Say Anything Blog

Good news for North Dakotans:

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis credited a sharp jump in crop prices for a 7.6 percent increase in personal income. Other experts added that energy played a role with high oil prices, as well as the state avoiding problems in housing and financial services.

A couple of reactions:

With personal income spiking and with the state already sporting a record-setting treasury balance and projections of massive budget surpluses, isn’t it time for the state political leadership to get behind some income tax cuts in a big way?  C’mon NDGOP, where are you on this?

Also, let’s remember that it’s the oil industry that’s driving a lot of this.  The same oil industry that Senator Byron Dorgan and most of the rest of his fellow Democrats want to saddle with a massive “windfall profits” tax.  A tax that would mean less capital for the oil companies to invest in North Dakota.  Capital that creates jobs and boosts our economy.

Kind of makes you wonder who Dorgan is really representing in Washington DC.  Because on the windfall tax issue, it sure ain’t North Dakotans.

We all know how journalism is supposed to work, right?  A reporter gets the details on the story, gathers reactions and statements from all perspectives on the issue, and then synthesizes that data into an objective reporting of fact.

Keeping that in mind, read this laughably transparent whitewashing of Kent Conrad’s involvement in the Countrywide Mortgage scandal from reporter Janell Cole headlined “Conrad angry about negative publicity.”

Which is a knee-slappingly hilarious state in and of itself. I’m sure Conrad is pretty angry about getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  Who wouldn’t be?  And once you get past the headline you’ll notice there is no input at all in the article from Conrad’s critics and political opposition.  It’s all just one long article dedicated entirely to Conrad putting the best face possible on this scandal.

So much for getting both sides of the story.

I’ll excerpt some of the more absurd passages.

BISMARCK – It’s safe to say few North Dakotans knew their senior senator owned a million-dollar seaside vacation home in Bethany Beach, Del.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., isn’t upset that people now know. After all, he says, he’s tried numerous times for several years to list it on his Senate financial disclosure form, only to have the Senate’s Office of Public Records nix the idea because of security risks.

Conrad hasn’t revealed his vacation home in the past because of security risks?  Well then why did he suddenly list the home on his 2007 disclosure?  Why has their never been any concern over Conrad listing his apartment “home” in North Dakota (if you can call the dumpy apartment he maintains in Bismarck for the purpose of meeting state citizenship requirements a “home") or his Townhouse in Washington on these disclosures (each of those properties have been included on the last several disclosures)?

The idea that Conrad has been trying to disclose this $1.4 million vacation home but hasn’t been allowed to is just plain laughable when you consider the fact that he’s readily disclosed his other two residences.

Next, Conrad tries to paint his beach home as a humble abode:

He describes the property, about a block from the beach in the southern Delaware resort community, as “kind of a traditional beach cottage.” The 2,600-square-foot home has four bedrooms, a great room and a porch, with parking underneath. He and his wife, Lucy Calautti, bought it new in 2002.

A cottage?  A 2,600 square foot, parking-underneath, $1.4 million cottage?  The media price for a home in North Dakota is $74,000.

Conrad must think we’re all stupid.  With that in mind, the article moves on to describe how troubled Conrad is that everyone is upset over this scandal:

What bothers Conrad is how wrong he feels many news reports and editorials have been since Portfolio magazine broke the news last week it had obtained Countrywide Financial e-mails directing loan officers to give Conrad, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and other Washington officials of both parties a break on fees or interest. Such recipients were known within Countrywide as “Friends of Angelo” Mozilo, the company’s founder and CEO.

“The most troublesome thing in this whole thing is how ready people are to think the worst,” Conrad said, pointing a finger mostly at national news organizations he says have gotten the story wrong or criticized him using incorrect assumptions.

In the past several days, he’s fired off stern letters to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Bismarck Tribune, blasting them for “breathtaking … disregard for the facts” and “serious inaccuracies” in their editorials criticizing him for something he has said he never sought or knew he had.

Stern letters, eh?  Well the only thing breathtaking in this sorry mess is Conrad’s self-righteous inability to grasp how serious this is.  He lied about his relationship to Mozilo.  He lied about not not taking any action beneficial to Countrywide as a Senator.  He accepted special treatment and $10,700 worth of savings on a loan from a major mortgage company and then helped push legislation through his committee potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to that same company.

If anyone has a “breathtaking disregard for the facts” it’s Conrad himself.

