The Culture of Death Marches on in Washington...I guess we can US Tax Payers Monopoly Money that the Democrats created with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to Kill more American Babies!

  From Life News

 

WASHINGTON, September 23, 2008 In a letter to all members of Congress on September 19, Cardinal Justin Rigali warned against enactment of the proposed "Freedom of Choice Act" or "FOCA" (S. 1173, H.R. 1964).

"Despite its deceptive title," he wrote, "FOCA would deprive the American people in all 50 states of the freedom they now have to enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry. FOCA would coerce all Americans into subsidizing and promoting abortion with their tax dollars. And FOCA would counteract any and all sincere efforts by government to reduce abortions in our country."

Cardinal Rigali, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, wrote that under FOCA"abortion on demand would be a national entitlement that government must condone and promote in all public programs affecting pregnant women." While some have said the bill would simply codify the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, Cardinal Rigali responded, pointing out that supporters of FOCA say it "would sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies" that are now in effect because they do not conflict with Roe. These include bans on public funding of abortions as well as "modest and widely supported state laws" protecting women's safety, informed consent and parental rights.

Cardinal Rigali urged all members of Congress "to pledge their opposition to FOCA and other legislation designed to promote abortion," so that "we can begin a serious and sincere discussion on how to reduce the tragic incidence of abortion in our society."

The full text of his letter can be found at http://www.usccb.org/prolife/FOCArigaliltr.pdf

• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

• LINKS TO THE "KING OF ASTROTURFING" -- DAVID AXELROD
• We believe the voice can also be heard on these AKP&D Message and Media produced videos.
• In fact, all of the female voice overs showcased on the AKP&D website seem to belong to the same woman. That's right, all of them. The same voice heard in some Barack Obama ads, and which was used for the "eswinner" slime campaign.
• More importantly, though, what is AKP&D? It's the Chicago based political consulting firm headed by David Axelrod. Yes, that David Axelrod. As in the David Axelrod who is Barack Obama's chief media strategist.

