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I noticed that in his remarks to the crowd at Cross Orchards, Sen. Barack Obama tried to blame Wall Street’s troubles on Republicans. I’m sure that there is enough blame to go around Washington, but here are a few facts.
With the exception of Chris Dodd, Barack Obama received the most money of any member of Congress in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, a total of $126,000 plus change. John McCain is well down the list at around $22,000.
Additionally, Obama’s campaign ads attacking John McCain’s credentials as a reformer by pointing out that lobbyists occupy key positions in his campaign are classic “guilt” by association attacks.
John McCain is known as a maverick reformer and a war hero and Obama has little choice but to go negative with ads of this sort since there is nothing Obama has accomplished except make vague promises.
GEORGE E. CORT
Montrose
16 Responses to “Obama has little choice but to go negative”
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 11:17 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
I dunno, George. Candidates sniping at one another is as old as our great nation. I read a quote the other day, “You can’t trust a man who speaks well of everyone.” Or was it, “Don’t ever trust a politician?” Anyway…..
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 11:23 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
the real culprit in our financial mess is mr. greenspan. he set the landscape in the 90’s, remember enron/tech bubble. he left interest rates way too low and it carried over into the housing market.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 11:29 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
golfdoc is correct. Mr. Greenspan, of ” there can’t be a housing bubble” fame, is a major culprit. He, more than anyone, set the stage for this multibillion dollar rip off of the taxpayers.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 1:07 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Cort is quite wrong here. He apparently did not read Tom Teepen’s column in yesterday’s Sentinel. This otherwise conservate columnist noted that “…as a presidential candidate McCain has become a liar, a serial liar at that, and not through any inadvertance but quite deliberately” “…McCain’s lies overwhelm in their number calculation and cynicism. Lately he has been on a rampage of untruths”
This column is echoed by quite a number of editorials and columns around the country
St. Petersburg Times (Editorial) “Campaign of lies disgraces McCain” McCain’s straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity, and it is a short-term strategy that eventually will backfire with the very types of independent-thinking voters that were so attracted to him. LINK
Atlanta Journal Constitution (Jay Bookman) The volume and audacity of lies pouring from the McCain campaign is startling and even historicThat’s really something, lying straight out about a FactCheck group, knowing that you’re going to get caught but not giving a damn about it. With stuff like this, the McCain camp has cut any remaining tethers to reality and integrity and is now floating wherever the winds of illusion and whimsy may take them. It’s quite remarkable, and quite insulting to the intelligence of the American people. LINK
Pittsburg Post Gazette (Tony Norman) Where have you gone, John McCain? You once said you’d rather lose an election than lose a war. Is it worth winning an election if it means forfeiting your soul on the altar of political expediency?Where is the honor in reciting lies for something as transient as political advantage? What are we as voters supposed to make of political ads that accuse Barack Obama of advocating sex education for kindergartners? Despite the intellectually dishonest maneuvering of your campaign, many Americans admire you, John McCain. Before you embraced the darkness, I was among those who disagreed with your politics, but considered you honorable. Now it’s hard to look at you without seeing the scoundrels who made you what you are today. LINK
Kansas City Star (Barb Shelly) McCain stoops to deception, distortion: Maybe you’ve seen it. The campaign ad cites the authoritative journal Education Week to claim that Democrat Barack Obama has been missing in action on education reformShamelessly misleading the public?These are old tricks we’ve been seeing in local elections for years. Distort. Twist. Deceive. Damage. And the winning candidate drags a load of public contempt into office. I had hoped for better from McCainJohn McCain may win the presidency this way, but he will lose the respect he has acquired over the years. LINK
Boston Globe (Scot Lehigh) Pretzel logic from the McCain campaign: Here’s the question voters should be asking themselves this week: Just how stupid does the McCain-Palin campaign think I am? The answer: Dumb enough to hoodwink with charges so contrived and cynical they make your teeth acheAs the nonpartisan campaign watchdog FactCheck.org has made clear, this is a thoroughly dishonest ad [Kindergarten]. No matter. The McCain campaign has shown it’s ready and willing to say preposterous things to win. LINK
