Fannie Mae Ex-Officers Sued by U.S.

[darrels joy]

Obama, McCain's ties to Fannie Mae

Andrew Zajac
Barack Obama's taking serious heat for his reliance on former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson to vet potential vice presidential prospects.
Obama has presented himself as an outsider and a Washington change agent and Johnson, whose favorable loan deals with Countrywide Financial Corp. made him a lightning rod, is as inside as they come in the capital.
How much of an outsider can Obama be, really, GOP skeptics ask, if he's turned to somebody like Johnson for important spadework in finding a running mate?

Johnson announced he quit the Obama campaign earlier today, but the question likely will linger.

John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, also has ties to Fannie Mae, though less directly.


Davis, was president of the Homeownership Alliance, a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-led advocacy group which has tried to fend off regulation sought by large private banks and mortgage lenders.

The front story of the Homeownership Alliance is that it sought to make home ownership affordable to the broadest possible range of people and feared that that this mission would be compromised if Congress stepped in with too many rules.

The back story, according to critics, is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac feared that Congressional meddling would lower their healthy profits.
The issue really hasn't been who could buy a home. It's been more about the playing field for the vast mortgage market.

Fannie and Freddie are publicly-traded companies, but they are federally-chartered, which creates the widespread impression that if they really screw up, the government will bail them out.

Private banks don't operate with that perception and so, they argue, their costs of doing business are higher.

For years, banks' Hill allies, mostly Republicans, including Richard Baker, of Louisiana, have sought 'reforms' to level the playing field.

Davis, who has a 25+ year pedigree as a lobbyist and Republican political consultant, was hired in 2000 and the Homeownership Alliance was ginned up, to help Fannie and Freddie build support to rebuff Baker's efforts. The organization dissolved about two years ago.

To be clear, Davis's tenure at the Alliance wasn't accompanied by the same criticism that dogged Johnson's links to Fannie Mae and Countrywide.

But the involvements of both men in a Washington honey pot like Fannie Mae underscore the difficulties of selling the message of reform in both the McCain and Obama campaigns.

It defies belief -- actually it's a practical impossibility -- that Obama could be elected without some reliance on the Washington establishment represented by people like Johnson.

Same thing for McCain, who has raged against the influence of big money lobbying while entrusting his campaign to some of the oldest and most accomplished practitioners in the capital.
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Posted at 1:57 AM on 9/24/2008 by Michael Goldfarb

A Partisan Paper of Record

Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis -- weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual -- since 2006. Again, zero.

Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times' reporting, Mr. Davis has never -- never -- been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with...Paul Begala.

http://www.johnmccain.com/McCainRepo...6-53c0c2d88376

[SuperScout]

“Under [Bill] Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001. Instead of looking at ‘outdated criteria,’ such as the mortgage applicant’s credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named ‘Caylee.’ Threatening lawsuits, Clinton’s Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn’t a joke—it’s a fact. ... In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration’s affirmative action lending policies as one of the ‘hidden success stories’ of the Clinton administration, saying that ‘black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded.’ Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn’t get out of their loans by selling their houses. A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it’s gone off.”

[exlrrp]

John MccAin's top campaign staff are mostly lobbyists
And he lies about it.
here's the list of top McCAin campign advisors who are, or formerly were lobbyists, from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/09/mccain.lobbying/ At the youtube reference below that, you can see and hear McCAIn lie about it, saying "theyre not":

"...It's true: Seven top McCain officials were lobbyists, though the campaign stresses that none is currently registered to lobby Congress:

• One: Campaign manager Rick Davis is a major telecommunications lobbyist.

DAVIS WAS GETTING PAID BY FANNIE MAE UNTIL ONE MONTH AGO!!! (see above quoted aricle!)

• Two: Senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann recently faced scrutiny over his foreign lobbying on behalf of the Republic of Georgia, which has been embroiled in a military conflict with Russia.

• Three: Senior adviser Charlie Black was a foreign lobbyist for dictators in Zaire and Angola in the 1980s, fodder for the liberal group MoveOn.org.

• Four: Frank Donatelli, the Republican National Committee's liaison to the McCain campaign, has had clients including Exxon Mobil.

