Obama Admin Won’t Tell Congress How It Paid Iran $1.3 Billion in Taxpayer Funds

Remember the bundles of cash paid as ransom for kidnapped Americans?  Here's a good question, how did Obama ship another $1.3 billion to the Mullahs in Iran?

The Obama administration is withholding from Congress details about how $1.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds was delivered to Iran, according to conversations with lawmakers, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the administration is now stonewalling an official inquiry into the matter.

The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice have all rebuffed a congressional probe into the circumstances surrounding the $1.3 billion payment to Iran, which is part of an additional $400 million cash payout that occurred just prior to the release of several U.S. hostages and led to accusations that the administration had paid Iran a ransom.

Well, if you got your information from the MSM this is not a surprise. Think the Koch Brothers Are Among the Top 10 All-Time Political Donors? Sorry, You Are Wrong. Very Wrong.

... according to the data, Koch Industries places 59 on the list with $18 million in donations, 90-percent of which went to Republicans.

So who takes the top spot? An organization called “ActBlue” which bills itself as a PAC “allowing individuals and groups to channel their progressive dollars to candidates and movements of their choosing.”

That group has donated more than 97 million to political causes, with over 99-percent going to Democrats.

So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are … wait for it … unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.

The "Big Money" Boogeyman

The shills who prate constantly about big money in politics are nauseating. Some even pretend that Obama gathered billions of dollars in contributions one dollar at a time. I recall, and probably you do too, that he gathered millions from anonymous donors via a credit card scam on which the security system was turned off. One of those donors even identified himself – and I ‘m not kidding – as Osama bin Laden, another as “Good will Hunting.”

Not one millionaire or billionaire has ever harmed me, but the Liberals in Washington have taken money from my pay and from my investment income, they have forced me to buy more expensive light bulbs, intruded into my bathroom and decided my toilet was a hazard to the planet, they have passed so many laws that I commit several felonies before breakfast. When they take charge of cities like Detroit they bleed them to death until they go bankrupt. They have forced millions to lose their health insurance under the pretense that they were going to improve American health care. They have imposed the largest Ponzi schemes in the history of the world via social Security and Medicare. They have transformed the world’s richest country into history’s brokest country without breaking a sweat. They own the distinction of spending a billion dollars on “stimulus” without actually creating a single job. They managed to elect a half-black President who promised to bridge the racial divided and who managed to set back race relations fifty years.

We are told to believe that Obama didn’t know about Fast and Furious, he didn’t know that the IRS going after conservative groups and auditing his political opponents, that he read about DOJ going after James Rosen in the paper, that NSA isn’t spying on Americans and that Benghazi was a demonstration about a video that got out of hand. We have to believe that when Obama told us we could keep our insurance, doctor and hospital if we wanted to he was telling the truth. And the press covered up the Obama scandals like a dog burying a bone.

But I’m supposed to fear rich people. Well there’s one rich person I fear and he’s named Obama. Not because he’s rich but because he or an underling can cause the entire power of the government – IRS, DOJ, EPA, and all the rest of the government’s alphabet agencies to come down on me and bury me.  And even if I'm as innocent as a lamb, that will make no difference; the process will destroy me.

The People Behind St. Treyvon and the Big Money Payout

The story is very long and not well formatted, but it's like a bright light in a dark room.  If you ever wondered how this story was shaped, kneaded, molded and fed to the public via a sympathetic media, this is a must read.

First, They Came For The Cypriots...

Via Investors Business Daily

Rule Of Law: Markets tumbled after Cyprus and the EU said they might tax private bank accounts to pay for a bailout. Arbitrary property grabs are a new low and a bad precedent in this crisis. Worse still, it can happen here.

As bad as tumbling markets around the world are, they seem to be the only signal strong enough to catch the attention of Europe's otherwise unaccountable bureaucrats who have long since learned to ignore street riots.

As stocks fell from Tokyo to New York, Europe's leaders are scrambling to say they had nothing to do with the cause — the shutdown of all Cyprus banks and ATMs for at least three days and the expropriation of a large chunk of each now-captive account, as a "tax" to pay for Cyprus' $13 billion EU bailout, Europe's fifth.

