Senator Dodd Has Some Explaining to Do

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) received below market interest rate loans from Countrywide who is in the process of being bought by Bank of America. The Senate is in the process of debating (it was held up by the GOP) a bailout bill for the mortgage industry. Dodd says there was no quid pro quo for his receiving the low-interest loans but the facts don't bear out his assertion:

Yesterday, Tim Carney reported that the prevailing sentiment on Capitol Hill is that the Dodd-Shelby bill "is exactly what Bank of America and Countrywide wanted." BofA is in the process of acquiring Countrywide. Countrywide is currently embroiled in a scandal over its V.I.P. program, under which several powerful politicians, including Sen. Chris Dodd, got preferential loan rates.

This discussion document (dated March 11, 2008) would appear to support the contention that BofA essentially wrote the bailout section of the bill. Almost all of BofA's preferences are mirrored in the Dodd-Shelby legislation. The BofA document even offers PR tips, such as "We believe that any intervention by the federal government will be acceptable only if it is not perceived as a bail-out of the bond market."

Now imagine if it were a former GOP candidate for President and he was a sitting Senator helping out, say, the oil industry. Imagine it this hypothetical way:

Senator Shady (R-CT) received reduced value stock from Exxon-Mobil last year in a deal that would net him up to $75,000 over the next fifteen years (roughly what Dodd's loans will save him). Further imagine the bill before the Senate--the Shady-Bastard Oil Company Bailout Bill--was shown to be exactly like an Exxon document and all the things that would benefit Exxon were in the bill. In essence, it looked like Exxon's lawyers wrote the bill.

If it were a Republican and it was the hypothetical situation presented above, it would be the biggest news story since Angelina Jolie said she was pregnant again. It would be run on CNN and the DNC house organ MSNBC repeatedly. Senator Shady would be the "Worst Person in the World" on Keith Olbermann's bloviation-fest three weeks in a row. But this is a Democrat folks so we hear essentially nothing from the MSM.

Senator Dodd is all that is wrong with politics these days and believe me, Obama is exactly the same.