Could someone buy Senator McCain some cue cards? Something with big, bold text on them that can be read from a mile away. And somebody to hold them for him would be a good idea, too.
Seems that he told the world that Rick Davis has not had any dealings with Freddie Mac for a long time.
NYT, September 23, 2008 One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.
Ruh roh….
The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years.
The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.
What are we going to learn next, that he is not really Mrs. McCain’s little boy, but was adopted from an Albanian organ-grinder?
They said they did not recall Mr. Davis doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee composed of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the coming midterm congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s his firm, Davis & Manafort, was kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who was widely expected by 2006 to run again for the White House.
Oh, for the love of Mike! Lemme get this straight: Davis got paid $180,000/year for not doing anything, because he was working for McCain, who would be in a powerful political position that Freddie Mac wanted to be able to exploit for corporate gain???
A Freddie Mac spokeswoman said the company would not comment. The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Well, OK then. That makes everything fine, since everyone refuses to comment about it. Sorry for the interruption, go about your business.
…
No it doesn’t!!
Mr. McCain’s campaign has been attacking l Senator Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, for his ties to former officials of the mortgage lenders, both of which have long histories of cultivating allies in the two parties to fend off efforts to restrict their activities. Mr. McCain has been running a television commercial suggesting that Mr. Obama takes advice on housing issues from Franklin D. Raines, a former chief executive of Fannie Mae, a contention flatly denied by Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign. Freddie Mac’s roughly $500,000 in payments to Davis & Manafort began immediately after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in late 2005 disbanded an advocacy coalition that they had set up and hired Mr. Davis to run, the people familiar with the arrangement said.
So, not content with simply siphoning off cash from the two largest offenders in the mortgage crisis, Mr. Davis chooses to accuse Senator Obama of somehow being connected to the companies and hopes no-one will find his own connections.
But wait, it gets worse:
As president of the Homeownership Alliance, Mr. Davis got $30,000 to $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have characterized the alliance as a coalition of many housing industry and consumer groups to promote homeownership, but numerous current and former officials at both companies say the two mortgage companies created and bankrolled the operation to combat efforts by competitors to rein in their business.
Yes, you read that right. Mr. Davis was taking $360,000-$420,000 a year to run a company setup by Freddie and Fannie to help them keep out competitors (and by implication, the regulators who would keep the psudeo-public corporations from poisoning the public housing market). And what was that Freddie-funded organization supposed to do? Encourage homeownership, at a time when that translated into getting people into the same ridiculous mortgages that are tearing apart the economy right now.
But this has to be the worst of it, right? McCain wouldn’t have more old chord-wood from the mortgage crisis stacked up against his campaign shack, would he?
Oh yeah, baby:
At least two other people associated with Mr. McCain have ties to either Freddie Mac. The lobbying firm of the Republican that Mr. McCain has enlisted to plan his transition to the White House should he be elected, William Timmons Sr., earned nearly $3 million from Freddie Mac between 2000 and its seizure, federal lobbying records show.
Well, if Maverick John gets into the White House he won’t have far to look to find the greedy people who gorged their way into the current national economic collapse, will he? He just needs to look around the room and he’ll be able to find plenty.
-chris
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