising money lately will appreciate this report from CQ Politics’ Greg Giroux.

National Journal has a new blog, “Under the Influence,” that focuses on the “lobbying and advocacy industry.” One of its first posts, by Alexis Simendinger, examines how lobbyists feel about being a punching bag in this year’s race. The lobbyists in this story call the focus on their profession “silly and arbitrary” and “at its core…political.” The new blog also offers up a PDF of how an Obama administration plans to deal with lobbyists.

Speaking of Obama, USA Today’s Ken Dilanian notes that business executives are warming up to the Democratic nominee. The story reports that among Obama’s donors, “5,845 list “CEO” or “chief executive” in their title, compared with 2,597 of McCain’s donors.” Interestingly, the executives quoted appear to be doing more than cozying up to a front-runner – their decision to give seems motivated by personal beliefs.

John McCain’s ties to gambling interests have been getting a bit more attention these days – look at these recent reports by The Associated Press and CBS News. Now, that relationship is the subject of a new ad by Campaign Money Watch – more details about the ad will be posted here later today, but feel free to watch it right now.

In other news, the Associated Press’ Justin Pritchard and Garance Burke reported this weekend that McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, presided over a “flawed bidding process” for a massive pipeline project that “narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration.” The story notes that “leader of Palin’s pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman’s former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada’s lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal.”

Also in the news today are reports of two GOP fundraisers who once played a crucial role but have seen their influence minimized. The first is President Bush – The Washington Post notes that the unpopular incumbent has been relegated to relatively small events for congressional fundraising committees and hasn’t attended many events for specific candidates, most notably McCain.

The other Republican fundraiser down on his luck these days is McCain bundler Harold C. Simmons, who was behind 2004’s infamous Swift Boat ads. His efforts this year to tie Barack Obama to William Ayers haven’t had much impact, The New York Times notes, largely because Democrats were simply better prepared, but also because independent groups have seen their influence decline this election.

Even with two weeks to go until the election, yet another connection between John McCain and troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has come to light.

Word came out this weekend that Freddie Mac secretly paid Republican firm DCI Group to lobby GOP senators to oppose legislation that would have increased regulations on its lending.

Does DCI Group sound familiar? It might – it turns out that DCI Group’s CEO is Doug Goodyear, who was John McCain’s choice to organize this year’s Republican National Convention. And, as Newsweek reported in May, Goodyear’s firm also made money representing Burma’s brutal military junta.

As for McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, The New Yorker has a lengthy article on the governor’s rise to prominence among the GOP elite – the very “Good Ol’ Boys Network” she so often decries. Part of that, the story mentions, was her quick desire to cozy up to powerful Washington lobbyists after she became mayor of Wasilla.

Of course, McCain spent Sunday questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s staggering $150 million in September fundraising, saying on Fox News Sunday, “What’s going to happen, particularly if you’ve got an incumbent president, and we no longer stick to the … public financing, which was a result of the Watergate scandal?”

Sen. McCain might want to ask this question of himself, as “sticking to public financing” proved to be, well, a sticky point during the Republican primaries. You may remember that McCain opted into the public financing system for the primaries and then decided to change his mind once his campaign took off. Despite the questionable legality of this move, the FEC eventually let him off the hook.

Finally, The Dallas Morning News explores why an Obama administration, combined with a Democratic Congress, would likely result in new regulations on AT&T. As for a McCain administration, the story notes that “AT&T’s executives and lobbyists have longstanding ties to Mr. McCain,” including the company’s top lobbyist, Tim McKone, who has raised $500,000 for the GOP nominee. The article also points out that some of McCain’s “top campaign aides are former AT&T lobbyists, including Charlie Black and Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager. Some of Mr. McCain’s Senate aides later worked as lobbyists for AT&T.”

Our biggest story today is one we mentioned yesterday – McCain bundler Harry Sargeant III was labeled a “war profiteer” Thursday by Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which is investigating Sargeant’s oil services company for overcharging the U.S military for oil it shipped to troops in Iraq. Read the whole story in our post from yesterday.

But what’s really generating some headlines today is lobbyist Vicki Iseman finally breaking her silence in an interview with National Journal. Iseman, you probably remember, was the subject of a New York Times piece early this year that alleged she had an affair with John McCain. Iseman strongly denies that claim today, and says the Times’ story nearly broke her. While there’s little in the way of news, it does offer an interesting look at both McCain’s time in the Senate and the inner workings (and dysfunctions) of his presidential campaign.

