The McCain campaign has decided that the New York Times is not real journalism. The stinging article below may be why...
Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.
But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.
Mr. Davis’s role with the group has bubbled up as an issue in the campaign, but the extent of his compensation and the details of his role have not been reported previously.
Mr. McCain was never a leading critic or defender of the mortgage giants, although several former executives of the companies said Mr. Davis did draw Mr. McCain to a 2004 awards banquet that the companies’ Homeownership Alliance held in a Senate office building. The organization printed a photograph of Mr. McCain at the event in its 2004 annual report, bolstering its clout and credibility. The event honored several other elected officials, including at least two Democrats, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and Representative Artur Davis of Alabama.
In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. McCain noted that Mr. Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants. He said Mr. Davis “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”
Asked about the reports of Mr. Davis’s role, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that during the time when Mr. Davis ran the Homeownership Alliance, the senator had backed legislation to increase oversight of the mortgage companies’ accounting and executive compensation. The legislation, however, did not seek to change their anomalous structure as private companies with federal support.
The spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also noted that the Homeownership Alliance included nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Urban League. “It’s not controversial to promote homeownership and minority homeownership,” Mr. Bounds said. More than a half-dozen current and former executives, however, said the Homeownership Alliance was set up mainly to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by promoting their role in the housing market, and the two companies paid almost the entire cost of the group’s operations.
“They were financed largely, possibly exclusively, by Fannie and Freddie,” said William R. Maloni, a Democrat who is a former head of industry relations for Fannie Mae. “We thought it would be helpful to have someone who was a broadly recognized Republican to be the face of the organization, and that person became Rick Davis.” Mr. Maloni added, “Rick, for that purpose, turned out to be quite good.” (Several executives said Mr. Davis’s compensation was not unusual for the companies’ well-connected consultants.)
The federal bailout of the two mortgage giants has become an emblem of what critics say is the outdated or inadequate regulatory system that allowed the financial system to slide into crisis this summer.
At the time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recruited Mr. Davis to run the Homeownership Alliance in 2000, they were under new pressure from private industry rivals and deregulation-minded Republicans who argued that the two companies’ federal sponsorship gave them an unfair advantage and put taxpayers at risk. Critics of the companies had formed their own Washington-based advocacy group, FM Watch. They were pushing for regulations that would deter the companies from expanding into new areas, including riskier and more profitable mortgages.
Mr. Davis had recently returned to his lobbying firm from running Mr. McCain’s unexpectedly strong 2000 Republican primary campaign, which elevated Mr. McCain’s profile as a legislator and Mr. Davis’s as a lobbyist.
“You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap,” Mr. Davis said to Institutional Investor magazine in 2000, adding that he would run the advocacy group out of his Alexandria, Va., lobbying firm.
The organization also hired Public Strategies, a communications firm that included former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon. Mr. Davis wrote letters and gave speeches for the group. In April 2001, he sent out a press release headlined, “It’s Tax Day — Do You Know Where Your Deductions Are? For Most Americans, They’re in Your Home.”
But by the end of 2005, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were recovering from accounting problems and re-examining costs, former executives said. The companies decided the Homeownership Alliance had outlived its usefulness, and it disappeared.
John Harwood contributed reporting.
Grab them here!
While you're at it check out our growing collection of iPhone wallpapers, signs, posters, wallpapers, etc. at obamamedia.wordpress.com.
Obama and Apple do have a lot in common, including massive popularity with a cultlike following. They both have the image of being elegant, intelligent, open minded, groundbreaking, innovative, and even a little revolutionary.
I got a good response from the last Vote Different logo I made, so I put together another one.
For those of you who aren’t clear on the details, heres a "dumb down" explanation of the fannie mae and freddie mac takeover explanation. Its pretty straightforward, and before reading you should read up on what a bond is if you don’t already know.
Bond Definition: (read the first paragraph alone and you’ll understand.)
In a nutshell, the “real estate bubble" burst and the value of homes plummeted. This caused interest rates for loans from banks to soar, and those families that barely made payments were now facing mortgage defaults. Millions of people couldn’t afford the new mortgage payments, which *had* the cost of essential commodities not soared along with the cost of gasoline AND healthcare, millions of people would have had a few more dollars to pull out of their pockets for their homes. This rule is applied across the board to millions of homeowners. Well we all know that when you buy a home it’s a mutual risk between you and the bank. However all the risks the bank takes with millions of people is indirectly propagated to financial institutions like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They in turn will go out and sell bonds to raise the money for those loans to overseas and domestic investors.