Washington Post (David Ignatius) Stopping at nothing to win: Thinking about the Palin choice, you begin to ponder other moves McCain has made on the road to winning the Republican nomination. McCain was right a few years ago to warn that Bush’s tax cuts would have potentially ruinous fiscal consequences; now he favors extending the cuts that have produced a crisis of debt and deficit. Why did he switch his position, other than political opportunism?In May 2006, after McCain had courted the Rev. Jerry Falwell in an effort to win conservative support, I asked him if he was bending his principles for the sake of winning. “I don’t want it that badly,” McCain answered. “I will continue to do what is rightIf that means I can’t get the Republican nomination, fine. I’ve had a happy life. The worst thing I can do is sell my soul to the devil.” He was right. LINK
Washington Post (Eugene Robinson) The Scream Machine: There was a time when Republicans campaigned on their ideas, programs and values. This year — lacking ideas, programs or values — John McCain and Sarah Palin are running for the White House on an elaborate fictional narrative of victimhoodCreating the false impression that Democrats and journalists are unfairly attacking Palin serves another purpose as well: It helps create the impression that legitimate and necessary questions about her record — such as her one-time support for the Bridge to Nowhere or her history of seeking the congressional earmarks she now claims to reject — are somehow out of bounds. LINK
Chicago Tribune (Steve Chapman) To McCain the truth is expandable: McCain has concluded that a fact-based case about Obama isn’t enough to prevail in November. So he has chosen to smear his opponent with ridiculous claims that he thinks the American people are gullible enough to believe. He has charged repeatedly that his opponent is willing to lose a war to win an election. What’s McCain willing to lose to become president? Nothing so consequential as a war. Just his soul. LINK
Chicago Tribune (Frank James) “McCain plays dirty on Obama & sex-ed” So the McCain ad, in the way it contorts the truth, is pretty shocking from a candidate who has promised to bring change and reform to Washington, a man who’s urging Americans to live for a cause larger than themselves. This is an old-fashioned, unreconstructed politics whose goal, first and foremost, is to get the candidate elected, the truth be damned. McCain has said he’d rather lose a campaign than lose a war. But it appears from this ad he’d rather lose any purchase he has on straight-talk than lose this presidential election. LINK
Chicago Tribune (Eric Zorn) `Sex ed’ ad educates us on the character of John McCain: The surprise came at the end: I’m John McCain and I approved this message. With that infamous admission, McCain surrendered his integrity and signaled a willingness to say or do anything to get elected We used to expect better from John McCain. No longer. LINK
TIME (Joe Klein): A new rule here: Rather than do the McCain campaign’s bidding by wasting space on Senator Honor’s daily lies and bilge–his constant attempts to divert attention from substantive issues–I’m going to assume that others will spend more than enough time on the sewage that Steve Schmidt is shoveling and, from now on, try to stick to the issues. LINK
TIME (Joe Klein) Apology Not Accepted: he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I’ve ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won’t abet its spread by linking to it, but here’s the McClatchy fact check.. I just can’t wait for the moment when John McCain–contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat–talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig. LINK
By , Newsday
Posted on September 15
http://www.alternet.org/story/98761/
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Nice summary, ‘52. Even the msm is starting to catch on. Which, of course, is why Mccain/bushco laid the groundwork the last few years to label the msm as ‘liberally biased.’ In order to run a campaign based on misinformation (lies,) the GOP has to eliminate ‘truth’ as a metric with which to judge the candidates. If the GOP can get nearly half of America to believe whatever they say, and discredit all opposing viewpoints as biased, well they just might achieve their goal. What really gets me is that if they are comfortable lying to retain power, won’t they just continue lying after the campaign? And assuming that nearly half the nation knows they are lying, and no longer listens, just who are they lying to? They are lying to the very people they want to vote for them, of course. Just think of all the voters out there who will go to the polls and vote for a liar. Do they not care about lies? Do they not believe Mccain has lied, or will continue to lie? Has the Rovian machine really worked that well? At what point does a severely misinformed electorate become a dangerous liability to our country? When half of our population will only believe the words of two or three men and a handful of lackeys, even when those words are proven again and again to be deceitful, should we not start to question the very patriotism of the willing believers? The very basis of our nation rests on the idea of an INFORMED electorate and our resulting votes, right? It is my opinion, shared by many others, that what Mccain/Rove/Bushco is foisting on the American public could very easily be considered treasonous, as they purposely mislead the public and undercut the very fundamentals of our democracy. I understand that many people don’t like Obama for many various, even reasonable, reasons, but I think folks have to ask themselves if they wish to aid and abet the trampling of our most sacred ideals when they go to the polls in November.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 2:58 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