• Axelrod is the senior partner of AKP&D Message and Media
• and was a political writer for the Chicago Tribune.
• He operates ASK Public Strategies, a company that allegedly engages in "astroturfing" [12].
• He is also a supporter of Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool , who helped Axelrod found his firm (under the name Axelrod and Associates).
• Axelrod was born to Jewish parents in 1955 in New York City and grew up in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan.
• He went to P.S. 40.
• Axelrod's father was a psychologist and avid baseball fan.^[1]
• His mother worked as a journalist at PM, a left-wing 1940s newspaper.
• Axelrod traces his political involvement back to his childhood.
• he told the Los Angeles Times, "I got into politics because I believe in idealism. Just to be a part of this effort that seems to be rekindling the kind of idealism that I knew when I was a kid, it's a great thing to do. ^[2]
• So I find myself getting very emotional about it." At just 13 years old, he was selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy.
• After attending Stuyvesant High School^[1] in Manhattan, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago, where he majored in political science. 
• As an undergraduate, Axelrod wrote for the Hyde Park Herald , covering politics, and picked up an internship at the Chicago Tribune.
• At the age of 27, Axelrod became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the Tribune for eight years, covering national, state and local politics. He became the youngest political writer there in 1981.^[3]
• Unhappy with his prospects at the Tribune, in 1984 he joined the campaign of US Senator Paul Simon as communications director; within weeks he was promoted to co-campaign manager.^[4]
• He formed a political consultancy, Axelrod & Associates, in 1985.
• In 1987, he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor.
  • This established his first experience in working with black politicians and he later became a key player in similar mayoral campaigns of blacks, including Dennis Archer in Detroit, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia.^[5]
• Axelrod is a longtime strategist for Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley and styles himself a "specialist in urban politics."
• In 2004, Axelrod worked for the presidential campaign of John Edwards. During the campaign, he lost responsibility for making ads, but continued as the campaign's spokesman. Regarding Edwards' failed 2004 presidential campaign,
• In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including for the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and for Deval Patrick in Massachusetts's gubernatorial election.
• Axelrod also served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.
• Axelrod and Barack Obama's ties reach back a decade.
• Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lu Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago's "lakefront liberal crowd," during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two.
• Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered his famed 2002 anti-war speech^[8] and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.^[9]
• Axelrod currently serves as the chief strategist and media adviser for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
• Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Tom Vilsack—were past clients.
• Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE).
• (Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod's wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened on finding a cure for the condition was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy."^[10]
• Ultimately, however, he viewed Obama's potential candidacy as inspirational and historic.
• He often likens Obama to Robert F. Kennedy and told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life."^[1]
• Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama's campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007. [13] He continued to use 'man on the street' style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.
• Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign's main theme of "change
• The change message played a factor in Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Just over half of [Iowa's] Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama...
• Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they - bewilderingly - seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."^[12] In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.
• Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from the effectiveness of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama.
• Axelrod explained to Rolling Stone magazine, "When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in."^[13]
• This includes drawing on "Web 2.0" technology and viral media to support a grassroots strategy.
• Obama's web platform allows supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home.
• Axelrod's elaborate use of the Internet has helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.^[14]
• The Obama strategy stood in contrast to Hillary Clinton's campaign, which benefited from high name recognition, large donors and strong support among established Democratic leaders.
• The Politico described Axelrod as 'soft-spoken' and 'mild-mannered'^[15] and it quoted one Obama aide in Chicago as saying, "Do you know how lucky we are that he is our Mark Penn?"^[16]
• Democratic consultant and former colleague Dan Fee said of Axelrod, "He's a calming presence."^[17] "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys," political advisor Bill Daley said of Axelrod in the Chicago Tribune.
• "In late April and early May, Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright criticized Axelrod's influence on Obama.
• Axelrod operates a second business from the same office, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way.^[20]
• He and his partners are secretive about operations and won't reveal the client roster or revenue. ^[21]
• Customers and public records confirm agency has run campaigns for the Chicago Children's Museum, ComEd, Cablevision, and AT&T.^[22]
• The firm helped set up front organizations that were listed as sponsors of public-issue ads, a practice that industry insiders call such practices "Astroturfing" (manufacturing grassroots support). ^[23]
• Eric Sedler, 39, a former public relations director at AT&T and corporate-reputation specialist at PR giant Edelman, is the "S" in ASK and the company's managing partner. The "K" is John Kupper, 51, a former congressional press secretary and ad-industry consultant, while the "A," of course, is Axelrod.^[24] One TV commercial, penned by ASK, warned of a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts without a rate hike and was sponsored by a group known as CORE, which describes itself on its Web site as "a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations," but after a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd acknowledged that it had bankrolled the entire $15 million effort.^[25] Employees of the utility and its parent, Exelon, have contributed $181,711 to Obama's presidential bid, more than workers at any other company in the state.^[26] When Illinois utility Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest.^[27] The firm also worked on behalf of Madison Square Garden's to stop plans for the contructions of a football stadium for the Jets on New York's Westside. ^[28] ASK's $1.1 million fee was listed as the "largest lobbying contract" of the year in the annual report of the state's lobbying commission.^[29]
• ASK last year proposed another "front" group campaign to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent.
• One part of its plan: create a "grassroots" group of medical experts "capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position," according to a copy of the proposal. (ASK didn't get the contract.) Public-interest watchdogs say these grassroots campaigns are state of the art in the lobbying world.
• "There's no way with a straight face to say that's not lobbying," says Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency.^[30] The firm's work has also involved Michelle Obama's employer, the University of Chicago Hospital. She helped create a program, called the Urban Health Initiative, that hired ASK Public Strategies in 2007 to assist in marketing the plan to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. The plan has critics in the community, however, who see at as a way to dump costly patients and increase the hospital's bottom line. ^[31][32

Day Gardner, president of The National Black Pro-Life Union, a leading African-American pro-life advocate group says presidential candidate Barack Obama continues to mislead the public about his votes on an abortion-infanticide bill. Obama has been tagged over the bill all election, and it involves making sure infants who survive abortions get proper medical care.Washington, DC (LifeNews.com)

Obama voted four times against the bill during his tenure in the Illinois legislature and was the only member of the body to speak against it on the floor.

