Say Anything Blog

Not that they were trying to be objective about it in the first place.

Apparently Tuesday the Subprime Senator, Kent Conrad visited the Herald to give them his side of the story.  That rated not one but two articles in the paper.  One on the front page (at least it was on their website) and one on the editorial page.  I don’t know which is worse.  This story was completely inappropriate for a news story in that there was no objective reporting.  When a politician is caught in a scandal do you give him front page coverage without any other reporting?  Not if you’re a real news outlet, but the Herald did.

There are so many objectionable things in this story that I’ll have to fisk the story to do it justice.  First the “news” story.

If it turns out he received any preferential treatment when he refinanced a mortgage with Countrywide Financial in 2004, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., told the Herald on Tuesday, he’ll write the company a check for the difference.

According to documents provided by Conrad, Countrywide Financial waived a 1 percent fee for him in 2004 when he refinanced a mortgage he’d originally received from the company two years earlier on a Delaware beach home. The waived value was $10,700.

Well right there he admits he got a special deal in the documents they gave him.  Where’ s the check?  By the way it’s not appropriate to think that paying back money after you were caught is any kind of excuse for unethical behavior in the first place.  Besides when it came out he paid that amount to Habitat for Humanity already so he admitted he got the deal.

Conrad has steadfastly maintained he never knew the fee was waived — he offered to swear to it Tuesday on a stack of Bibles — and that the resulting mortgage was still consistent with market rates…

Since then, Conrad said, he’s been told it was common practice in the mortgage industry to waive such fees in 2004,

You just admit that the documents showed that the point was waived.  We know there was an email from the CEO to take a point off.  Does he do that for any run of the mill customer?  Why would he do that except for the fact that he knew Kent Conradwide was a US Senator?

The article says that the Subprime Senator brought a binder with his mortgages to the meeting.  I assume those documents show that papers that he signed did in fact show that the point was waived.  All along Conrad said that he never got a special deal.  If this is the case he probably signed the terms sheet or whatever they call it and that proves that he knew he got a special deal.  The only thing missing is Mozilo’s fingerprints.

[Conradwide] “This is absolutely one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever been through,” he said. “The national media didn’t care about the facts.”

Certainly we can say that about the Grand Forks Herald and other Forum Communications properties.  At least they don’t care for the North Dakota public to know the facts.

The article describes how Conrad’s short phone call with the CEO of Countrywide in 2002 led to the national media interest.

But Conrad said Monday it “strains credulity” that he would have expected his conversation with Mozilo to affect the deal he received when he refinanced the same loan two years later.

Why would you speak to the head of a mortgage giant unless you expected to get a special deal? 

Conrad also shot back at suggestions that his special deal from Countrywide had been a quid pro quo for his work to curtail the recent mortgage crisis — during which Countrywide has often been cited as a purveyor of risky mortgages — in his role as chairman of the Senate’s banking committee.

This is my favorite part.  The Herald allows Conrad to present the defense for a charge that they nearly never allowed to be printed in their paper.  If this was an actual “news” paper they would have covered the fact that he broke the budget rules to benefit the mortgage industry after receiving nearly $11,000 from them in personal funds, (let along a lot of campaign donations).

“That’s so utterly farfetched and nonsensical,” he said, arguing there would have been no way to predict the mortgage crisis when he first spoke with Mozilo in 2002 and that he’s worked to bail out the housing industry at large, not Countrywide in particular.

As if we’re supposed to believe that it’s ever a bad thing to have a senior US Senator friendly to your company for when you need it.  But when Countrywide needed the bailout the Friend of Angelo, Ken Conradwide, was ready to waive the rules for him.  Unfortunately while that cost Countrywide $10,700, it’s costing the US Taxpayers Three Hundred Billion Dollars. 

Conrad also joked about the Friends of Angelo program Tuesday, which he said, by some accounts, is so large it could hardly be labeled exclusive.

That’s not the question.  The question is why was the Subprime Senator on the Friends of Angelo list?  Conrad says that he didn’t know the man so it’d have to be because of his position as US Senator.  We know Kent got $10,700 because of that status and we know that he waived the budget rules to move the bailout bill along. 

That’s the “news” story.  I’ll be covering the shameful editorial later today or tomorrow.