McCain/Rove/Bushco is treasonous. I’ve read that their activities could be subject to law suits AFTER the administration ends. That would be much preferable to impeachment and all of the confusion surrounding it in Congess. Jail time for many in the administration, including Bush and Rove, sounds good to me. It will be interesting in the last days before a new president takes over who will get pardons or some kind of an amnesty trickery for anything they may have done while in office. This will be the new Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 3:45 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Well John, are we forgetting about Clinton and all the pardons he granted?
Here’s a nice list about Clinton;
The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates
Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
Sued for sexual harassment.
Second president accused of rape
First first lady to come under criminal investigation
Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
First president to establish a legal defense fund.
First president to be held in contempt of court Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad
First president disbarred from the US Supreme Court and a state court
Considered the most investigated President ever.
And some people say he was one of the greatest Presidents we’ve had.
Now if anyone want to dispute this list, please do so.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 4:34 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
I hope that everyone notices that we have been talking about the honesty of current candidates for the presidency and the honesty and performance of the current administration while the only rebuttal posted here so far takes us back to a period which began 16 years ago. Is that all you got Tasha? Repubs were obsessed with Clinton during his tenure and they are still obsessed with him. Water under the bridge and irrelevant to the problems of today.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 4:35 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
I don’t know about the list. Some things I know are true, others are probably half truths and non-truths. It would be helpful (as always) to know the source(s), not provided.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 4:57 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Tasha. That deflection isn’t even mediocre. We are talking about McCain. Is his transgression justified by a previous one?
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Sorry Ash, I just forgot to put it up.
http://prorev.com/legacy.htm
Class: Is that all you got Tasha? Repubs were obsessed with Clinton during his tenure and they are still obsessed with him. Water under the bridge and irrelevant to the problems of today.
Really? I was making a point about what John said referring to treason, impeachments and pardons. It’s ok to bash current people for what they’ve done, but it brings the point up about past presidents and the bad things they did. But I guess it’s ok they did what they did. Right?
No, in reality, it isn’t water under the bridge. Clinton had his hands in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (as one example that is current). He is part blame for what has happened with the two corporations, along with several other people. So that right there keeps him current in the discussions.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 5:59 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Tasha, nice change of subject. Did I say that Clinton’s actions were anything other than outrageous? But none of those pardoned were destroying the Constitution and so many of our rights. If Bush did as I suggested it would far outweigh anything Clinton did. You have a strange sense of equivalency driven by pure, blind partisanship.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
John states: “But none of those pardoned were destroying the Constitution and so many of our rights”
Perhaps Jay Leno said it best regarding what the current administration and its sycophants have done with the Constitution. When referring to the confetti dropped at their convention, some of us believe that he was right on point when he said that the confetti was made by shredding the original document.
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 6:15 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Thanks for the link Tasha
Posted September 17th, 2008 at 10:39 pm Login to Send PM Report this comment
Tasha: “Clinton had his hands in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (as one example that is current). He is part blame for what has happened with the two corporations, along with several other people. So that right there keeps him current in the discussions.”
