(with thanks to Hjoirst for the title suggestion)
This is the follow-up to a dairy I posted last night regarding the "Obama advisors are part of the Fannie Mae Collapse" smear. If you're interested, this is it: I am NOT a troll
Following is the e-mail I sent to my friend, with very big, huge, gigantic thanks to everyone who responded and helped with information.
I searched the web for information on Obama advisors and their relationship to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mack. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
I found an article at the Washington Spectator that I believe is the origination of this rumor, the article can be found here: http://www.spectator.org/... You can read the entire article, but I’m going to copy parts of it here with what I’ve found out.
They have a huge problem with the mortgage and housing market story, and everyone is missing it," says a Republican political media consultant with ties to the Obama campaign due to the bipartisan nature of the firm he does work with.
"You look at Obama's economic advisers, the guys he has counted on from day one and who have raised him a ton -- and I mean a ton -- of money: Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, both of them are waist to neck deep in the mortgage debacle."
Both Raines and Johnson have served as CEO of Fannie Mae, with Raines taking over from Johnson. Both are key political and economic advisers to Obama.
First thing that strikes me about this is that the person making the accusation is unnamed, a trend that continues through the entire article. The second thing is tagging Raines and Johnson as advisors. Franklin Raines has denied ever being an advisor to the Obama campaign: http://abcnews.go.com/... . Jim Johnson was an advisor to the Obama campaign, who helped with vetting VP candidates; he had nothing to do with advising on financial policy. He also did the honorable thing and quit the campaign in June when there were questions about possible favoritism from Countrywide: http://articles.latimes.com/... .
"How can Obama go out with a straight face and saw it was Republicans who made this mess, when it is his key advisers who ran the agencies that made the big mess what it is?" says a Democrat House member who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. "It's his people who are responsible for what may well be the single largest government bailout in history. And every single one of them made millions off the collapse that are lining Obama's campaign coffers. If the McCain campaign lets this one go, they deserve to lose."
Mmmm, an unnamed Democrat (I believe this should be "Democratic") House member. Just a couple of notes on the key advisers who ran the agencies that made the big mess what it is. Franklin Raines, as Clinton’s budget director, negotiated the first balanced budget in 30 years. He also may have taken the fall for people under him at Fannie Mae. See: http://www.slate.com/... . He left Fannie Mae in December 2004, and while there are questions about accounting practices, it does not appear that he had anything to do with the failure of Fannie Mae, or made any money off of its collapse. He did make money while he was there, and bonuses like any other CEO (which is fair game to have a discussion about, I believe they are over-compensated). Jim Johnson left Fannie Mae in 1998, way before any of the current issues became a problem.
It isn't just Fannie Mae where Obama has a problem. Another close political adviser, in fact the one man responsible for rallying support for Obama early on among Congressional Democrats, is Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who served on the Board of Directors for Freddie Mac after leaving the Clinton White House. According to Freddie Mac insiders, Emanuel during his time on the board opposed every reform proposed by the Bush Administration that would have impacted Freddie and Fannie Mae.
Emanuel claimed to be neutral in the primary race between the wife of his old boss and his longtime Chicago acquaintance, Obama. But the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, who would be first in line for the vacated Senate seat of Obama should he win the presidency, quickly dumped Clinton when it was clear Obama had a head of steam for the nomination.
Look, unnamed insiders! I haven’t been able to find anything about this accusation other than it’s been made. It’s pretty sparse, seems to be nothing more than smear.
"We ought to be able to -- rightly -- hang the Fannie and Freddie scandal around the neck of Obama, if they can get out in front," says a House Republican. "Middle-class folks' mortgages are probably safe, but the American taxpayer will also be paying for this scandal for years to come."
ANOTHER unnamed person. I find the statement kind of funny, since it was Phil Gramm who basically orchestrated this mess. See: http://www.chron.com/... , http://www.motherjones.com/... , http://www.politico.com/... . Phil Gramm was McCain’s most senior economic advisor until July 2008. He resigned after he said that we are a nation of "whiners", and that we are in a "mental recession". He is still traveling with McCain, but in the capacity of "unofficial advisor". Also, the number of lobbyists working for the McCain campaign is truly staggering: http://www.motherjones.com/... .
Are you tired yet? I am. However, I’m going to keep going. You said that Obama scares you. Well, McCain scares me because up until yesterday, he kept saying "The economy is fundamentally strong", which makes sense when your economic advisor is telling you that we are a nation of whiners, and you don’t know how many homes you own. Obama, on the other hand, addressed Wall St. last year: http://www.nytimes.com/... , lamenting what was happening to the middle class. McCain’s way of dealing with the meltdown this week was to appoint a "Blue Ribbon Commission", Obama’s was to come out with a plan on how to fix the problem: http://my.barackobama.com/...
I'm calling for a $1,000 tax break for middle-class families -- not just because they need help dealing with the rising costs of gas, food, and health care, but also because our economy needs to be reinvigorated from the bottom up, not the top down.
I'm proposing a second stimulus package to save over one million jobs and provide immediate relief to struggling families.
And I'll end the "anything goes" culture on Wall Street with real regulation. We can see clearly that our economy is stronger when we protect investments and pensions, and avoid devastating bankruptcies and bailouts.
Speaking of protecting investments, McCain also wants to privatize Social Security, and allow people to play the market with it...I can’t imagine what would have happened if that legislation had passes.
Whew! Ok, if you’re willing to keep reading, the other thing we discussed was what was perceived to be Obama’s lack of accomplishments in the Illinois Legislature and as a Senator. Here’s some of what he’s done:
o Helped deliver the first significant campaign finance reform law in Illinois in 25 years.
o Brought law enforcement groups around to back legislation requiring homicide interrogations be taped.
o Helped bring about the passage of the first racial profiling law.
o Chief sponsor of law enhancing tax credits for the working poor.
o Played a central roll in negotiating welfare reform and successfully pushed for increasing child care subsidies.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
As a U.S. Senator, he has sponsored 136 bills, two have become law. This doesn’t include bills that he contributed substantially as co-sponsor, such as the Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 or the Lugar-Nunn Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction act of 2006. He has co-sponsored 619 bills as well. The list can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/... .
That was the end of the political discussion. I'll update if I ever hear back from him. Oh, and if you notice the copy of the letter has no spelling errors, yet they are rampent everywhere else, well, spellcheck is my friend, I wish it was available for the diaries!
UPDATE before I've even posted. My friend replied: great review. I usually go to snoopes.com but you went in depth. I am impressed. Thanks you deserve a Granita on me. I appreciate your friendship. Which I think means "I skimmed through it, maybe I'll read it more later". But really, he's a great guy, and I'm glad we can have these discussions.
Again, a huge thank you to everyone with suggestions and links. And for those (few) of you that did accuse me of being a troll.....I fart in your general direction!