• The issue has been involved in back-and-forth television ads, with a woman who survived a failed abortion saying Obama's votes targeted her and Obama's campaign responding, calling the woman,Gianna Jessen and McCain, "sleazy, despicable liars."
• Gardner also chides Obama for the ad blasting the Ms. Jessen young woman who survived the abortion.
• Obama's comments about why he voted against the bill don't square up with the facts.
• "He misrepresented his vote, saying that the bill he opposed in the Illinois State Senate was different from the bill that was passed by the US Senate and signed into law by President Bush," she said.
• "However, the National Right to Life Committee has produced documents that confirm the two bills were exactly the same."
• "It is hard to believe that this man vying for the highest office in America would not only oppose legislation to protect children born alive, but would then lie about it for 4 years stating that he did not oppose it," she continued.
• "To make matters even worse, Obama is now attacking Gianna Jessen, a young woman who by some blessing, miraculously, survived being killed by abortion," she said.
• "Rather than applaud her life, he totally disregards her and ignores her passionate plea for the lives of babies who after surviving abortion--are strangled, suffocated, stabbed to death, or shelved until dead-- which amounts to infanticide," she added.
• Gardner said Obama is acting like a child and she urged him to admit he was wrong on voting against the bill.
• "Mr. Obama behaves like a small child caught with his hand in the cookie jar--instead of telling the truth, he continues to deny the obvious and spouts tall tales like some children do," she told LifeNews.com.

• "The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing,
• he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but 'predatory.'" See, the very people that designed the program that led to all of this mess now get to blame the private sector and they're put back in total control and charge of it. "Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street.
• But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck. And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi- governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America. A
• s soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud."
  
• Can I translate that for you?  Franklin Raines was a Treasury employee, some sort of cabinet secretary in the Clinton administration.  He ends up at Fannie Mae and pays himself a hundred million bucks from 1999 to 2005, and they finally had to get rid of him because the scandal could not be contained.  Democrats propped up this, Carly!  Bush didn't do any of this. 
• "Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million." Gorelick again. 
• "In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk. But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America."  Hello, Mr. Chris Dodd, number one receiver of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. 
• "At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.
• The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists.
  • Investor's Business Daily: The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
• HotAir: Whose Policies Led To The Credit Crisis?
  • American Thinker: Jamie Gorelick's Two Trillion Dollar Disasters

• The FBI is stepping up its investigation into the possibility that a University of Tennessee student hacked into the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
• A Department of Justice spokesperson confirmed there has been "investigatory activity" in Knoxville regarding the Palin case, but she said there are no publicly available search warrants, and no charges have been filed.
• A separate law enforcement source confirmed to 10 News that a search warrant was served on Kernell's apartment.
• According to the witness, several agents arrived at The Commons of Knoxville around midnight.
• They presented their badges upon entering Kernell's apartment, where several students were having a party, and took down their names.
• The witness tells us they asked him and those who did not live in the unit to go outside. He believes the investigators took about 1.5 to 2 hours taking pictures of everything inside the apartment.
• Witnesses say Kernell and his friends fled the apartment when the FBI agents arrived.
• Kernell's three roommates were also subpoenaed, and must testify this week in Chattanooga, according to the witness.
• Knoxville blogger and WBIR contributor Terry Frank has posted what she says are images from Kernell's Facebook page.
• Numerous web sites say someone going by the name "Rubico" has admitted to hacking Palin's email. According to www.wired.com, "Rubico" made the claim in an internet posting. This person said it was easy to access Palin's yahoo account by using information like her zip code and birthdate. Various people on the internet have quickly associated Rubico with David Kernell.
• Previous StoryThe son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell confirmed on Thursday.
• Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, said his 20-year-old son David had been contacted by authorities investigating the hacking of Palin's personal email account.
• The FBI and the Secret Service started a formal investigation on Wednesday into the hacking.