Generally when I make a statement like that I try to buttress it with some evidence-a reference to an analysis of an informed expert in the field with no ax to grind for example. Can you back up this opinion with any evidence that what you say is in fact true or is this just an uninformed opinion? Or perhaps you have a Ph.D. in economics that you have not told us about.
Posted September 18th, 2008 at 8:32 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Well class, there is always honest reporters and commentators that rely on FACT instead of innuendo and hyperbole.
One does need to note the level of corruption and greed brought out in this report, as well as the political ties of those individuals involved.
(clinton appointees)
“By Byron York
Editor’s note — The impending federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has shed light not only on the seriousness of current housing market conditions but also on the mismanagement and corruption that helped cripple the mortgage giants. Although political figures from both parties have profited mightily from Fannie Mae, it has been a particular favorite of former officials of Democratic administrations, as NR’s Byron York found out when he looked into the situation in the summer of 2006.
On May 23, 2006, as a jury in Houston deliberated the case against top Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, a little-known regulatory agency in Washington, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), released a study with the dryly bureaucratic title “Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae.” The document received far less attention than the news from Enron, but its conclusions were stunning. In meticulous detail, it outlined a culture of corruption at the Federal National Mortgage Association — better known as Fannie Mae — that rivals the most serious corporate scandals in recent years. In this case, however, the main players are Washington insiders — some of them prominent veterans of the Clinton administration — and the scandal’s effects could ripple through Congress for years.
Fannie Mae is the biggest single source of money for mortgages in the United States. From 1998 to 2004, the years covered by the OFHEO investigation, it was headed by former Clinton budget director Franklin Raines, whose top management team included former Clinton Justice Department official Jamie Gorelick, sometimes mentioned as a future attorney general in a Democratic administration. During that period, the report says, Raines and his team grossly overstated Fannie Mae’s earnings — to the tune of $10.6 billion — for the purpose of paying themselves big bonuses. “By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets,” the report says, “senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders.”
In doing so, the report says, Raines and his team steered Fannie Mae far afield from its original mission, transforming it from a stable business into a risky one. Fannie Mae has its roots in the New Deal, when it was established to increase the amount of money available for mortgages. Over the years, its main business has been to issue debt and then use the proceeds to buy mortgages from lenders, allowing those lenders to give out new mortgages. Originally a government agency, Fannie Mae went private in 1968, with the goal of “increasing the availability and affordability of homeownership for low-, moderate-, and middle-income Americans,” according to its mission statement.
But Fannie Mae is not just any private institution. It is congressionally chartered, meaning its existence is established in law, it does not have to pay state and local income taxes, and it is not subject to bankruptcy laws. It can borrow money at a lower rate than anyone else except the federal government itself. Given all that, there is a public perception that Fannie Mae is a rock-solid government institution. “There is an implied guarantee,” says Sen. John Sununu, a member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee who has sponsored legislation to reform Fannie Mae. “Investors think they are the next best thing to Treasuries.”
There’s no doubt that Fannie Mae succeeded in its original mission of increasing the amount of money available for mortgages. In the 1980s, it went a step further, essentially creating a new product when it bought up mortgages and bundled them for sale to investors as mortgage-backed securities. It was an extraordinarily profitable move for Fannie Mae, and good for the housing market, too.
But in the 1990s, the company moved in a much riskier direction. Fannie Mae used its borrowing power to buy up mortgages and hold them, making a profit from the difference between the low price it paid to borrow the money and the higher interest rate it received on the mortgage. It was potentially profitable, but it had nothing to do with helping low- and middle-income people buy houses. “It doesn’t do anything to support their core mission,” says Senator Sununu, “and it increases their exposure to interest-rate risks.”
But the OFHEO report suggests that none of that mattered to Raines, who had been a top official at Fannie Mae in the early 1990s before leaving to join the Clinton administration and then returning to Fannie Mae as chief executive in 1998. According to the report, Raines became obsessed with propping up Fannie Mae’s earnings per share, or EPS, even if he had to use creative accounting to make it happen. Raines set a series of increasingly higher EPS goals that, if met, would trigger bonuses for the executive team that far surpassed what they received in salary.