It appears that Cypriot banks made very bad investment decisions costing them billions. Without a bailout they will go bankrupt. So the EU demands that the Cypriot government confiscate a large part of every saver's account in return for enough money to bail out the banks.

Which teaches everyone a valuable lesson. The government can do anything to you if you can't defend yourself. Banks accounts are not safe from government confiscation. Neither are any other accounts held by any other financial institution and not held by you personally.

Suddenly the Second Amendment and stuff under your mattress become increasingly important.

Already Congressional Democrats are plotting the expropriation of Americans' private 401(k) and IRA retirement savings accounts in favor of "a guaranteed income." If bank accounts can be casually expropriated in Cyprus to pay for big-spending governments and bailouts, there is no reason a nice slice of the $19 trillion in retirement accounts can't get the same treatment.

If it happens, it will signal the end of individual freedom and the return of feudalism.

Frederick Hayek had a phrase for this: "The Road To Serfdom." Let's hope there will be more than just markets to make this state theft of private property stop.

From Glenn Reynolds:

Like I said, an enterprising GOP member of the House or Senate would introduce a bill immediately to make such shenanigans illegal — and dare the Dems to oppose it.

This is a golden opportunity for Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.

Oops! Reinstate Jerusalem, God still out in the cold.

Dems to reinstate language on Jerusalem

Something tells me that Jewish contributors are more important to Obama's fund raising efforts than Christians.

UPDATE:  DRUDGE
Dems Ram 'God' and Jerusalem Back into Platform...
VIDEO...
Delegates at convention boo, hiss, jeer...
REPORT: Obama had seen language prior to convention 'but did not seek to change it'...
HALL DIVIDED...
Jewish, Palestinian Leaders Fume...
Romney: 'I think it's a very sad day'...


<! MAIN HEADLINE>
THEY BOOED PUTTING GOD BACK!

Outsourcing the Obama Campaign

Busy Month for Obama Campaign with Fundraisers in Switzerland, Sweden, Paris and Communist China

CHECKS AND THE CITY

Putting out for Obama

Occupy Wall Street – What Happens to the Money that’s being Donated?

Teresa in Ft. Worth has raised a very good issue:

Aside from the valuable lesson that is hopefully starting to sink in about the truth of the ”welfare state” to the post-collegiate idealists who are there (they aren’t really thrilled with the increasing numbers of do-nothings who are showing up with their hands out and no willingness to do any work), I have a feeling they are about to get broad-sided by the reality of the scope of human greed.

You see, monetary donations have been POURING in.

Where's the money?

Who's getting a cut?

Where's the money going to end up?

All of the stuff the OWS's use, food, electricity, a park to occupy, police protection, condoms, etc. is being donated or supplied by the city. So where's the money going and who's getting rich off the OWS protesters?

Read the whole thing and thanks to The Other McCain for the link.

Dinner with Barack down to $3!

Three bucks?  Didn't the price start at $5?

Is "Dinner with Barack" a remaindered book with the front cover torn off?

From Michelle Obama:

Just relax. Barack wants this dinner to be fun, and he really loves getting to know supporters like you.


I hope you'll take him up on it before Friday's deadline.


Will you donate $3 or more today and be entered to have dinner with Barack?

No Taxaction without Representation

Are the rich getting richer?  Are they paying their "fair share?"  From Cumberland Advisors the facts and statistics that prove:

• The rich are not getting richer (Nancy Pelosi is an outlier).
• They are paying more than their fair share.
• Tax reform is needed.

...variations in revenues collected by the government were essentially unrelated to variations in the highest marginal tax rates. In addition, the most recent data suggested that those in the top 5% of the income distribution paid 59% of the personal income tax collected and those in the top 1% paid 38%, while the bottom 50% paid 2.7%. Looking at the distribution of income, comparable data from the IRS show that the top 1%, who paid 38% of the taxes, earned 20% of the income and the top 5%, who paid 59% of the taxes, earned 34% of the income. In contrast, the bottom half earned 12.5% of the income but paid only 2.5% of the taxes.