The next part is actually pretty interesting:

Many news organizations, including the Post, reported that Conrad got the $10,700 break on the original loan in 2002, which wasn’t the case.

The instruction to the Countrywide loan officer was issued nearly two years after Conrad originally obtained a Countrywide mortgage on the beach house, and also nearly two years after he said he had a “serendipitous” 30-second phone conversation with Mozilo, whom he said he has never sought and had not talked to before and hasn’t since.

So, Conrad refinanced the vacation home after he talked to Mozilo?  And that refinancing saved him $10,700?  And then, after the refinancing, Conrad helped pass legislation that would benefit Mozilo’s company in a big way?

Seems to me like Conrad is just digging himself a bigger hole.

I’ll end with a bit of slippery word play from Janell Cole herself (who may as well be collecting money as Conrad’s PR flak at this point):

There is no allegation and no evidence that Conrad received any preferential treatment on the original mortgage, for $1.16 million, which he got at 6.125 percent at a time when the prevailing rate was 6.37 percent. He paid 20 percent down, or $290,000 on the property, the price of which was $1.45 million. The down payment came from cash Conrad and Calautti had from liquidating investment holdings when the stock market was down.

There’s no allegation and no evidence that Conrad received preferential treatment on the original mortgage.  There is, however, a hell of a lot of evidence showing that he got preferential treatment on the refinancing.  Which happened before Conrad used his powers as Senate Budget Committee Chairman to grease the wheels for some bail-out pork for Mozilo’s company.

All in all, this is about what you’d expect from the North Dakota media.  They’re not challenging Conrad at all.  They’re not looking to rebut any of the holes in his story, nor are they asking Conrad’s critics to provide that rebuttal.  All they’re doing is giving a soap box from which to broadcast his spin.

And once Conrad is done spinning you can bet that they’ll bury this story and pretend like none of it ever happened.

From a commenter:

Conrad claims that he called this Jim Johnson guy who then put him in touch with Countrywide.  In his oped, Conrad goes further and says he talked to Mozilo directly only because he just happened to be in the room with Johnson when Conrad called him.

Yet when the local TV reporter asks Conrad why he didn’t just go with a lendor in North Dakota, Conrad’s answer makes no sense.

He says something like, ‘Well, that’s a good question.  The reason is I had just refinanced the Bethany(?) property, and they had all my financial records, so it was just easier that way.’

So if Countrywide had just worked with him on another refinancing and they had his financial information, why would he not call Countrywide directly instead of calling Jim Johnson?

Good question.

Here’s the link to the video that’s mentioned.

The bill provides protections from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the federal government in anti-terror operations.

Here’s the final vote.  In the end, every single Republican in the House voted for it along with 105 Democrats who broke with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat party line to do the right thing for the country instead of the right thing for the trial lawyers who were no doubt salivating at the idea of raking in millions in fees while lawsuits against giants like AT&T wound their way through courts for years.

For North Dakota readers, it’s worth commending Rep. Earl Pomeroy who did the right thing in breaking with his party to vote for this amendment despite getting pressure from the liberal left to vote no.

I spend a lot of time harping on North Dakota’s all-Democrat congressional delegation, so it’s nice to compliment them for doing something nice for a change.

This time his beef is that two North Dakota Workforce Safety board members had dinner together and didn’t notify the public of the “meeting.”

A former North Dakota Workforce Safety and Insurance executive says he walked in on an illegal meeting of agency board members in a restaurant, and he has asked Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem to investigate.

“They are breaking the sunshine laws. This is why we’re in the problem that we’re in,’’ said Jim Long, who was fired in March from his WSI job as chief of support services.

Long believes he was dismissed for disclosing possible agency wrongdoing to the Burleigh County prosecutor, allegations that WSI officials deny. Two separate examinations of the agency have been critical of its past management practices.

That last sentence would be more accurate if it said that two separate examinations of WSI found criticisms of the agency but no evidence of the sort fraud and corruption Long alleges.

Fargo Forum reporter Janell Cole is filing a separate complaint about another apparent infraction of open meetings laws:

Separately, Forum Communications Co.’s state Capitol reporter, Janell Cole, requested an open meetings legal opinion from Stenehjem about a separate June 10 meeting of an ad hoc subcommittee of WSI’s board, during which the possibility of raising board members’ compensation was discussed.

The meeting was held by telephone conference call, and it appeared from conversations among members Bobbie Ripplinger, J.P. Wiest and Dyste that they had already talked about the issues and each other’s opinions about them, the complaint said.

