Barney Frank knocked on his Fannie

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank admitted he helped his ex-lover land a lucrative post with Fannie Mae in the early 1990s while the Newton Democrat was on a committee that regulated the lending giant — but he called questions of a potential ethical conflict “nonsense.”

“If it is (a conflict of interest), then much of Washington is involved (in conflicts),” Frank told the Herald last night. “It is a common thing in Washington for members of Congress to have spouses work for the federal government. There is no rule against it at all.”

Frank said he helped his former longtime companion, Herb Moses, land a job at Fannie Mae in 1991 after Moses graduated with a master’s degree in business administration from Dartmouth College. Frank said he was approached by a Fannie Mae executive and vouched for Moses, who formerly worked as an economist in the Department of Agriculture.

“(The executive) said, ‘Herb applied for a job,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think he’d be great. He’s an economist and he’s got an MBA,’ ” Frank said, recounting the conversation. “He was hired to an entry-level position.”

Asked if he should have disclosed his efforts to help Moses land the job at Fannie Mae, Frank said: “It was widely known. It was out there in the public. It’s nonsense.”

“Just when you think you’ve heard the worst, Democrats in Massachusetts take shameless politics to a new low,” said Tory Mazzola, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The fact that Barney Frank didn’t see this as a conflict of interest is alarming by itself, but it’s so deceitful that it really shows voters that he’s not looking out for them in Washington.”

Moses, who lived with Frank in Washington at the time, worked for Fannie until 1998, when he left the mortgage behemoth. Moses, who could not be reached for comment, and Frank split up that year.

Frank was a junior member on the House Financial Services Committee at the time he helped Moses land the job and served on the committee, which regulates lenders, for the duration of their relationship. Frank wasn’t on the subcommittee that directly dealt with Fannie and Freddie Mac legislation but he once abstained from voting on a Republican amendment to limit executive compensation at the government-backed lenders.

“I said publicly that my companion worked there and I voted present. I didn’t think I should vote on it,” the congressman said.

Frank’s assistance in helping Moses land the job was first reported in a new book about the fiscal meltdown by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times [NYT] reporter Gretchen Morgensen.

In an interview Tuesday on WBUR’s “Fresh Air,” Morgensen said Frank “was very aggressive and really tough on those who were testifying in Congress about reining in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” during hearings after Moses was hired. She said Fannie Mae “rolled out the red carpet” for Moses as part of a strategy to curry favor with Frank and other members of the Financial Services Committee.

Morgensen also noted that members of the committee raked in tens of thousands in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie execs, including Frank, who received $42,000 in contributions from 1989 through 2008.

Frank denied he turned a blind eye to Fannie until after the 2008 mortgage meltdown. He says he criticized the Bush administration’s policies on government-backed lenders in 2004 and backed legislation to deal with lending concerns in 2006 but was thwarted by the GOP-controlled Congress.

Howie Carr list ping (he was hinting at this article yesterday) and special Thu. column

Barney Frank Mae have to find new friends
By Howie Carr | Thursday, May 26, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Please, try not to let what I’m about to tell you destroy your faith in the integrity of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Newton).

It appears that back in 1991, Barney went to the mat in obtaining a six-figure hack job for his then-boyfriend, Herbie Moses, at, of all places, Fannie Mae.

You know, that same Fannie Mae that in the summer of 2007 Barney said publicly would be fine “going forward.” This was a couple of months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac almost brought down the entire world economy with the subprime mortgage policies they’d developed under the leadership of another Democrat hack who managed Fritz Mondale’s doomed 1984 campaign.

Granted, you’re reading this in the Boston Herald, which Barney dismissed on election night last November as having “complete political irrelevance.”

He continued, “There is no limit to the bias and vitriol they unleashed.”

OK. But Barney’s problem with this latest “bias and vitriol” is that it doesn’t come from the Herald. It comes from a New York Times reporter, Gretchen Morgenson — a Pulitzer Prize winner — in a new book, “Reckless Endangerment.”

Morgenson accused Barney of getting a job for his boyfriend on a show a couple of days ago on, of all places, National Public Radio.

Another bastion of anti-gay bias and vitriol.

Can anyone dispute that the New York Times/Boston Globe protects and venerates Barney Frank? And yet here is what the Times’ Pulitzer Prize winner says:

“Frank actually called up the company (Fannie Mae) and asked them to hire his companion, who had just gotten an MBA from the Amos Tuck School of Business (at Dartmouth). . . . Of course the company was happy to provide a job for his companion and rolled out the red carpet in a series of interviews with a variety of executives, and it ultimately did hire the man.”

Another nationwide search!

“And he stayed there for, I believe, seven years.”

Longer than that would be my vitriolic and bias-filled guess.

Remember, this is the same Barney Frank who used to consort with a criminal male prostitute named Hot Bottom, and who wrote letters on Mr. Bottom’s behalf to the cops. And more recently, Barney was present at a drug raid in York County, Maine, where he claimed he didn’t even know what a marijuana plant looked like.

As liberal blogger Mickey Kaus said of Barney yesterday, “If he were straight and a lousy interview, he’d be in trouble, no?”

The Pulitzer Prize winner from the Times interviewed Barney about his Significant Other, and Mr. Hot Bottom assured her he never, ever went to bat for his boyfriend’s employer at congressional hearings. Not true, says the NYT reporter.

“The record shows that he was very aggressive and really tough on those who were testifying in Congress about reining in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

True love is what it was. Later on, Barney had an epiphany about Fannie Mae’s corruption. But as Morgenson puts it, “He had been a vocal supporter for so long that it was sort of an odd turnabout.”

But Barney is one of the Beautiful People. So it’s all . . . irrelevant.

One last question: When do you think El Globo will report this story?

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1340677

That's because there shouldn't have to be rules against conflict of interest, you pathetic waste of human flesh. A decent, honest human being has a moral compass that sounds the alarm whenever they get anywhere near a COI but you DC scum have managed to breed that out of you. Time to drive every snake out of the capital and begin the tedious process of reclaiming America. The new American government needs to appoint an all- citizen panel to thoroughly investigate politicians such as Barney Frank and turn the findings over to a criminal court. Politicians should not be in charge of investigations of politicians.

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