Frank'a got more than ethics questions. Frank was closely identitfied with the criminal money-making enterprise of the Democratic party---Fannie Mae. Read on.
Frank Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest
Friday, October 03, 2008
By Bill Sammon, Washington FOX News, Deputy Managing Editor
Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefited from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s. So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions. Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives.
Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie. Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Critics, however, remain skeptical. ‘It’s absolutely a conflict,’ said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane? “If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane,’ added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. ‘But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.’
A top GOP House aide agreed. ‘C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?’ the aide told FOX News. ‘No media ever takes note?
Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.’
Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress. ‘I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus,” Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. “On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover.’
The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses ‘helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs.’ Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.
Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants.
In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis. ‘I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,’ Clinton said recently.”
Lefty financier and congresswoman’s fiancée dodged U.S. taxes as Virgin Island Resident
Weekly Standard | Oct 15, 2010 | ALANA GOODMAN
FR Posted Saturday, October 16, 2010 by fight_truth_decay
Lberal financier S. Donald Sussman the hedge-fund billionaire has pumped millions into the coffers of Democratic politicians and their political pet projects since 1989. Sussman sits on the board of the non-profit Center for American Progress, the non-profit Democracy Alliance and the dovish non-profit Israel Policy Forum, and he’s been one of the top contributors to left-leaning 527 non-profit organizations.
Progressive organizations and Democratic pols have taken significant financial contributions from Sussman – and have long vilified offshore tax havens, pointing to them as evidence of corporate greed gone wild. Sussman's girlfriend Rep. Pingree (D-Maine) has been an outspoken critic of this type of tax evasion, and made it one of the cornerstones of her unsuccessful 2002 senate bid against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). (Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Sussman has long kept a behind-the-scenes profile, a recent ethics controversy in Maine has flung him into the center of a complicated dispute over state residency, tax dodging and congressional ethics – the implications of which extend all the way from the rocky coast of southern Maine to the offshore tax haven of the U.S. Virgin Islands. According to Sussman’s fiancée, Rep Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the philanthropist lives with her and has been a resident of Maine since 2009. But financial records and other documents indicate that Sussman has claimed full-time residency and extensive tax breaks in the U.S. Virgin Islands for years – and may be continuing to claim them.
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HOW'D THEY DO THAT? The court-appointed man ID'ing Ponzi Madoff's assets, unearthed a labyrinth of interrelated international funds, institutions and entities of almost unparalleled complexity and breadth...... and assets and businesses in 11 places overseas. No question,tax evasion and money laundering was the name of the game for the wealthiest ----- posing as philanthropists----businessmen who were funneling income to Madoff to avoid US taxes. The crooks take on the image of "philanthropists" ....forming non-profits that contribnute to their fave "charities"....the MO for tax evasion and money laundering.
Frank's and Sussman's connections to Israel, and the non-profit Israel Policy Forum, should be rigorously scrutinized----Israel is the only place in the world, one can debark, go to a bank with a suitcase full of cash, and nobody asks where it came from or if taxes were paid on it.
ping
1. GOP takes the Housee, big time..60-70 seats
2. Frank wins a narrow victory against Bielat.
3. Ethics committee opens an investigation about these flights ( I cna just hear Mad Maxine Waters demanding it..saying that dems only investigate black members..
4. Barney won't enjoy the minority
THUS..Frank retires, either during, or at the end of the coming Congress..
Great post...Like was said, if Frank was a Republican he’d have been skewered for having a live-in boyfriend that was an executive at Fannie Mae but as a gay Dem everyone looked the other way.
Donald Sussman threatened to sue Maine's WCSH TV
http://www.asmainegoes.com/content/sussman-biz-vows-legal-action-if-wcsh-airs-gop-ad
However the use of Sussman’s corporate plane by Pingree was considered appropriate under closer study by the ethics committee, as her spokesman surfaced and announced that Chellie and Donald had been engaged secretly since 2008, even though up until a short time before the discovery of these corporate flights by a mainewatchdog.org group she had referred to Don as “a partner”. Being a fiancee falls under “relative”. Thus relative is family.
Pingree had debated yesterday with her rival Dean Scontras 7:08 [R] 560 News Radio
http://wgan.com/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=4967950
If you have the time this is very informative.
“No town hall meetings” Pingree talks how she is not an insider and most responses are carbon copy Obama mantra, remember she is “new” she repeats or “before her”, and of course the big surplus when Clinton left office but Scontras responds brilliantly on all questions!
In Scontras' early morning speech, he slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and incumbent opponent Democrat Chellie Pingree for what he considers to be irresponsible spending decisions — including $26.5 million he said Pingree earmarked for "an institute in one of the wealthiest counties in the country: Orange County, California."
seacoastononline Scontras suggested taxpayer money would have been better used to rebuild or renovate a "crumbling" Memorial Bridge.
Moveon.org money has come to Maine financially in supporting [D] Michaud.
Paul Lepage is the one to watch which if elected would be the first Republican governor in decades.Lepage could change the entire political atmosphere in Maine if elected, then Mainers would see up close and personal that there can be another Maine where they won't have to operate ongoing yard sales [tax free so far] to make ends meet. Lepage is "all business" coming from being abused and homeless at age 11 to general manager of the Maddens stores (numbers of stores added since he became gm), the popular mayor of Waterville , now thriving small city , lowering taxes in Waterville and "open for business". That's the race to watch against Libby Mitchell, Speaker of the House and Senate President, grandmother, [a Pelosi attired in Maine garb-long skirts)part of politics for decades in Augusta--part of the present day problem.
The NRA has given LePage a first Maine candidate the nod in 20 years!
"Am I politically correct all the time? No. Maybe it's time to have people say bluntly what's going on,"..."The fact of the matter is that I haven't learned how to speak out of both sides of my mouth yet."-Lepage