As far as I’m concerned, if North Dakota’s open meetings law is so broadly written that two board members can’t even hold conversations with one another individually or even socialize together privately without needing to go through the formalities of a public meeting there’s something wrong with the law.

After all, we all want transparency, but let’s not be absurd.

What’s really interesting about all this is while Forum reporter Janell Cole (who once called me WSI’s “chief apologist”) is willing to go to the Attorney General about ticky-tacky, though admittedly relevant, questions about the law she and the rest of her colleagues in the North Dakota media still refuse to report that Jim Long (now a Democrat candidate for the state legislature) was fired for his job not for exposing fraud and malfeasance at WSI (something no investigation into the agency has been able to prove) but rather because he had an affair with one of his subordinates while working at the agency.

Plus he gave that subordinate a massive raise (raising questions of nepotism from other employees) and faced allegations of racial discrimination.

These are facts gleaned from documents obtained from WSI through an open records request which no media outlet in North Dakota - certainly not Janell Cole or the Fargo Forum - has reported despite having published a plethora of articles casting Long as some sort of truth-telling, whistle-blowing martyr.

For all their concern about WSI’s openness and transparency I guess Cole, the Forum and the rest of the state’s journalists are only interested in the public getting one side of this story.

As recently as yesterday.

Remarks yesterday by Republican Kit Bond who’s opposing the Countrywide bailout bill.

BOND: While I would like to keep as many homeowners in their homes as possible, this strategy is more likely to result in a large bailout for lenders, while protecting a very limited number of borrowers.

In particular, [the Congressional Budget Office] estimates that under this program, quote, “Mortgage holders would have an incentive to direct their highest-risk loans to the program,” close quotes. For a modest write-off, lenders who were in a number of cases either fraudulent or negligent in their treatment of borrowers will be able to clear out many of their problem loans.

At the same time, CBO estimates that the cumulative default of the home program would be about 35 percent, meaning that one out of every three loans refinanced would fail. Creating a new federal program that takes on the worst of the worst subprime loans, which will hurt [the Federal Housing Administration] and ultimately the taxpayers, is extremely troubling.

I wonder if they can count on the support of Kent Conradwide?  Well there were two procedural votes yesterday on the issue.  On the one to refer the item back to committee (to delay or kill it I suppose) Kent didn’t vote.  Is that why we sent him to Washington to NOT vote for issues of the state.  I realize that he probably did that because he’s in a no win situation BUT who put himself in that position?

Conrad’s unethical pandering for a bargain loan has hurt North Dakota by removing our vote from the Senate in this instance.  Certainly we can tolerate that once, but who’s at fault?  Kent Conradwide. 

I just checked and so far nothing in the Forum or Herald papers about Kent Conrad waiving budget rules to help his Countrywide buddies.

A couple years ago the Forum went into full protection mode for Byron Dorgan.  What they did was ignore most of the news then ran a super friendly interview on a Sunday.  Of course the interview was full of holes but the Forum didn’t care.  After that interview they never mentioned the scandal again. 

And like then, Forum Property readers won’t know the worst parts of the scandal.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that same thing is going to happen, maybe even this weekend. 

Imagine you’re the CEO of a highly-leveraged company that’s heavily-regulated by the US government and you suddenly find yourself on the phone with a US Senator who is asking for a loan, which is exactly the position Angelo Mozilo found himself in when North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad called him up (or, according to Conrad, called disgraced Obama ally Jim Johnson up and then got the phone from Johnson).

What would you do?

Such a situation doesn’t exactly leave you with a lot of good options now, does it?

Via a friendly source in the North Dakota media comes this soon-to-be-published op/ed from Kent Conrad which seeks to defend the Senator on the Countrywide Mortgage scandal.

Here’s the text of the email being sent out with the op/ed:

Good afternoon. Below is an op-ed that Senator Conrad would like to submit for publication in your paper.  While I know it is longer than usual, it deals with a complicated issue and deserves as much space as you can afford.  I thank you in advance for your consideration.  Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind regards,

Sean

Sean Neary
Director of Communications
United States Senator Kent Conrad

I’m sure the North Dakota media will give Senator Conrad all the space he needs to defend himself.