1.   Franklin Delano Raines is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton.The son of a Seattle janitor [1], Raines graduated from Harvard University, Harvard Law School; and Magdalen College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
• Raines was of age during the Vietnam War, but performed no military service.
• He served in the Carter Administration as associate director for economics and government in the Office of Management and Budget and assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff from 1977 to 1979.
• Then he joined Lazard Freres and Co., where he worked for 11 years and became a general partner.
2. In 1991 he became Fannie's Mae's Vice Chairman, a post he left in 1996 in order to join the Clinton Administration as the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, where he served until 1998. In 1999, he returned to Fannie Mae as CEO, "the first black man to head a Fortune 500 company."^[1]
3. On December 21, 2004 Raines accepted what he called "early retirement" [2] from his position as CEO while U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators continued to investigate alleged accounting irregularities.
• He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses [3].
4. In 2006, the OFHEO announced a suit against Raines in order to recover some or all of the $50 million in payments made to Raines based on the overstated earnings [4] initially estimated to be $9 billion but have been announced as 6.3 billion.^[2].
• Civil charges were filed against Raines and two other former executives by the OFHEO in which the OFHEO sought $110 million in penalties and $115 million in returned bonuses from the three accused.[5] On April 18, 2008, the government announced a settlement with Raines together with J. Timothy Howard, Fannie's former chief financial officer, and Leanne G. Spencer, Fannie's former controller. The three executives agreed to pay fines totaling about $3 million, which will be paid by Fannie's insurance policies. Raines also agreed to donate the proceeds from the sale of $1.8 million of his Fannie stock and to give up stock options. The stock options however have no value. Raines also gave up an estimated $5.3 million of "other benefits" said to be related to his pension and forgone bonuses.[6]
5. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal called it a "paltry settlement" which allowed Raines and the other two executives to "keep the bulk of their riches." [7] In 2003 alone, Raines's compensation was over $20 million.^[3]
6. A statement issued by Raines said of the consent order, "is consistent with my acceptance of accountability as the leader of Fannie Mae and with my strong denial of the allegations made against me by OFHEO."^[4]
7. In a settlement with OFHEO and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fannie paid a record $400 million civil fine. Fannie, which is the largest American financier and guarantor of home mortgages, also agreed to make changes in its corporate culture and accounting procedures and ways of managing risk. [8]
8. In June 2008 The Wall Street Journal reported that Franklin Raines was one of several public officials who received below market rates loans at Countrywide Financial because the corporation considered the officeholders "FOA's"--"Friends of Angelo" (Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo). He received loans for over $3 million while CEO of Fannie Mae. ^[5]

• From Slate reveals the Offenders from the Republican side too but it mentions all the money that the DemoRats got paid and not the Republicans...I wonder why?...the DemoRats became MultiMillionaires!

• At the top of the list we must place Franklin D. Raines, chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004. Raines, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, had previously worked at Fannie Mae as vice chairman. Before that, he worked on the Clinton transition team following the 1992 election. Before that, he was a general partner at Lazard Freres & Co. Raines, as the Wall Street Journal reported, was forced to leave Fannie Mae in 2004, when regulators discovered it had broken accounting rules "in an effort to conceal fluctuations in profit and hadn't maintained adequate risk controls." The New York Times reported two year ago that regulators "have said that of the $90 million paid to Mr. Raines from 1998 to 2003 at least $52 million—more than half—was tied to bonus targets that were reached by manipulating accounting." Raines agreed to a $24.7 million settlement with a federal regulator in exchange for charges being dropped, but he admitted no wrongdoing.

• Next up is Jamie S. Gorelick, whose official résumé describes her as "one of the longest serving Deputy Attorneys General of the United States," a position she held during the Clinton administration. Although Gorelick had no background in finance, she joined Fannie Mae in 1997 as vice chair and departed in 2003. For her trouble, Gorelick collected a staggering $26.4 million in total compensation, including bonuses. Federal investigators (PDF) would later say that "Fannie Mae's management directed employees to manipulate accounting and earnings to trigger maximum bonuses for senior executives from 1998 to 2003." The New York Times would call the manipulations an "$11 billion accounting scandal." Gorelick, it should be noted, has never been charged with any wrongdoing.

  Republicans also proved willing to serve Fannie Mae. Robert B. Zoellick, current head of the World Bank, has served President Reagan, President Bush 1, and President Bush 2 as a trade representative, deputy secretary of state, deputy secretary of the treasury, deputy chief of staff, and so on. Zoellick's first Fannie Mae tour of duty was from 1983 to 1985, when he was a vice president. His second tour was 1993 to 1997, and his title was executive vice president in charge of lobbying, public affairs, and affordable housing. According to a July 23, 1997, report in the American Banker, Zoellick "has used his close ties to Republicans in Congress, such as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., to defend Fannie Mae from new taxes."