Finally, BusnessWeek reports on lobbyists for the three Detroit automakers, who are “pestering” both the McCain and Obama campaigns for a bailout for their struggling industry. Their biggest asset might be the electoral map: “Its hired guns point out that many auto plants are in battleground states—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Missouri.”

We’ve all been there – you’re in a remote area and cellphone coverage is lacking or sometimes non-existent. Most of us resign ourselves to being out of touch for a while.

But when you’re Cindy McCain, you get two cellphone towers built right on your property by Verizon and AT&T – two companies that have given John McCain both hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions and over a dozen lobbyist bundlers.

That’s the story, according to The Washington Post’s James V. Grimaldi, and it’s one that goes to the heart of why John McCain’s lobbyist ties are so important. The article makes it clear that the towers were completely unnecessary in terms of providing coverage, and so few people lived near them that they could never be profitable.

Of course, none of that may matter when the McCains are the customers. Why? Well, Sen. McCain has been a friend to AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants during his service on the Senate Commerce Committee, where he is a senior member and former chairman. And it turns out that McCain and these two companies have had a healthy exchange of money and lobbyists over the years.

According to a Campaign Money Watch analysis of data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, AT&T employees and PACs have given McCain $480,408.00 since 1989. Verizon has contributed $282,572.00. AT&T is his No. 3 all-time contributor; Verizon is No. 11.

A list of the people who have lobbied for AT&T and Verizon forms a virtual who’s-who of McCain’s campaign staff, advisors and fundraisers. They include: national finance co-chair and bundler Wayne Berman, senior advisor Charlie Black, McCain’s Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, VP vetter A.B. Culvahouse, campaign manager Rick Davis, deputy RNC chair Frank Donatelli, deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry, congressional liaison John Green, former finance chair Tom Loeffler, mega-bundler Tim McKone, George W. Bush national finance chair Jack Oliver and transition team head William Timmons.

In total, AT&T has paid nearly $20.9 million in lobbying fees to lobbyists now connected to McCain’s campaign, with Verizon paying just over $7 million. Those same lobbyists have bundled $600,000 for McCain.

The best way to illustrate these many, many connections is to visit our home page – click on one of the lobbyists mentioned above to see just how complicated this web (with McCain at the center) really is.

All those connections appear to have helped the McCains get good cellphone reception, even though AT&T and Verizon had to navigate through plenty of red tape to do it. That they’re willing to do such favors for McCain suggests they might expect a lot from him if he were elected to the White House. With so many of their lobbyists in McCain’s orbit, they’d definitely have reason to be hopeful.

Today’s big story comes courtesy of Murray Waas, who reports on Huffington Post that the head of John McCain’s transition team, lobbyist William Timmons, “aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.”

Waas notes that Timmons’ previoius claim that he didn’t know two of his associates, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, were working on Saddam’s behalf falls flat: “Virtually everything Timmons did while working on the lobbying campaign was within days conveyed by Vincent to either one or both of Saddam Hussein’s top aides, Tariq Aziz and Nizar Hamdoon. Vincent also testified that he almost always relayed input from the Iraqi aides back to Timmons.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Monica Langley reports that McCain’s rhetoric during the economic crisis has caused tension between the candidate and financial executives and advisers. The story also suggests that Wall Street is increasingly reluctant to donate to the Republican’s campaign, because of both concern about McCain’s response to the crisis and Barack Obama’s rise in the polls.

Finally, The Washington Post’s Matthew Mosk gives us another report on Obama’s airwave dominance, though it also details some of the problems that go with having such a large donor base.

An analysis piece posted on CNN.com yesterday goes after what might be the source of John McCain’s recent troubles: “In the end, it’s not relevant who holds what title in the McCain operation, because it is not being run by campaign professionals, but by the Washington lobbying class.”

The sentiment is not surprising, but the source may be: GOP strategist Ed Rollins, known most recently for managing Mike Huckabee’s overachieving presidential campaign.

At least McCain has the political professionals at the Republican National Committee helping him stay in the game. The New York Times’ Leslie Wayne notes that the RNC, “flush with cash,” recently made two $5 million ad buys.

That money from the RNC – which is allowed to take much, much larger donations than candidates themselves can – appears essential to keeping the spending wars competitive. As The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza notes, there is growing speculation that Barack Obama may have raised well over $100 million in September. That would shatter the earlier record set by… Barack Obama in August.

