Covering The Left's Fannie

The current fiscal crisis is the left's progeny. It is a direct result of their policies from start to finish. It was protected by the left from regulation - cosponsored by McCain - that may have stopped this debacle before it occurred. But pay no attention to any of that. The NYT have a different agenda and it has nothing to do with objective reporting on this seminal issue to all Americans.

It turns out that one of McCain's campaign team was, three years ago, a lobbyist for Fannie Mae. Thus, of all the things the NYT can report on the scandalous disaster of Fannie Mae and the subprime loan disaster, their headline is "Loan Titans Paid McCain Advisor Nearly $2 Million."

Powerline is reporting that Steve Schmidt of the McCain Campaign accused the NYT of being a propaganda machine for Obama:

The New York Times is a pro-Obama advocacy organization, not a journalistic organization...the Times attacks McCain every day...the Times is an organization that is completely in the tank for the Democratic candidate...that's their prerogative, but let's not be dishonest, everything in the New York Times should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective...the Times has decided to cast aside its journalistic integrity and history and advocate for one candidate, and against the other.

If there is any question about the accuracy of that characterization, one need only look at the above linked article in today's NYT.

This article is the NYT's attempt to muddy the waters as much as possible, and minimize the fact that McCain was right on this issue years ago. This from the NYT:

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.

. . . Mr. McCain was never a leading critic or defender of the mortgage giants, although several former executives of the companies said Mr. Davis did draw Mr. McCain to a 2004 awards banquet that the companies’ Homeownership Alliance held in a Senate office building. The organization printed a photograph of Mr. McCain at the event in its 2004 annual report, bolstering its clout and credibility.

(emphasis added)

There is nothing recent about McCain's criticism of Fannie and Freddie, and the NYT portrayal of McCain as neutral about Fannie is a sheer rewrite of history. There was legislation submitted in 2005 that would have reigned in Fannie and Freddie and placed them on a much tighter regulatory leash. As an article in Bloomberg points out today, "Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190 [in 2005], the bill that would have averted this mess." Nor does the NYT ask what Obama was doing at the same time. The fact is that, while McCain was trying to reign in these organizations, Obama was at the bank, cashing campaign contributions that made him the second highest recipient of Fannie largesse in Congress. And lastly, if the NYT is going to play this game of got'cha about employing anyone with ties to the subprime loan crisis, how can they possibly ignore the "Queen of Subprime Loans," Obama's Campaign Finance Chairman, Penny Pritzker. She "owned a failed Chicago thrift that helped pioneer sub-prime financial instruments . . ."

This is a horrendous piece of agenda journalism by the NYT. The current NYT has nothing to do with fair and objective reporting.