Fannie & Freddie execs denounce McCain's smears

The John McCain campaign has been running television advertisements accusing Barack Obama of being advised by Franklin Raines, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae.
In reality, this accusation is a bald-faced lie. Both Raines and the Obama campaign deny this charge.
This lie is possibly a maneuver to divert attention from the actual relationship between the McCain campaign's Rick Davis and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Past and current executives for the two companies went public to express their disgust with the McCain campaign's inaccurate ads. They spoke on and off the record, to the "New York Times" as reported this morning in "Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million," by David D. Kirkpatrick and Charles Duhigg. The executives pointed out that Rick Davis received $30,000 per month from an advocacy organization (Homeownership Alliance) with the mission to represent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Davis is McCain's campaign manager, and operates by distortion and smear in the mold of Roger Ailes and Karl Rove.
Christy Hardin Smith aptly called Rick Davis the "uber-lobbyist."
Illustrating the Republicans' galling hypocrisy, Davis in turn, helped thwart federal regulations that would have affected the two companies. Underscoring how McCain represents corporate interests instead of the public's interest is this quote:

“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae . . . .

Book: was Jack Abramoff the fall-guy for Washington's ills?

Anytime there is a huge concentration of blame on one person --almost alone-- for the ills of a corrupt institution, one should exercise some skepticism.

Boston-based freelance investigative reporter Gary S. Chafetz began writing his book on Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff with an eye towards his culpability in corrupt lobbying practices. He concluded his research with quite a different perspective.

In his "The Prefect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff" (published last week by Martin & Lawrence Press), Chafetz asserts that Senator John McCain undertook an unduly vengeful crusade against Abramoff. He claimed that "McCain was retaliating against Abramoff for his role in the infamous 'black baby' smear campaign during the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary," as he summarized in the Huffington Post, on September 16, 2008. Abramoff had unwittingly funded the smear, by raising $3 million on short order for Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition. Without Abramoff's knowledge, Reed and George W. Bush advisor used the money to spread a smear by phone calls and flyers on windshields, to insinuate that McCain had an illegitimate black child by a prostitute. (The child actually is Bridget, whom Cindy McCain adopted from a Mother Teresa-operated orphanage in Bangladesh.)
Not only was Abramoff unfairly accused as producing this smear, Chafetz asserts, McCain produced a 373 page report rife with distortions and falsifications. The ills of lobbying and lobbyists' influence are more than one man; singular attention upon Abramoff was unfair. There is a different scandal within this story: the unrelenting abuse of power by a vengeful politician, Senator John McCain.