Say Anything Blog

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.