McCain is against help for the Big 3 but he is all for govt. subsidies for his wife's beer business

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http://www.reason.com/news/show/129476.html

How Your Beer Bought John McCain's $500 Loafers

Uncovering the government subsidies behind Cindy McCain's family fortune

Radley Balko | October 15, 2008

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has made no bones about his disgust for greed. In the primaries, he contrasted his own record of public service with the private sector career of opponent Mitt Romney, whom McCain derided as a "profit manager." More recently, as the world’s capital markets fell into a full-blown crisis, McCain has struck a populist chord, lambasting the "unbridled greed" that he says drives Wall Street.

Though ostensibly more free market than his opponent Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), McCain (he of the eight houses, 13 cars, and $500 loafers) has never been shy about laying into what he feels are the excesses of capitalism, including the way lobbyists can bribe lawmakers to jigger the system to their liking. The problem for McCain is that the fortune he married into came by way of alcohol wholesaling, an industry that isn’t remotely free market, is awash in excess, and that wouldn’t exist were it not for rigorous system-jiggering from high-powered lobbyists.

When McCain married his second wife Cindy Lou Hensley in 1980, he became one half of a very wealthy household. By some estimates, Cindy McCain’s stake in her family’s Hensley & Co. beer distributorship puts her net worth around $100 million. The Hensley company gave McCain an executive position shortly after he married the heiress, helped catapult him into public office, has thrown heaps of money at his campaigns over the years, and in addition to providing him with a charmed life, has played a significant role in putting him an election away from the White House.

Over the course of his career, media outlets covering McCain have delved pretty extensively into the history of Cindy McCain’s father and his company, as well as the ethical issues McCain will have to face if he’s elected and his wife still serves as the company’s president (McCain generally recuses himself from federal legislation pertaining to alcohol regulation—he won’t have that option as president). But thus far, there’s been little examination of the beer wholesaling industry as a whole. To be blunt, the entire industry is a farce. It’s an artificial, anachronistic, government-created entity that’s anti-competitive and full of lobbyists and special interests. It raises the cost of each bottle of beer you drink, though “Joe Six Pack,” as McCain’s running mate might put it, receives no value for the added cost.