AP IMPACT: Mortgage firm arranged stealth campaign

[Chreamps]

From Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081019/ap_on_bi_ge/the_influence_game_housing) this afternoon.

WASHINGTON – Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.
In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September....
There's a lot more to the article (and I don't necessarily think it is implementing McCain, just some Republican's if I'm understanding it correctly) and I'm still reading and will have to reread it I'm sure.

[Hollie]

Good find, Chris. I am beyond irritated about this whole mess. I wish we could just unseat all of congress at this point and start over--with people from any and every party besides the big two. Well, there are a precious few currently there that I wouldn't mind keeping, but whichever. I'm so sick of this. Thanks for posting this, though--I appreciate it!

[scrapper_gal]

From Yahoo News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081019/ap_on_bi_ge/the_influence_game_housing) this afternoon.

There's a lot more to the article (and I don't necessarily think it is implementing McCain, just some Republican's if I'm understanding it correctly) and I'm still reading and will have to reread it I'm sure.

Actually McCain was the "victim" of this campaign. Chuck Hagel is a Republican from Nebraska who has continually bucked the Republican party. He and McCain are actually friends, I believe, and Hagel was on the list of potential VP candidates.

Hagel introduced the legislation to reform Freddie and Fannie. McCain and other republicans on the senate banking committee signed on to the bill. All the democrats on the committee opposed the bill. The "stealth campaign" was actually an effort to persuade non-committee Republicans (not McCain and Hagel and other bill sponsors) to not allow this to come to the floor for a vote since it would not otherwise advance since it had been defeated in committee.

McCain was a victim of this targeted campaign. Had the bill been voted on and passed we may have actually seen meaningful reform of Freddie and Fannie before this crisis spiraled out of control.

[tammy1999]

Actually McCain was the "victim" of this campaign. Chuck Hagel is a Republican from Nebraska who has continually bucked the Republican party. He and McCain are actually friends, I believe, and Hagel was on the list of potential VP candidates.

Hagel introduced the legislation to reform Freddie and Fannie. McCain and other republicans on the senate banking committee signed on to the bill. All the democrats on the committee opposed the bill. The "stealth campaign" was actually an effort to persuade non-committee Republicans (not McCain and Hagel and other bill sponsors) to not allow this to come to the floor for a vote since it would not otherwise advance since it had been defeated in committee.

McCain was a victim of this targeted campaign. Had the bill been voted on and passed we may have actually seen meaningful reform of Freddie and Fannie before this crisis spiraled out of control.

Republicans many times tried to have Fannie and Freddie checked out, but because of Barney Frank and his followers, they were knocked down. And there is video showing Frank and others saying that Fannie and Freddie were sound.