I’ve included the entire text of his op/ed in the extended portion of this entry, but here’s three points to take away from this rather self-serving piece of horse puckey:

First, Conrad says that he never intended to ask Mozilo for the loan.  Yet Conrad has been quoted by the Associated Press as saying he “called him [Mozilo] up” to ask for the loan.  Is that an inaccurate quote?  It could be, but even so Conrad still called a high-ranking move-and-shaker in the mortgage industry (Jim Johnson), which isn’t exactly the action of someone who is just looking for a run-of-the-mill loan.  Clearly, Conrad was looking for a deal from someone.  And what are the chances that Conrad would call up Johnson who just happened to be in the same room with the CEO of a major mortgage company who was more than happy to give Conrad a cushy, VIP loan?  Seems like an unlikely coincidence to me, though one that’s very convenient for Conrad who is scrambling to get out of the way of this scandal.

Second, Conrad tries to minimize his savings on the loan as though $10,700 were mere peanuts.  I’m sure there are a lot of North Dakotans, hell a lot of Americans, who would love to have saved $10,700 on their mortgage.

Third, let’s remember that Kent Conrad is not a stupid man.  He knew Countrywide was waiving fees for him and lowering the interest rate on his loan.  He also knew that, after receiving this special deal from Countrywide, he helped grease the wheels for a $300 billion bail-out bill for the mortgage lending industry in which Countrywide is the largest player.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in Conrad’s entire op/ed is the fact that he didn’t mention this bailout legislation at all.  I guess he has no convenient explanation for that.

Conrad and his allies in the North Dakota media (and make no doubt about it, he has a lot of them) will no doubt try to make this go away.  They’ll pretend like it’s no big deal.  “An honest mistake from a dedicated public servant” is how they’ll spin it.  But at the end of the day this is what happened: Kent Conrad got $10,700 in savings and some special treatment on a mortgage from Countrywide Mortgage and then turned around and pushed through legislation potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Countrywide Mortgage.

Perhaps the most appalling thing in this whole mess for this particular North Dakotan is not so much that Kent Conrad allowed himself to be bribed, but that his price was so low.

Conrad should resign.  Now.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl Thursday morning at a south Mississippi hospital, according to a person close to the Spears family.

Still no coverage by the Forum on the news that Kent Conrad waived some budget rules in order to benefit the mortgage industry of which Countrywide is the largest. 

But you know the Forum only has so much room for news. 

As a citizen of the state of North Dakota I feel that Kent Conrad should resign his seat in the US Senate over his involvement in the Countrywide Mortgage scandal.

Here’s why:

1. Conrad accepted a “VIP” or “Friends of Angelo” loan from Countrywide Mortgage.  Conrad claims that he wasn’t aware of receiving any special considerations on the loan, but we do know that after calling Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo directly and asking for a loan Conrad got a lower rate, had fees waived and received a mortgage on a property Countrywide normally wouldn’t lend on.  These things saved Conrad approximately $10,000.
2. After accepting this special treatment from Mozilo and Countrywide, Conrad acted in his role as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to push through legislation allowing a government bailout of mortgage lenders.  Countrywide Mortgage is the biggest mortgage lender in the United States and certainly stood to benefit from this bailout.
3. Kent Conrad has lied about his relationship with Angelo Mozilo.  In a press release put out by Conrad’s office shortly after the scandal broke Conrad said he had “never met” Angelo Mozilo.  It has since come to light that Conrad called Mozilo directly to arrange his loan.
4. Kent Conrad has been less than forthcoming about the ownership of the beach home in Delaware.  In a “narrative” given to the Associated Press Conrad mentions that his vacation home is owned by his wife, Major League Baseball lobbyist Lucy Calautti.  According to the county where the vacation home resides, however, both Conrad and his wife are the owners.

Due to the above evidence of deception and quid pro quo I think it’s clear that Kent Conrad - who has been dishonest, deceitful and corrupt throughout this matter - is no longer qualified to represent North Dakota in the US Senate. 

Watch the video and see for yourself. It’s at just half way through the short news story.

The Quote in question by Conrad:

“How could it be, that they waived a one point fee and never told me, the customer?  [Chuckle] I mean that is bizarre.”

It is bizarre Kent.  I don’t believe it either.  I also don’t believe that they didn’t know you were waiving the budget rules in order to benefit the mortgage industry of which Countryside is the largest. 

By the way the bonus in the video is watching Conrad pretend he’s Richard Nixon.

Kent, follow the Fargo Forum’s lead and say as little as possible about the Scandal.  You’re not making it any better. 