The assumption of the critics was probably that the top income brackets earned a larger share of the income than they paid in taxes, but that is not borne out by the data. I would also note as an aside that out of a population of over 300 million people, 1.4 million tax filers were in the top 1% of adjusted gross income. Seven million returns were filed by those in the top 5% of adjusted gross income distribution while 70 million returns were filed by the bottom 50% of the income distribution. Any way one cuts it, the few are carrying the many, and the fairness issue that is bothering some special interest groups is whether the few should assume even more of the burden.

Now what about the distribution of wealth? Much has been made recently about the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Again, the facts are informative. From 1920 through 2007, the share of wealth held by the top 1% of the population peaked in 1929 at 44%. That share then fell steadily to a low of 20% in 1976. The share increased gradually and peaked at 39% in 1995 before falling off again to 35% in 2007. While information is not readily available about what taxes the wealthy pay, it does seem that the wealthy are not in a significantly different position today than they were in the 1920s and in the mid-1960s. Indeed, the distribution of wealth holdings has varied significantly over time but hasn’t steadily increased as some might have guessed.

The bottom line from this more in-depth exploration of the data shows that looking at either the wealth distribution or the distribution of income taxes paid relative to income earned doesn’t indicate that the wealthy are either significantly better off than they were a long time ago or that they are paying disproportionately less in taxes relative to income earned. What this implies for the debt discussion is that focusing on the distributional dimensions of the revenue side of the deficit issue is a second-order problem. It is a diversion of attention from the critical issues of establishing criteria for determining the appropriate size of government and bringing government spending down more in line with revenues received.

Qaddafi (like Hosni Mubarak) only recently became a villain. (The Bat Signal.)

Commenting on the decision of a few pop music stars to give back the money they received from K. Daffy for personal appearances, Ed Driscoll references “the Great Celebrity Implosion of the 21st-century.”

I prefer the explanation in one of the comments that follows. T.S. remarks that most of the pop stars are like Nelly Furtado.

Nelly Furtado is a garden-variety Gen Y arts community fashionable liberal from Vancouver. It’s probably a mistake to make too much of her politics. A deep thinker she likely ain’t. She went from being a high school candy raver, to a hip hop chick, to a neo- folkie-singer/songwriter-hippie chick, to a glamorous pop star (and symbol of young single female sexual “empowerment”). Her biggest hit song was about being “Promiscuous,” bit in its verses, she still managed to give shout outs to Amnesty International and Steve Nash.

Ms. Furtado’s politics have always appeared to be those of the kind of trendy liberal who thinks that taking the positions of the fashionably reflexive Left equates to being socially conscious and doing the right thing. In giving the $ million back to Mr. al-Qaddafi, she’s most likely doing what she thinks (or her PR people think) is the right thing to do.

So why is she – and some of the others like her – giving the money back (or to charity)? Have they realized that K. Daffy was a bad man?   Well, not at the time.

“In terms of pop culture relevancy, Anti-American Muslim dictators from North Africa were thought to be pretty freakin’ cool when Bush was president. After all, those guys were standing up to the oppressor and raising a fist in the air and speaking truth to power and showing solidarity and trying to change the world and all of that. So until the recent Libyan uprising, it made all the sense in the world for American entertainers to perform for Qaddafi … Plus, for the old-timers, Qaddafi’s animus toward and defiance of Ronald Reagan earned him big props, though that hasn’t been much of a factor for a while — 1986 was way before most young fashionable liberals’ time (Ms. Furtado included).”

What changed? Obama ...The Lightworker  

But now that President Obama has decided that it’s time to officially condemn Qaddafi, the message has been sent like the Bat Signal to everyday fashionable Gen X, Gen Y and Millennial liberals — hipsters, SWPL, single city girls, college students, Bikhram yoga instructors, NYT readers, AOLHuffington Post readers, DJ’s, bartenders, news reporters, advertising executives, entertainment professionals, etc. — that Quaddafi is a BAD GUY. If President Obama says you’re bad, then you’re bad. And now that the President has decided it’s time to call Qaddafi bad, everybody knows that Qaddafi is indeed bad. You know, like Mubarak and the Governor of Wisconsin.

So it’s a little harsh to rake Nelly Furtado over the coals for being a hypocrite. She’s probably very sincerely trying to do the right thing. She just lives in a world in which Left Wing and low-information liberal narratives are the rule. And in that world, al-Qaddafi (like Hosni Mubarak) only recently became a villain.