  John Buckley worked at Fannie Mae for almost 10 years (1991-2001) but took a leave of absence to serve as Bob Dole's communications director during his 1996 run for the presidency. Before Fannie Mae, he worked at the National Republican Congressional Committee, served as press secretary to Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., deputy press secretary during the Reagan-Bush 1984 campaign, and press secretary to Lewis Lehrman when he ran for governor of New York. He hails from the political Buckley family, his uncles being William F. and James.

  Moving back across the aisle, let's say hello to Mr. Democrat James A. Johnson, who ran Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, served as vice chairman from 1990 to 1991, and earlier worked as a managing director at Lehman Bros. and for Vice President Walter F. Mondale. He currently leads the American Friends of Bilderberg and made news earlier this summer when he had to resign as vice-presidential-candidate vetter for Barack Obama "as new details emerged about loans Mr. Johnson received from mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.," according to the Wall Street Journal. In his 1997 profile of Johnson, "The Velvet Fist of Fannie Mae," by Richard W. Stevenson writes that Johnson "hires lobbyists from both sides of the political aisle—last year the company had 36 registered lobbyists making its case in the hallways and hearing rooms of Congress. ... And Mr. Johnson has made Fannie Mae both a launching pad and a landing strip for officials moving in and out of politics and Government in Washington." According to the voluminous "Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae" by the Office of the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (warning, extra large PDF!), Johnson earned nearly $21 million from Fannie Mae in 1998.

  Moving down the Democratic Party food chain, we meet William M. Daley, son of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and brother of current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Daley worked as special counsel to President Clinton and chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. He also served as a Clinton secretary of commerce from 1997 to 2000, and earlier as president of Amalgamated Bank in Chicago. He is now an executive at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Daley was appointed to the Fannie Mae board in 1993 by President Clinton.

• As part of the "leave no Democrat behind" campaign, Johnson's Fannie Mae hired Walter Hubbell, son of Webster L. Hubbell, in 1994. Walter Hubbell got his job, the Times' Stevenson reports, "after Mr. Johnson and other executives received calls from Administration officials—including Mickey Kantor, who was then the United States trade representative—urging them to do so. At the time, the White House had undertaken an effort to help the Hubbell family financially after the senior Mr. Hubbell's resignation from the Justice Department." He got a slot in the marketing department, where Johnson said he was an ''outstanding" employee.

  But Fannie Mae is nothing if not ecumenical. According to the Associated Press, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have spent $170 million on lobbying in the past decade. "Fannie Mae's 51-member lobbying stable" includes "former Reps. Tom Downey, D-N.Y., and Ray McGrath, R-N.Y.; Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic political strategist and former congressional aide; and Donald Fierce, a longtime GOP operative. Freddie Mac's list of 91 lobbyists includes former Reps. Vin Weber, R-Minn., and Susan Molinari, R-N.Y." The AP notes the Fannie Mae ties enjoyed by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., who helped in McCain's veep search. According to Politico, McCain economic adviser Aquiles Suarez worked as Fannie Mae's director of government and industry relations, and McCain finance co-chairman Frederic V. Malek spent time on the Freddie Mac board.

  A totally brilliant and prescient Washingtonian article from 2002 by Ross Guberman harvests a bunch of politicos who benefited from and supported Fannie Mae. Arne Christenson, a former Newt Gingrich aide, was senior vice president for regulatory policy. Tom Donilon was Fannie Mae's executive vice president for law and policy and secretary to the board of directors until 2005. He worked in the Clinton State Department and as part of the 1992 Clinton-Gore transition. William Maloni, Fannie Mae senior adviser, worked on the Hill as chief of staff for Rep. Richard Baker, R-La. Of Fannie Mae's board of directors, Guberman writes that it is "political by design."

  The company's charter gives the President the right to appoint five of the board's 18 members. The idea was to ensure that Fannie fulfilled its public mission. Today the five appointees, considered big winners in the capital's game of spoils, promote the interests of Fannie's shareholders. Recent directors include Ann McLaughlin Korologos, Ronald Reagan's Labor secretary; Ken Duberstein, Reagan's chief of staff; Bill Daley, former Commerce Secretary and Gore spokesman during the 2000 election controversy; and Jack Quinn, counsel to Bill Clinton and lawyer to pardoned fugitive Mark Rich. [Emphasis added.]

