Equal Opportunity Corrupters

The American Spectator ^ | 9/26/2008 | David Boaz

[markomalley]

John McCain's campaign is under fire for his campaign manager's ties to Freddie Mac. Rick Davis's lobbying firm, it turns out, was still receiving monthly payments until very recently, despite previous assurances that the relationship had ended three years ago.

Meanwhile, McCain is running television ads tying Sen. Barack Obama to Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who was forced out for misstating the company's earnings. Obama vigorously protests that Raines isn't really one of his advisers, though Raines had previously said that he advised the campaign.

But McCain doesn't need to focus on Raines. Obama selected another Fannie Mae CEO, James A. Johnson, to head his vice presidential search. Johnson had been executive assistant to Vice President Walter Mondale and a lobbyist before his nine years at Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, found that Fannie Mae had misrepresented its expenses during his tenure, allowing him and other officers to receive larger bonuses than warranted. After revelations that Johnson had received loans directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, he resigned his position with the Obama campaign. (Given his experience, Johnson could probably have helped Obama choose a better vice president than the gaffe-prone fabulist Joe Biden.)

Obama is also the second-biggest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, behind only Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd. What's remarkable is that the calculation by the Center for Responsive Politics covers 20 years, from 1989 to 2008, and yet Obama is at the top of the list after only one Senate campaign and four years in office.

[Rippin]

I thought McCain’s assurances are not that the firm didn’t continue to get money but that it isn’t Davis’ firm anymore.