In 1999, Raines announced a new goal to double Fannie Mae’s EPS in five years, from $3.23 per share to $6.46. It was an audacious goal, and reaching it, according to OFHEO, became Fannie Mae’s reason for existence: “$6.46, the EPS goal, became the corporate mantra — everything else was secondary to hitting that target.” To convey an idea of just how obsessed Raines had become, and how he passed on that obsession to his top managers, the OFHEO report quotes at some length from a speech given in 2000 by Sampath Rajappa, head of the Office of Auditing, to his accounting team:
By now every one of you must have 6.46 branded in your brains. You must be able to say it in your sleep, you must be able to recite it forwards and backwards, you must have a raging fire in your belly that burns away all doubts, you must live, breathe and dream 6.46, you must be obsessed on 6.46. . . . After all, thanks to Frank, we all have a lot of money riding on it. . . . We must do this with a fiery determination, not on some days, not on most days but day in and day out, give it your best, not 50%, not 75%, not 100%, but 150%. Remember, Frank has given us an opportunity to earn not just our salaries, benefits, raises . . . but substantially over and above if we make 6.46.
So it is our moral obligation to give well above our 100% and if we do this, we would have made tangible contributions to Frank’s goals.
It worked. Fannie Mae met its EPS goals, and Raines rewarded his top executives — and most of all himself — with unheard-of amounts of money.
Even though his salary never topped $1 million, Raines’s total compensation shot from $6.48 million in 1998 to $8.52 million in 1999, to $13.89 million in 2000, to $18.86 million in 2001, to $18.20 million in 2002, to $24.15 million in 2003, all on the strength of EPS bonuses. Investigators found that of the $90.12 million Raines was paid in that six-year period, more than $52 million came from EPS bonuses.
Gorelick’s situation was similar. OFHEO found that she took home $26.46 million in the period from 1998 to 2002 (she left in that year, so she wasn’t there for the entire period under investigation). Of that figure, nearly $15 million came from EPS bonuses.
Of course, it wasn’t legit. “Fannie Mae reported extremely smooth profit growth and hit announced targets for earnings per share precisely each quarter,” the OFHEO report says. “Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by [Fannie Mae’s] senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management.”
In other words, they cooked the books. And to make matters worse, according to OFHEO, when regulators began to catch on to what was happening, Raines and his team then “sought to interfere” with the OFHEO investigation by trying to get Congress to start up a separate probe of OFHEO. Fannie Mae also lobbied Congress to cut OFHEO’s funds unless it got rid of the top official in charge of investigating Fannie Mae.
That didn’t work, and, as a result of the investigation, Fannie Mae has agreed to pay $400 million in penalties. The company is now under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, and will likely be in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, too. And there probably won’t be much more talk about Gorelick as attorney general should a Democrat win the White House in 2008.
But there still is the matter of cleaning up Fannie Mae. Senator Sununu and his colleagues on the Senate banking committee have been trying for two years to win approval of a bill that would create a new regulatory body for Fannie Mae and give that body the authority to crack down on the company’s riskier practices.
But the bill has faced a lot of opposition, mostly from Democrats. When Raines was still at Fannie Mae (he was forced out in 2004), he tried, in Sununu’s words, “to slow-walk the process. Frank Raines decided they were stronger and better and smarter than everyone else, so they would push back.” Democrats allied themselves with Raines and said they worried that reform might harm Fannie Mae’s ability to provide mortgages to low- and middle-income homebuyers. Sununu’s bill was approved in the banking committee last year, but only on a straight party-line vote.
Now, however, there is the OFHEO report, which will probably make it impossible for anyone to oppose reforming Fannie Mae. “It’s not a very smart move politically to stand up and defend people who manipulate earnings to get $50 million bonuses,” says Sununu.
So look for reform to happen, with the support of Republicans and Democrats. It took a long time, and $10.6 billion in overstated earnings, and a scathing report from regulators, but things are finally moving along.”
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