Overall, the presidential race appears to have crossed the $1 billion spending threshhold. As Agence France-Presse notes, “the total bill adds up to 1.3 billion dollars spent during the length of a marathon struggle which started back in early 2007.” And that figure doesn’t appear to include spending by outside groups.

Even the presidential debates aren’t immune from the effects of money, The New York Times’ Leslie Wayne reports. The Commission on Presidential Debates is largely dependent on cash and in-kind contributions from corporations like Anheuser-Busch and the International Bottled Water Association. But the most disconcerting part of this arrangement, as one critic noted, is that “sponsors receive tickets to the events allowing them to ‘hobnob with campaign staff advisers and managers who will be senior advisers in the next administration.’”

Finally, The New York Times’ Robert Pear looks at the health care and pharmaceutical industries’ political contributions and notes that the money is shifting toward the Democrats. The question, of course, is what impact that will have on health care policy in 2009. History suggests the industries’ investments will pay off.

(Sorry for the late post today. We had some technical difficulties this morning.)

The “Troopergate” investigation into whether John McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, abused her powers in pushing for her brother-in-law to be fired, and if those efforts resulted in the firing of the state’s public safety commissioner, is picking up steam. “First Dude” Todd Palin submitted a statement to the legislative investigation yesterday that indicated his efforts to get the trooper fired “started before his wife became governor and accelerated during the first 19 months of her administration,” the Anchorage Daily News’ Bill White reports.

The legislative panel’s report is expected to be released in a matter of days.

As for McCain, The New York Times reports today that a plan he floated in Tuesday’s debate – having the government buy up bad mortgages – would “would leave taxpayers to cover the losses, rather than the financial institutions that hold the original mortgages.” Of course, those are the same financial institutions that, with the help of deregulatory laws supported by McCain, played a big role in sparking the current crisis.

In an editorial today, the Times notes the “hypocrisy” of McCain for his talk about Obama’s “cronies” during the debate. After noting that McCain once called lobbyists “birds of prey,” they say the GOP nominee “is living in a virtual aviary with, among others, his campaign manager and his White House transition planner, bona fide heavyweights in the power game of lobbying and consulting.”

In the same vein, The Washington Post’s Zachary Goldfarb examines how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae became this year’s “political hot potato,” noting how deeply entangled the mortgage giants were in Washington and the two presidential campaigns.

The LA Times’ Dan Morain and Doug Smith examine how Obama’s fundraising has, basically, been so successful that it’s rendered existing law obsolete. Campaigns don’t have to report information on donors who provide $200 or less, but Obama has raised so much money from small donors that a large chunk of his donor base is completely unknown. Basically, when the law was written, no one thought so much could be raised via small donors.

Finally, and along the same topic, the Financial Times notes that Blue State Digital, whose tools and consulting have helped fuel Obama’s record-breaking online fundraising, is taking its business international.

The Republican National Committee made the news over the weekend by demanding a Federal Election Commission audit of Barack Obama’s political donations, citing concerns that the Democratic nominee was illegally accepting money from foreign nationals, the Wall Street Journal and others reported.

The Journal’s take notes that Republicans “didn’t provide evidence of widespread foreign contributions” and that any audit, if approved would take place after election day, two facts that have led to questions over the motives behind the RNC’s action.

John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, is facing an interesting week. The “Troopergate” report is scheduled for release on Oct. 10, and, according to the Anchorage Daily News’ Wesley Loy, seven state employees are set to honor subpoenas and testify in the legislative investigation. She’s also being sued by a Republican activist over two personal e-mail accounts, The Washington Post’s Matthew Mosk reports. Amid all that, she still managed to attend a California fundraiser on Sunday.

Agence France Presse notes that, even as lobbyists become a “whipping boy” on the campaign trail during the economic crisis, they’ve also come to be more relied upon than ever. But the story ends on an optimistic note for those worried lobbyists will roll back any regulations put into place: “”There is such an enormous popular reaction to what has happened that it will be more difficult than usual for lobbyists to turn back and craft legislation.”

No wonder President Bush was so eager to sign the bailout bill – turns out, according to The Associated Press, that he left for a fundraiser only 28 minutes after signing the legislation.

USA Today reports on Hillary Rodham Clinton as a fundraising draw for Barack Obama. She’s reportedly raised more than $8 million for her former rival for the Democratic nomination.

Speaking of Obama’s fundraising, Newsday turns up a good example of why a ban on lobbyist contributions may be well intentioned, but is prone to loopholes.