Problem is that banks took in way too much risk, which indirectly eroded fannie and freddie with concerns over its financial integrity. Can a single company take in 5 trillion dollars of debt? This makes foreign and domestic investors alike think twice about buying bonds from fannie and Freddie. These concerns together with the 5 trillion dollars in debt started to slowly affect the influx of investors buying bonds from fannie and Freddie. This in turn forced fannie and Freddie to raise interest rates on the banks loans to still be able to raise money for future loans, which then in turn forced banks to raise interest rates on homeowner’s loans to still make a profit. That means they began pinching the people whom were already suffering from financial instability caused by the rising cost of living (gas, food, healthcare to name a few). End result, fannie and Freddie would have gone down the drain and the cost of living would have soared over night even further because banks would not have had a stream of cash flow to pay for the crucial roles they fill in our economy. Could this have been avoided? Sure, if we had someone who knows how to run the economy leading us.
Heres a great CNN money article that explains how we got to where we are regarding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
You know those Mac vs. PC ads that Apple runs? I think our campaign should put out a spoof of that ad wherein Obama plays the Mac guy and an actor portraying McCain plays the PC guy. I think this could really work:
OBAMA: Hello, I'm Barack Obama!
McCAIN (trembling, scratching head): And I'm John McCain.
OBAMA: You look a little confused...
McCAIN: Well, I keep changing my positions so often that I can't keep track of them anymore...
A recent New York Times article compares Obama and Clinton to a Mac and a PC. It specifically looks at this website, my.barackobama.com, and compares the ways social networking has been used by the campaigns.
While Mr. Santa Maria praised barackobama.com for having “this welcoming quality,” he added that it was “ethereal, vaporous and someone could construe it as nebulous.” He said there was a bit of the “Lifetime channel effect, you know, vasoline on the lens” to create a softer effect on the viewer. The “hectic” site that the Clinton campaign is offering could actually be quite strategic, exactly in step with her branding. After all, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly emphasizes how hard she will work for the average American “starting on Day 1.” If she comes across as energetic online, that may simply be her intention. If she shouts a bit more, typographically speaking, that may be the better to be heard.
This is a must read for any technophilic member of this site.
Link via New York Times
Watch the YouTube video...
PS: Feel free to copy this image for whatever use you like.
I'm using it for my profile pictures on just about every web 2.0 site I'm on.
I am perhaps not the most eloquent writer, nor do I pretend to be. My gift is drawing. Political cartooning has come along late in my career. I compare it to learning a new language. Where as every line has a meaning, some lines carrying more definition than others, just like words. They combine to form a short story or a novel and with that - it's purpose.
I work for a small daily newspaper. My opportunity came almost forced on me. My job description was redefined to involve more of my talent that my designing skills. This prompted insecurity, which, in turn, propelled me to become a contributor of content to our newspaper.
It's true that news should be unbiased. Editorial cartooning, on-the-other hand, is opinion oriented. There is a certain power one wields producing in this format that can spark debate and generate thought. I make no pretense about who I support for POTUS. It's all Barack Obama.
With that preface, here are the two political cartoons I've done so far related to the race for a democratic nominee.
I'm a PC and I'm a Mac
My complete cult-like addiction to all things Apple, I found a great avenue to compare Barack's opponent as "THE STATUS QUO" and Barack as the "THINK DIFFERENT WAY" of change. Portraying Barack as an innovator of change just like Apple is the leader in innovation of their products. As I was drawing it occurred to me to put in the Secret Service Agent to represent some media identity. Kind of like an announcer, referee or a news anchor relaying information on a fight or contest.
SAMANTHA POWER
There were many emotions going through me as I drew this last cartoon. Many may find it sexist. My rebuttal is: IF SHE CAN USE IT, SO CAN I. During the past couple of weeks, including a week prior the Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont primaries, Barack's opponent opened up a barrage of dirty political tactics against his campaign. I was trying to combine many aspects to formulate the idea she is a MONSTER! After the comment made by Samantha Power, I felt compelled to justify her statement by depicting Hillary as just that. I feel she is unfair using dirty politics of the past and not taking the higher road to change. I despise the way politicians use fear, misrepresentations, Rovian tactics and smears to destroy their opponents. I wanted to show how ugly Hillary is for using that kind of campaigning.
AS A SIDE NOTE: I can't contribute very much to this great campaign. I am not rich. Journalism doesn't pay like some would think it does. I do, however, greatly enjoy what I am doing. I have donated as much as I can. Around $25 every two weeks or so. I am hoping that posting my cartoons may enlighten some people or even make them smile as we continue this journey together. It may not be much, but it's doing something.
I would appreciate your comments or feedback and any ideas for future Barack cartoons!
Read the full NY Times article here: http://tinyurl.com/2rwm8w
I'm a MacGirl myself, and happily to be so aligned.
Welcome to my blog. I should start with the basics. I have been an Obama supporter since the convention speech, and have been praying he would run since then. I have just joined the websight and am hoping to find a way to be helpful and useful in the closing days.
Before I joined I made my own little add - this is the link if anyone is interested - hopefully it can be used to convinve the undecideds -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXuPetLHeQo
