Posted on 03/30/2009 6:32:51 PM PDT by tobyhill
An aide to U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd dismissed as "old news" a report Monday that said the Connecticut Democrat collected more than $160,000 from American International Group employees and their spouses after a top executive urged employees to give.
The Washington Times reported that in a November 2006 e-mail, the head of the troubled Financial Products unit told employees that Dodd was "next in line" to chair the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, where he would "have the opportunity to set the committee's agenda on issues critical to the financial services industry."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
If there is a silver lining in this cloud, it would be to see Dodd’s carcass nailed to the barn door!!!!!!!!
When most of the MSM is ignoring it who is going to find out about it except for the Washington Times readers and Fox News readers/viewers?!
If it was a Republican/Conservative it would be splattered on the front page news in every paper and a news flash on every channel. BET ON IT!
And they wonder why no one wants to buy their fish-wrap or watch their ‘news’ shows!
>If there is a silver lining in this cloud, it would be to see Dodds carcass nailed to the barn door!!!!!!!!
Democrat response: How dare you! To blaspheme the name of the Most High Dodd.
Between AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Countrywide, etc., this “statesman” has been raking it in.
You'd almost think that he had been in a position of oversight and influence...
dismissed as "old news"...also in the category were Bill Clinton's rapes, phony global warming research results...
“If it was a Republican/Conservative it would be splattered on the front page news in every paper and a news flash on every channel. BET ON IT!”
Folks who never agreed (with me) that the media actively was managing the news with overt bias have been coming around over the last 6 months.
“old news”
Ahhhh, and oldie but a goodie from the clinton crime years.
Not with Pelosi covering faster than a cat with diarrhea in a litter box.
Well wasn’t a good night to make chili for dinner, but funny as hell anyhow.
Dodd should do the perp walk too.
See also:
AIG chiefs pressed to donate to Dodd
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2217759/posts
His Daddy did it ....and we all know the son is even more corrupt than Daddy-dearest !!
Bye Bye Dodd !!
Daddy & Son - 2 corrupt pompous asses !!
His father Tom was corrupt also. He was run out of the Senate for dishonesty. It’s genetic.
Dodd, never saw a banker bailout he did not push through.
An intriguing item here from the dogged Kevin Rennie of the Hartford Courant that highlights a classic example of why ordinary citizens become cynical about politicians and the way business in Washington is conducted.
Silver-haired Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has already been getting a lot of heat for his two 2003 VIP mortgage loans from Countrywide, one of the major actors in triggering the current financial crisis.
Seeking Senate re-election in 2010, the 2008 presidential candidate (he dropped out on the first day of voting after finishing seventh in Iowa, where he had moved with his family as a way of courting voters) is now in a bit of a sticky spot with another accommodation- his "cottage" on the lovely Irish island of Inishnee.
Some digging from Rennie (a lawyer and former Connecticut state legislator) reveals that as well as there being a cloud over Dodd's properties in Connecticut and Washington DC, considerable murkiness surrounds the financial arrangements for the purchase of his "cottage".
As Rennie outlines, Dodd became part owner of the 10-acre Galway property in 1994 along with Missouri businessman William Kessinger, whom Dodd knew through investor Edward R. Downe Jnr, who had pleaded guilty the previous year to insider trading charges. The mortgage was listed as "between $100,001 and $250,000". Downe was a witness to Kessinger's purchase.
In 2001, Dodd circumvented the US Justice Department to help get his pal Downe a full pardon on President Bill Clinton's last day in office. The following year, Dodd bought off Kessinger's two-thirds share of the "cottage" for, Dodd said, $127,000.
Ever since then, Dodd has continued to list the value of the property as "between $100,001 and $250,000".
Check out the picture of Dodd's "cottage" (provided to me by Rennie), where he spends summers and which is looked after during the rest of the year by a caretaker. It's not exactly the humble tumbledown abode with a leaky thatched roof, a fireplace with peat thrown on it and donkey tethered outside that the Senator might like you to envisage.
The nearby village of Roundstone is a celebrity hangout. When he's there, the Sunday Times reported in 2007, he's likely to "rub shoulders with [RTE's] Pat Kenny, Bill Whelan of Riverdance, Lochlann Quinn, the former AIB chairman, and the singer Brian Kennedy".
Given the Irish property boom, a conservative estimate would be that the house would be worth approaching $1 million, and very possibly much more than that.
So why hasn't Dodd declared a more realistic true value of the property? No doubt he didn't want to highlight the fact that he had a third splendid pile, to go along with his residences in DC and Connecticut, as he sought the presidency (remember how all those homes harmed John McCain?). Maybe he knew it would mean further scrutiny of his connection with the pardoned crook Downe.
Now that President Barack Obama - whom Dodd enthusiastically endorsed for president over Hillary Clinton - has declared a new era of ethical government in Washington, his former Senate colleague will order a fresh, long overdue reappraisal of its value. Or perhaps the Senate Ethics Committee will look into the matter.
Call me cynical, but I wouldn't advise you to hold your breath.
I see nothing is different here in America.
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