I wish I had said that.

What’s more important: cutting spending or cutting the deficit?

What’s more important: cutting spending or cutting the deficit? Wait, aren’t they connected?

The story from the Washington Examiner polls the public and the political class and shows that where you sit is hwere you stand.

The survey found "that 57% of likely U.S. voters think reducing federal government spending is more important than reducing the deficit. Thirty-four percent (34%) put reducing the deficit first," according to Rasmussen.


But when the same issue was put before members of the two groups, the results were profoundly different:


"It’s telling to note that while 65% of mainstream voters believe cutting spending is more important, 72% of the Political Class say the primary emphasis should be on deficit reduction," Rasmussen said.

Here’s the reason why most voters believe that cutting spending is more important. If you cut spending, you accomplish two things: you reduce the deficit AND you reduce the impact that the government has on the individual. The Tea Party is about the gargantuan government as much as it is about the humongous deficit.

When the political class puts deficit reduction first what people hear is: tax increases. The ruling class continues to believe that the people will be willing to pay more of their money to the government if they can see the deficit reduced; and this has the added benefit – to the government – of being able to continue to give money to their favored constituencies.

The focus should be laser-like on spending reductions; cutting the size and scope of government. If we do that, the deficit will take care of itself.

Further Travels Of Imam Feisal

Claudia Rosett seems to be the only journalist who's remotely interested in Imam Feisel, the Muslim who is the head of the Cordoba Mosque slated to be built near Ground Zero.  The last time the press showed such diffidence was when Obama was running for President and people wondered about his history and his associates.  When the press is this incurious, you can be virtually certain they know - or suspect - something that they don't want you to know.

While debate rages over plans for an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, the imam behind this project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is not available to answer questions in New York. Since locating the absent Rauf last week in Malaysia, I have now discovered that he's about to embark on a nearly month-long swing through the Middle East, with plans to visit Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar.

In case you have forgotten ...

Ground Zero is the both the geographic and symbolic heart of the attacks in which Islamist terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, murdered almost 3,000 Americans. Of those 19 terrorists, 15 were from Saudi Arabia and two were from the United Arab Emirates; the others were Egyptian and Lebanese.

Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation

Instead, Michelle Obama seems more like a modern-day Marie Antoinette - the French queen who spent extravagantly on clothes and jewels without a thought for her subjects' plight - than an average mother of two. While she's spent her time in the White House telling parents they should relieve their chubby kids' dependency on sugar and stressing the importance of an organic veggie garden, hopping a jet to Europe to meet with Spanish royalty isn't the visual the White House probably wants to project. Perhaps they've forgotten the damning image of John Kerry, on the eve of the 2004 election, windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket?

I don't begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime - the First Family included. It's the extravagance of Michelle Obama's trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President

I have commented more than once about the Obama's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." That "shared sacrifice" that they told us we would have to make. That's "we" and not "they."

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

To be clear, what the Obamas do with their money is one thing; what they do with ours is another.

...

Obama's demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders. Toning down the flash would humanize the Obamas and signify that they sympathize with the setbacks of the people they were elected to serve.

In January, President Obama insisted that "everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game."

If sacrifice is the precursor to change, what will the family that ran on change offer up? Elitist doublespeak won't cut it.

Let's cut the crap. The Obama's are reputed to be worth a couple of million bucks, based on the sales of his books. A trip like this on large aircraft and 40 rooms in a luxury resort with 70 security agents costs at least a couple of million dollars. There is no way in hell that this trip is coming out of the Obama's checkbook; they can't afford it.

Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

I enjoyed all the Star Wars movies because I view them in a "suspension of disbelief." I think that's how you're supposed to enjoy a movie. But this review brings out all the inconsistencies, lack of motivation and just plain silliness in this movie.

Nothing makes sense. Sort of like the Obama administration. Unless you view it from the proper perspective. It's not supposed to make sense, it's supposed to make money.

The AP's New Euphemism for "Pork"

Now that Democrats are in total control of the Federal Government, it's no longer "earmarks" or "pork," they're "back-home projects."

