Unsevered Ties?
Regulatory filings indicate that McCain campaign chief Rick Davis remains an officer with his lobbying firm.
Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, has remained the treasurer and a corporate director of his lobbying firm this year, despite repeated statements by campaign officials that he had ended his relationship with the firm in 2006, according to corporate records.
The McCain campaign this week criticized news stories disclosing that, since 2006, Davis's firm has been paid a $15,000-a-month consulting fee from Freddie Mac, the troubled mortgage giant recently put under federal conservatorship. The stories, published Tuesday by NEWSWEEK, The New York Times and Roll Call, reported that the consulting fees continued until last month even though, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement, neither Davis nor anybody else at his firm did any substantial work for the payments.
Stefanie Mullin, a spokesperson for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has taken over Freddie Mac and its sister entity Fannie Mae, confirmed Wednesday that the Davis Manafort contract is being terminated. "All lobbying activity has stopped and political consulting contracts at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of being terminated," said Mullin. (Democratic strategist Paul Begala also was on the Freddie Mac payroll, according to sources familiar with the arrangement.)
In its initial statements to reporters this week, the McCain campaign said that the disclosure of the payments from Freddie Mac was irrelevant because Davis, who was never a registered lobbyist for the troubled housing corporation, had severed his relationship with Davis Manafort in 2006, and was no longer drawing any income from it. Jill Hazelbaker, the campaign's communications director, said in an e-mail Tuesday that Davis "left" Davis Manafort in 2006. In a statement attacking The New York Times, posted on the campaign's Web site on Wednesday, campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said that Davis "separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006." (A senior campaign official, in an e-mail statement to NEWSWEEK that was not for attribution on Tuesday night, said "Rick is no longer affiliated with the firm.")
But those statements appear to have overstated the extent to which Davis had severed his relationship with his lobbying firm. Filings made by "Davis Manafort Partners" with the Virginia Corporation Commission as recently as April 1, 2008, show that Davis was still listed as one of only two corporate officers and directors of the firm, according to records on the commission’s Web site reviewed by NEWSWEEK. That filing records Davis as the "treas/clerk" of the firm; his business partner, Paul Manafort is listed as the president and chief executive officer.
Another filing by “Davis Manafort, Inc.” (with the same Alexandria, Va. address, and recorded on Oct. 17, 2007) also lists Davis as an officer and director of the firm, reporting his position as "T/Clerk," a reference to his formal title as corporate treasurer and clerk.
Both filings are annual reports of basic corporate information that are required by Virginia state law. There is no record of any amendments to the filings reporting that Davis's status with the firm has changed. The next annual report by "Davis Manafort Inc.", for the year 2008, isn't due to be filed until next month.
The McCain campaign Wednesday sought to clarify Davis's affiliation with his firm, but insisted that the new information contained in the corporate filings in Virginia didn't alter their basic points. "Rick Davis is functionally not affiliated with the firm," said Hazelbaker, the communications director. "That is to say that, since he left, he in fact has not done any work for Davis Manafort or its clients, and he has not taken a salary or received compensation since 2006. Furthermore, he will not receive any deferred compensation."
Hazelbaker directed all other questions about the matter to Davis Manafort. (Among those questions she said she was not in a position to answer were: whether there was any documentation of Davis's changed relationship with his firm, and why Davis Manafort continued to bill and accept the consulting fees if Davis wasn't performing any work for Freddie Mac.) For the second day in a row, Davis Manafort did not return phone calls about the matter.
Davis himself, on a conference call with reporters on Monday, said that he "had a severed leave of absence from my firm for 18 months." But if the leave is as described by campaign officials, it appears to have stopped short of the steps another senior McCain campaign official, Charlie Black, took to severe his ties to his own well-connected Washington lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates. After controversy arose over the lobbying ties of top McCain campaign officials, Black—one of Washington's most prominent lobbyists—wrote a letter on March 17, 2008, to Scott Pastrick, chief executive officer of his firm, stating: "I hereby resign my position as Chairman of BKSH, effective March 31, 2008." Pastrick confirmed Wednesday that Black has "resigned in full" from BKSH & Associates, serving as neither a corporate officer, director nor partner.