• Five: Economic adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer has lobbied for corporate giants like Koch Industries.

"Both John McCain and Sarah Palin have challenged special interests, challenged their own party. That's the test of courage," Pfotenhauer has said.

• The final two lobbyists are McCain's congressional liaison, John Green, and national finance Co-chairman Wayne Berman. They both lobbied for Fannie Mae, the troubled mortgage giant.


See John McCAIn lie about this here:

YouTube - McCain Falsely Claims Top Advisors are...

Its in the last minute of the interview

HEY MR SUPERSCOUT!!! WHY DON'T YOU PAY YOUR TAXES LIKE EVERY HONEST PATRIOTIC AMERICAN DOES AND QUIT CRYING ABOUT IT??

[exlrrp]

from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Davis_(politics)

"...He left the Reagan White House to work with longtime lobbyist Paul Manafort, founding the lobbying firm Davis, Manafort. Between 1998 and 2008, the firm was paid at least $2.8 million for lobbying Congress.[2]....

....In 2000, Davis became the head of a group called the Homeownership Alliance, a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac advocacy group. Its website said that the organization was dedicated to "exposing and defeating trends that would harm consumer access to the lowest-cost mortgage option."[4] He was head of the group for five years, being paid more than $30,000 per month. At the end of 2005, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decided that Homeownership Alliance had outlived its usefulness, and it was closed.[5]

....When McCain started the Reform Institute in 2001 to promote campaign finance reform, he involved Davis.[6] In 2002, Davis was paid $120,000 as an institute consultant; in 2003, he was paid $110,000 in fees. In 2004 and 2005, when he was president of the non-profit institute, his salary totaled $165,000. Tax forms said he worked five hours a week or "as needed."[1]....

...In 2006,[7] Davis and Manafort formed the company 3eDC, an Internet firm, [10] which the McCain campaign selected to oversee the campaign's Web site and online fund raising. The company was paid $340,000 before the contract's cancellation in April 2007; in mid-June, the campaign reported that it still owed the company $721,000.[7] [11] In all, the McCain campaign paid $971,860 to the company.[12] In June 2008, Campaign Money Watch, a 527 independent political group, filed a federal complaint that the company had improperly reduced the amount the campaign owed it by $107,000. [13]

In April 2008, after McCain became the presumptive Republican nominnee, 3eDC was paid $20,000 by the Republican National

...On September 24, 2008, the New York Times reported that Rick Davis' firm, Davis Manafort, had been paid $15,000 per month by Freddie Mac, for "consulting", from the end of 2005, when Davis stopped being head of the Homeownership Alliance, until August 2008. Payments stopped when Freddie Mac was taken over by the federal government. The Times said that "Davis took a leave from Davis Manafort for the presidential campaign, but as an equity holder continues to benefit from its income."[14]

The McCain campaign responded on September 24 with a statement that Davis had separated from Davis Manafort in 2006, and that "As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis -- weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual -- since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006."[15] On September 28, Newsweek reported that Davis had joined the campaign in January 2007, not in 2006, and that he specified that his $20,000-a-month salary be paid directly to Davis Manafort".[12]

--->The Times reported that "No one at Davis Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said."[14] Newsweek reported that during the period of the payments, Freddie Mac had no contact with Davis Manafort other than receiving monthly invoices from the firm and paying them.[16]The only thing that Freddie Mac officials could recall Davis doing for the company, the Times said, was speaking at an October 2006 forum attended by midlevel and senior executives who contributed to Freddie PAC, the company’s political action committee. [14]<----

...In 2006, Davis helped set up the encounter between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska in Switzerland during an international economic conference. Deripaska's suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his entry visa in 2006.[17]

At the time, Davis was working for a lobbying firm and seeking to do business with the billionaire. Later that month, Deripaska wrote to Davis and his partner, political consultant Paul J. Manafort, to thank them for arranging the meeting. "Thank you so much for setting up everything in Klosters so spectacularly," he wrote. "It was very interesting to meet Senators Chambliss, Sununu, and McCain in such an intimate setting."[17]



Chew on that, I got more!!

"I always aspired to be a dictator." John MccAin. You can see him saying that right here:

YouTube