Barack Obama claims that he will bring "Change that we can believe in" to the White House. As part of that change, Obama pledges to crack down on the corruption and greed that brought about the fall of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two U.S. government-backed mortgage loan companies.
"I want to commend federal regulators for blocking golden parachutes for the outgoing CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Last week, while John McCain praised the plan to rescue Fannie and Freddie without raising any concerns about a golden parachute for their CEOs, I urged Secretary Paulson and Director Lockhart to reject these multimillion dollar bonuses," stated Obama.
"Rewarding CEOs during a historic economic crisis may make sense to someone who's so disturbingly out of touch he believes 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong,' but it undermines our economy and betrays our sense of fairness," noted the freshman senator.
However, behind the curtain, Sen. Obama is careful not to mention that several of his top advisers are part of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac scandal and they got their golden parachutes.
First, there is Jim Johnson, former Fannie Mae CEO turned adviser to the Obama campaign. According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae, Johnson obtained millions of dollars of hidden income from the corporation.
In fact, investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million, when it fact it was $21 million.
"[Fannie Mae] failed to disclose to OFHEO in a timely manner a post-employment agreement with former CEO James Johnson that provided him with substantial compensation in addition to that already provided upon his termination as a Fannie Mae employee," noted the report.
Then there is Obama economic adviser Franklin Raines. In 2003, Fannie Mae CEO, Franklin Raines, was paid $20 million and he left with a $25 million retirement package. Raines left under a cloud of alleged corruption and illegal accounting within Fannie Mae.
Another change that Obama has promised is ousting of the big dollar lobby groups from D.C., along with a crackdown on big oil companies. However, what the freshman senator does not tell the public is one of his closest advisers is a lobbyist for big oil and the failed Freddie Mac.
Daniel Shapiro, one of Obama’s top foreign policy advisers on the Middle East, registered to lobby for several corporate clients in the last year. Shapiro, who worked during the 1990s for President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, lists some of America’s biggest corporate names among his clients, including the American Petroleum Institute and Freddie Mac.
Worse still, Obama pledged in his famous two minute ad to "bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours."
So another change in his position on Iraq?
This pledge is almost laughable since the freshman senator recently had to admit he demanded the Iraqi government delay any withdrawal negotiations until after the election. According to published reports in the New York Post, Obama met with the Iraqi Foreign minister and demanded that Iraq not negotiate a U.S. troop withdrawal until after he became president.
The Obama camp at first denied the reports, but there were too many witnesses. Instead, the Obama campaign is now trying to backpedal from the news.
Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi explained that Obama told the Iraqis that they should not rush through what she called a "strategic framework agreement" governing the future of U.S. forces until after President Bush left office.
Basically, Obama was negotiating for the U.S. government directly with the Iraqi Foreign Minister, even though Obama was then and still is a part time senator and thus had no legal right to negotiate. In the end, Obama wants U.S. troops to not leave just yet. At least, not until he can take office and the credit.
So much for the caring about the Iraq war and the billions we spend there.
The freshman senator claims he can bring change we can believe in. Yet, his performance during the campaign and his choice of advisers point to more of the same corruption that has plagued the Democratic Party for decades.
The only visible change from Obama are the huge chunks of change falling out of taxpayer’s pockets into the bank accounts of fat cat advisers and big dollar lobbyists.
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