Though I often hate computers, I do so love the internet (and TPM).
Bloomberg (emphasis mine):
McCain has labeled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as prime culprits in creating the financial storm that has roiled Wall Street and Washington.
“At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” he said last week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy,” he said. “And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington’s failure.”
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. 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.
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 … 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. …
The only thing that Freddie Mac officials could recall Mr. Davis doing for the company was the October 2006 pre-election forum with mid-level and senior executives who contribute to Freddie PAC, the company’s political action committee. …
A Freddie Mac executive said that as the event was being planned, and organizers were looking for a speaker from each party, "People at the office were saying, ‘Well, we have Rick Davis on contract and we never use him for anything. Why don’t we at least get him up here to talk like he knows what’s going on in the campaigns?"
Hell’s bells, I could sell ‘em that skinny: McCain-Palin is duplicating their own swirl down the drain. And (if there’s any reason left in the world at all) Davis is fixing to leave that campaign.
*through last month* my gawd!
They are truly stoopid (or think we are) to try to pull this off, still after and even tho’ what’s been happening these past 2+ weeks and talk as if none of this had any validity. I guess, in their defense, Bush has been getting away with a lot worse-only diff-he’s been in office. Oops, that’s right, we did put him back in despite some of his garbage.
I appreciate McCain’s laser-perfect understanding of the problems. He says that he and other very alert Congresspeople saw this coming a long time ago and they would have taken the necessary steps to prevent it, BUT — dadgummit — they were all bought off and otherwise deterred by lobbyists and other malefactors of great wealth.
I guess it’s kinda like Willie Nelson’s “Lefty and Pancho”:
“All the federales say,
they coulda had him any day.
They only let him get away …
Outta kindness, I suppose.”
from Newsweek:
“The arrangement was approved by Hollis McLoughlin, Freddie Mac’s senior vice president for external relations, because “he [Davis] was John McCain’s campaign manager and it was felt you couldn’t say no,” said one of the sources. [McLoughlin did not return phone calls].”