Efforts to tighten government regulation were gaining support on Capitol Hill, and Freddie Mac was fighting back. The baseball tickets for home opener were means of influence.
According to confidential company documents obtained by The Associated Press, Reps. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., spent the evening in hard-to-obtain seats near the Nationals dugout with Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin and four of Freddie Mac’s in-house lobbyists.
Kanjorski declined comment through a spokeswoman. Ney ultimately served a federal prison term after pleading guilty to trading political favors for a golf trip to Scotland, other gifts and campaign donations in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
The Nationals tickets were bargains for Freddie Mac, part of a well-orchestrated, multimillion-dollar campaign to preserve its largely regulatory-free environment, with particular pressure exerted on Republicans who controlled Congress at the time.
Internal Freddie Mac budget records show $11.7 million was paid to 52 outside lobbyists and consultants in 2006. Power brokers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were recruited with six-figure contracts. Freddie Mac paid the following amounts to the firms of former Republican lawmakers or ex-GOP staffers in 2006:
_Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York, at Park Strategies, $240,000.
_Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, at Clark & Weinstock, $360,297.
_Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, at Washington Group, $300,062.
_Susan Hirschmann at Williams & Jensen, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, $240,790.
Freddie Mac’s chairman and chief executive, Dick Syron, and McLoughlin, senior vice president for external relations, used Clark and Weinstock extensively, Weber said in an e-mail Friday.
“I personally met with the CEO several times and with Hollis and his team regularly,” Weber said in the e-mail. “Clark and Weinstock worked effectively and intensely for Freddie Mac under Dick Syron and Hollis McLoughlin.”
The tactics worked  for a time. Freddie Mac was able to operate with a relatively free hand until the housing bubble ultimately burst in 2007.
Now Freddie Mac and its sister company, Fannie Mae, are in financial collapse and under government control. Congress is investigating how it all happened. Lawmakers have planned a hearing Tuesday.
The records obtained by the AP reflect growing concern within Freddie Mac over a chorus of criticism from Republicans worried that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had grown too big. The two companies owned or guaranteed over $5 trillion in mortgages.
So, in this article, they account for about $1 million of the $12 million paid out, all to Republicans, and only get around to mentioning that Fannie and Freddie were concerned about regulatory changes proposed by Congressional Republicans after all of that?
By all means, pillory the Republicans who were bought out, but this is a little transparent, fellas, even for the AP. Who was heading up Freddie Mac?
They’re going after that evil 8% first, Dan. They’ll get around to that other 92% of payola recipients in, say, 2017.
Good lord.
That’s naked propaganda. Pete Yost’s mom and dad raised a dirty propagandist media whore. Shitty fucking parents like that are what’s killing the Associated Press and The New York Times and MSNBC but not NPR cause they can always get money from the government so they don’t give a shit.
Forget it, Dan. It’s Chinatown.
Soon having ever been registered a Republican will be crime.
“Comrade you are guilty of taking home loan from Republican outfit Fannie Mae and destroying USSA.”
Paying a registered lobbyist to represent you isn’t payola. Kanjorski and Ney are the only ones mentioned who could have possibly done anything wrong. Everything else was done at the direction of ACORN’s and Baracky’s Freddie Mac.
Please. We don’t ask inconvenient questions that may reflect poorly on Teh One’s administration. Didn’t you get the memo?
It’s gonna get worse says Baracky and that’s a fucking promise I think.
Which means Freddie knew it already had the Democrat ACORN whore congresspeople it needed in the bag already. Like Baracky and Barney and Nancy. Slovenly whores the lot of them.
Holy cow. Ok, these two guys went to a ballgame. Stupid move. Maybe corrupt. Put them on the list.
But I’ve gotta wonder how we focus on this ballgame thing when fucking Barney Frank is walking around with the head lobbyist from Freddie’s stool on the tip of his pecker. That one doesn’t rate a mention? He was living with the fucking guy! The guy had a “spousal credential” which he used around the capitol. WTF?
I understand, and you guys are now having fun with that.
You never have to play “AP’s Guess The Party” when a Republicna is involved.
Is this supposed to be a joke?
Probably not, but that’s the way it came out.
Spent over forty years in the Senate, Republican Ted Stephens was always a crook and every redumblican knew it. Never a word, because he was one of their crooks!
Dan’s been playing good-crook-bad-crook, I think.
So the fate of the other $11m doesn’t bother you in the least, thor?
Also, what’s with you and bringing up unrelated topics in an attempt to “discredit” the author of the topic at hand?
Any article about this that does not note the relationships that Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, and Baracky Obama had with these organizations is a steaming pile of cow dung.
Has “He Man” Harry Reid given back his Abramoff money yet?
Why did you put discredit in quote marks?
Dan and I disagree on this topic. I believe he willfully ignores redumblican corruption whether it’s the shady dealings of FNMA and FHLMC lobbying or the historic and longstanding tradition of direct payola to redumblican politicians.
I’d have guessed you could have concluded that without further explanation.
JD adds illumination of my point by shaking his little partisan e-fists.