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Member Comments
Posted By: Nowforthetruth @ 10/04/2008 12:56:16 AM
Comment: The link below contains a purported list of the top 25 in Congress who got contributions from the folks at Fannie and Freddie. Obama is listed third, after Dodd and Kerry, even though Obama is just a junior Senator. Obama is followed next by Clinton. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are on the list as well.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918
For an interesting article purporting to detail the history of the House Financial Services Committee Chair's relationship with Fannie Mae, See
"House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former 'spouse' was Fannie Mae executive."
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx
Posted By: Davole @ 09/30/2008 7:01:08 PM
Comment: A Proposal to Resolve the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Financial Fiasco
In order to solve what has been termed the financial crisis, it is necessary to identify the cause of Fannie Mae???s and Freddie Mac???s catastrophic failure.
The cause of their downfall is the partisan democrat pressure put on those companies to grant sub prime mortgages to persons who would be unable to repay those loans.
The democrat senators and representatives, who mandated that financial background checks be considered unnecessary and unwarranted, facilitated that irresponsible granting of mortgages to those unable to repay. The motive of the democrat members of Congress was strictly and blatantly partisan - to buy votes, and to maintain years of party support.
In 2005, John McCain co-authored a bill to investigate and regulate the faulty business practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but that was opposed and defeated by the democrats in Congress.
On many occasions, President George W. Bush introduced proposals to regulate the mortgage lending companies, but those calls for regulation were opposed, obstructed, and defeated by democrats who were obsessed with the continuance of faulty lending practices.
In order to reform the financial sector, it is necessary that the sleazy politicians and top administration of those 2 mortgage companies who perpetrated fraudulent activity be publicly identified, investigated, and severely punished for their undermining the national economy.
It is only reasonable to expose the corrupt financial practices and their facilitators, and to remove them from any further activity, before any effort can be made to resurrect the American economy.
Otherwise, any attempt to do so will be useless, because the problems and perpetrators would still be present to frustrate and obstruct any meaningful remedial action.
Posted By: Davole @ 09/30/2008 6:59:57 PM
Comment: Continued - A Proposal to Resolve the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Financial Fiasco
The first step toward economic recovery would be to isolate all sub prime mortgages from the assets of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and to group the remaining viable ones into several stock options to be offered for sale to the public, and also as a bailout measure.
That would result in an immediate infusion of cash into the banking sector, thereby ensuring that credit could be granted to qualifying loan applicants.
Individuals or organizations who choose to buy those stock options should benefit additionally from any profits later realized by their investments.
Also, any profits resulting from the bailout option should be refunded to the INCOME TAX PAYERS only, since they would be the ones who would have financed the bailout.
Likewise, but separately, the various questionable sub prime mortgages should be bundled together into other stock options which would be structured to contain a mixture of both somewhat and less redeemable loans.
Those sub prime mortgage packages should be offered first to democrats, especially wealthy ones, who might be attracted to them by their being valued at a price of 80 cents on the dollar, based on the face value of the mortgages.
.
That would afford them the option to support what democrats viewed to be a noble cause (home ownership for the unemployed), and besides, it might enable the stock option buyers to profit by 20 percent if all of the sub prime mortgages would be somehow repaid by the homeowners.
Thus democrats, especially the likes of George Soros, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Charlie Schumer (who supported the granting of sub prime mortgages irrespective of demonstrated ability to repay) would be able to ???put their money where their mouths are???!
Lastly, there should be a guarantee that no further sub prime mortgages be granted.
Home ownership is a GOAL for many financially responsible Americans - it is not a government sponsored RIGHT for all persons living legally and illegally in the US!