I’m sure this is old hat to North Dakota readers that also read the Fargo Forum or one of their newspapers.  Oh wait, the Forum Communications properties only print what Kent Conrad wants them to print.

While benefiting from those discounted Countrywide loans, Dodd used his position as Chair of the Senate Banking Committee to craft a bill to require the government to purchase up to $300 billion in bad loans from mortgage lenders. This would certainly benefit Countrywide as it is the largest mortgage provider in the United States.

During the regular process of creating legislation,the chairman of the relevant committee is required to send a “Views and Estimates” letter to the Budget chairman outlining budget requirements for the bill. In this case, Banking Chairman Dodd needed to send a letter to Budget Chairman Conrad. Then, to advance the bill, Conrad must attach needed budget provisions to the bill make sure it can be funded later.

While signing off on this particular bill, Conrad added something called a “reserve fund” to Dodd’s bill which would prevent the bill from later being subjected to a “Budget Act point of order.”

In essence, by creating the reserve fund for Dodd’s housing bill, Conrad created a way to increase funding for the bill without question.

So Kent Conrad, self professed budget hawk, broke the budget to bail out mortage lenders of which Countrywide is the largest.  And that only cost Countrywide $10,000.

How positively Clintonian.

So try to follow this, when the news broke Kent Conrad issued a press release that although he got a Friend of Angelo [Mozilo] loan he had never met him.  (Link to the first two quotes.)

“I never met Angelo Mozilo. And in my role as a United States Senator, I have never done anything for Countrywide.

Then a day later under questioning he admitted that he had called him.

``I called (Mozilo). I said, ‘I’m buying this property. Would you be interested in the mortgage?’, and he said, ‘Yeah. Call these people and we’ll take a look,’’’ Conrad said.

Of course that story got him in worse trouble because it got people to wondering why you would call up the chairman of a multi multi billion dollar mortgage lender unless you wanted a special deal.  So Clinton Conrad changed his story again.

Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, said he called his friend James Johnson in 2002 for advice on where to get a mortgage, and the former Fannie Mae chief happened to be with Mozilo.

Yeah right.  You know what Kent, you’d be better off leaving it to your defense team in the Forum Communications editorial rooms. If you keep this up they’re going to have to cover this affair like you were a Republican. 

The Washington Post asks the question:

SEEKING TO refinance his Delaware beach house in 2004, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) did what any ordinary property owner in his position would have done. On the advice of his friend James A. Johnson, who also happened to be the former chief executive officer of mortgage giant Fannie Mae, he called Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial. Soon Mr. Conrad had a $1.07 million loan—at a discount, personally ordered for him by Mr. Mozilo, of $10,500 in fees. A few weeks later, Mr. Conrad was back in touch with Countrywide, this time to refinance his eight-unit apartment building in Bismarck, N.D. Countrywide normally does not lend on properties with more than four units, but, on Mr. Mozilo’s orders, Mr. Conrad got $96,000. Clearly, it’s good to be a senator, and it’s good to be a “Friend of Angelo”—as favored VIP borrowers were known at Countrywide.

Of course, it’s even better to be a Friend of Angelo if the public doesn’t know about it. Now that Mr. Conrad’s status is known, along with that of other FOAs—including Mr. Johnson, Mr. Conrad’s Senate colleague Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), former Clinton administration Cabinet officials Donna E. Shalala and Richard C. Holbrooke, former Bush housing secretary Alphonso Jackson, and ex-Fannie Mae CEO Franklin D. Raines—it’s worth figuring out exactly what is, and is not, wrong with this kind of help. . . .

The Senate’s ethics rules quite wisely forbid members from soliciting gifts or knowingly accepting gifts worth more than $100 from entities, such as Countrywide, that employ lobbyists. One question is whether the FOA treatment counts as a gift or fits into an exception for loans at terms generally available to the public. In this case, does “the public” mean everyone, all Countrywide customers or just all FOAs (of whom there were apparently hundreds)? And how should the senators’ economic circumstances (credit scores, net worth, etc.) figure in?

It’s pretty clear to me that if you’re a Senator and you call up the CEO of a lending company and ask for a loan and that CEO responds by giving you an extra-special low rate and waiving costly fees that constitutes a gift.

Because the average American doesn’t get to just phone up the CEO and ask for a loan, and CEO’s aren’t inclined to give loans with special considerations to average Americans.

Senators shouldn’t get special treatment.