  ---

  ---

  The bipartisan Fannie Mae gang appears to have broken few, if any, laws. Their crime was to have practiced—without any thought of the consequences—"access capitalism," which Michael Lewis defined in the New Republic as "a neat solution for people who don't have a whole lot to sell besides their access, but who don't want to appear to be selling their access."

  The easiest way to end this article—and I'll take it—is to cite Michael Kinsley's tidy formulation: "The scandal in Washington isn't what's illegal. It's what's legal."

  Addendum, Sept. 17: International Economy magazine identified additional Fannie Mae enablers in its July-August 1999 issue in an article by Owen Ullmann titled "Crony Capitalism: American Style." Ullmann fingers Duane Duncan, a Fannie Mae vice president who previously worked as staff director for Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., who chaired the House banking subcommittee; Ellen Seidman, Fannie Mae senior vice president, who worked as director of the Office of Thrift Supervision; Wendy Sherman, president of the Fannie Mae Foundation, who was counselor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Dan Crippen, who lobbied for Fannie Mae after heading the Congressional Budget Office; Ann Logan, executive vice president, who was a policy adviser to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in the 1980s; Thomas Nides, senior vice president, who served as chief of staff to both U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and Speaker Tom Foley, D-Mass.; and Eli Segal, director, who was a senior adviser to President Clinton.

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Democrats

  Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on July 16, 2008 5:27 PM

  (For an updated chart that includes contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's PACs and employees to ALL lawmakers back to 1989, including to their leadership PACs, go here.) and data The federal government recently announced that it will come to the rescue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two embattled mortgage buyers that for years have pursued a lobbying strategy to get lawmakers on their side. Both companies have poured money into lobbying and campaign contributions to federal candidates, parties and committees as a general tactic, but they've also directed those contributions strategically. In the 2006 election cycle, Fannie Mae was giving 53 percent of its total $1.3 million in contributions to Republicans, who controlled Congress at that time. This cycle, with Democrats in control, they've reversed course, giving the party 56 percent of their total $1.1 million in contributions. Similarly, Freddie Mac has given 53 percent of its $555,700 in contributions to Democrats this cycle, compared to the 44 percent it gave during 2006.
  
  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also strategically given more contributions to lawmakers currently sitting on committees that primarily regulate their industry. Fifteen of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most from the two companies combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, has received the most from Fannie and Freddie's PACs and employees ($133,900 since 1989). Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) has received $65,500. Kanjorski chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.
  
  Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
  Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008
  

  Name	Office	Party/State	Total
  1. Dodd, Christopher J	S	D-CT	$133,900
  2. Kerry, John	S	D-MA	$111,000
  3. Obama, Barack	S	D-IL	$105,849
  4. Clinton, Hillary	S	D-NY	$75,550
  5. Kanjorski, Paul E	H	D-PA	$65,500
  6. Bennett, Robert F	S	R-UT	$61,499
  7. Johnson, Tim	S	D-SD	$61,000
  8. Conrad, Kent	S	D-ND	$58,991
  9. Davis, Tom	H	R-VA	$55,499
  10. Bond, Christopher S 'Kit'	S	R-MO	$55,400
  11. Bachus, Spencer	H	R-AL	$55,300
  12. Shelby, Richard C	S	R-AL	$55,000
  13. Emanuel, Rahm	H	D-IL	$51,750
  14. Reed, Jack	S	D-RI	$50,750
  15. Carper, Tom	S	D-DE	$44,389
  16. Frank, Barney	H	D-MA	$40,100
  17. Maloney, Carolyn B	H	D-NY	$38,750
  18. Bean, Melissa	H	D-IL	$37,249
  19. Blunt, Roy	H	R-MO	$36,500
  20. Pryce, Deborah	H	R-OH	$34,750
  21. Miller, Gary	H	R-CA	$33,000
  22. Pelosi, Nancy	H	D-CA	$32,750
  23. Reynolds, Tom	H	R-NY	$32,700
  24. Hoyer, Steny H	H	D-MD	$30,500
  25. Hooley, Darlene	H	D-OR	$28,750

  Includes contributions from PACs and individuals.
  2008 cycle totals based on data downloaded from the
  Federal Election Commission on June 30, 2008.