From James Taranto's column in the WSJ:

See if you can spot the new euphemism in this Associated Press report on the new $1.1 trillion budget bill (yes, that's trillion with 1,000 B's):

The measure combines $447 billion in operating budgets with about $650 billion in mandatory payments for federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. It wraps together six individual spending bills and also contains more than 5,000 back-home projects sought by lawmakers in both parties.

Seems to us that back when the Republicans controlled Congress, "back-home projects" were called "earmarks" or "pork."

It will be only a matter of time before the Virginian Pilot catches on.

"Pension Spiking": California Fire Chief Retires at 51 with $240,000 annual pension.

Via the Wall Street Journal ...

Can we understand why the state of California and its cities are in deep financial trouble?

Pete Nowicki just turned 51 and was eligible to retire. So he did. His pension was full pay (nice), plus he sold his unused vacation and holidays, raising his pension from a very healthy $186,000 to $240,000 - per year.

Pete Nowicki had been making $186,000 shortly before he retired in January as chief for a fire department shared by the municipalities of Orinda and Moraga in Northern California. Three days before Mr. Nowicki announced he was hanging up his hat, department trustees agreed to increase his salary largely by enabling him to sell unused vacation days and holidays. That helped boost his annual pension to $241,000.

..The boost was legal, and Mr. Nowicki said he is receiving a permissible pension. "People point to me as a poster child for pension spiking, but I did not negotiate these rules," he said.

Is this an isolated case?

Mr. Nowicki's situation isn't unique. Contracts that permit a jump in salary just before retirement -- boosting the pension payout -- have been around for years. But as tough times are putting more scrutiny on public pensions, Mr. Nowicki's case has sparked particular anger from colleagues and local residents. Some recently demanded an explanation from the department trustees and others have lobbied the Orinda council to divert funds away from the fire department.

"These guys may have priced themselves out of job," said Steve Cohn, a financial analyst in Orinda.

The practice is getting more attention amid growing concerns about the sustainability of guaranteed pension payouts for public employees after brutal market losses last year in public pension funds.

In California, which has taken to issuing IOUs to hoard cash, a private interest group has launched a campaign to publicize the names of government retirees with pensions of $100,000 or more to promote its view that steep pensions threaten to bankrupt states and municipalities. Mr. Nowicki's payout was brought to light in the spring in a Contra Costa Times column.

While it happens nationwide, pension spiking has been especially prevalent in California, which some attribute to favorable terms negotiated by powerful unions.

The cost of all this?

Mr. Nowicki recently turned 51 years old. If he lives another 25 years, his pension payments will cost the fire district an estimated additional $1 million or more over what he would have received had he retired at a salary of $186,000, not including cost of living adjustments, a fire board representative said.

To add insult to injury ...

In addition to drawing his pension, Mr. Nowicki currently is working for the fire department as a consultant at an annual salary of $176,400 while the department searches for his replacement.

If this is business as usual, the state is in bigger trouble than we realize.

“Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment”

I'm posting this as a contribution toward healing the political divide, hoping we can all get along.

Via Jeff Godstein at Protein Wisdom (who occasionally disagress with Patterico):

David Hardy, PJM, gives us some insight into the workings of “grassroots” fascism of the kind favored by “progressives” — in this case, “moderate” Barack Obama, who has shown a very troubling tendency to insist upon control of any and every narrative, even going so far as to threaten legal action, or send out Action Alerts intended to direct his followers to shout down and smear those holding opposing viewponts:

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama must demonstrate executive experience, but he remains strangely silent about his eight years (1994-2002) as a director of the Joyce Foundation, a billion dollar tax-exempt organization. He has one obvious reason: during his time as director, Joyce Foundation spent millions creating and supporting anti-gun organizations.

There is another, less known, reason.

During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.

The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.

Read the whole thing. It's amazing what a few million dollars will buy in the right hands.

Government assumes control over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

From the AP:

The Bush administration seized control Sunday of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, aiming to stabilize the housing market turmoil that is threatening financial markets and the overall economy.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is betting that providing fresh capital to the two firms will eventually lead to lower mortgage rates, spur homebuying demand and slow the plunge in home prices that has ravaged many areas of the country.

The huge potential liabilities facing each company, as a result of soaring mortgage defaults, could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, but Paulson stressed that the financial impacts if the two companies had been allowed to fail would be far more serious.

"A failure would affect the ability of Americans to get home loans, auto loans and other consumer credit and business finance," Paulson said.

But more importantly, "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so large and so interwoven in our financial system that a failure of either of them would cause great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe," he added in a televised announcement.

Reaction from the candidates:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama issued a statement agreeing that some form of intervention was necessary, and promised, "I will be reviewing the details of the Treasury plan and monitoring its impact to determine whether it achieves the key benchmarks I believe are necessary to address this crisis."

On Saturday, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said Fannie and Freddie "have gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers. The McCain-Palin administration will make them smaller and smarter and more effective for homeowners who need help."

The effect on stockholders:

The impact on existing common and preferred shares, which have slumped in value in the last year, will depend on how investors react to Paulson's assertion that they must absorb the cost of further losses first. Under the plan, dividends on both common and preferred stock would be eliminated, saving about $2 billion a year.

I expect the common stockholders will lose 100% of their investment. Preferred shareholders will not see dividends for a long time - perhaps as long as ten years and the value of their investment will approach zero.

Jim Lindgren at Volokh reminds us of the corrupt management of these companies:

In reading this article about Crony Capitalism at Fannie Mae (tip to Instapundit), I noticed that Jamie Gorelick was one of the Fannie executives who benefited from inflated bonuses based on Enron-style accounting. She was Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae from 1997 to 2003 (Fannie’s fraudulent accounting scheme was made public in 2004).
...
The magnitude of Fannie's machinations is stunning, and in two key areas in particular they deserve to be better understood. By improperly delaying the recognition of income, it created a cookie jar of reserves. And by improperly classifying certain derivatives, it was able to spread out losses over many years instead of recognizing them immediately.

In the cookie-jar ploy, Fannie set aside an artificially large cash reserve. And — presto — in any quarter its managers could reach into that jar to compensate for poor results or add to it to dampen good ones. This ploy, according to Ofheo (Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight), gave Fannie "inordinate flexibility" in reporting the amount of income or expenses over reporting periods.

This flexibility also gave Fannie the ability to manipulate earnings to hit — within pennies — target numbers for executive bonuses. Ofheo details an example from 1998, the year the Russian financial crisis sent interest rates tumbling. Lower rates caused a lot of mortgage holders to prepay their existing home mortgages. And Fannie was suddenly facing an estimated expense of $400 million.

Well, in its wisdom, Fannie decided to recognize only $200 million [of losses], deferring the other half. That allowed Fannie's executives — whose bonus plan is linked to earnings-per-share — to meet the target for maximum bonus payouts. The target EPS for maximum payout was $3.23 and Fannie reported exactly . . . $3.2309. This bull's-eye was worth $1.932 million to then-CEO James Johnson, $1.19 million to then-CEO-designate Franklin Raines, and $779,625 to then-Vice Chairman Jamie Gorelick.


As for other losses, they were routinely mischaracterized so that they could be amortized over years, not realized fully as they were supposed to be. By this method, the Fannie Mae management siphoned off millions of dollars in excess compensation to top management, including Gorelick.

Fannie Mae (FNM) & Freddie Mac (FRE) lobbying scandals:

From Open Secrets:

From $3 million to $10 million a year.

This amount seems to understate the actual money spent on influencing Congress.

According to the Washington Post :

FNM spent over $50 million a year in "partnership offices" used for lobbying and $40 million on advertising.

And from the Washington Post of 2006:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last year together spent nearly $23 million on lobbying, as Congress considered legislation to tighten oversight of the two mortgage finance companies in response to their multibillion-dollar accounting scandals.

According to records filed last week with the House of Representatives, the two companies remained among the most prolific corporate spenders on lobbying, despite controversy over their efforts to influence lawmakers.

From USA Today in July 2008:

Over the past decade, both Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE) made the list of Washington's top 20 lobbying spenders. They spent a combined $170 million to cultivate allies during that period, a bit less than the American Medical Association and a bit more than General Electric. At the same time, their executives have consistently led the mortgage-banking sector in campaign giving to members of Congress, contributing a combined $16.2 million since 1997.