I need help re: Dodd smear, please!

[Coexist]

got this late last night - I'd like to rebut before work, please help!


As a member and later chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd shoulders a good deal of the blame for the collapse of the national housing market, the subprime-mortgage-market meltdown and the latest convulsions on Wall Street.

Reams of legislation he has written or advocated affecting the housing, lending, insurance and securities industries have drained hundreds of billions out of the economy, ballooned the federal debt, cost tens of thousands of people their jobs and driven hundreds of thousands of homeowners into foreclosure, bankruptcy or both. For his efforts, Sen. Dodd has been rewarded in the 2008 election cycle with $7.65 million in campaign contributions — he took in $11.7 million in all — from the securities, insurance, real-estate and commercial-banking industries, according to his latest Federal Election Commission filing posted at opensecrets.org.

Sen. Dodd's list of donors reads like a who's who of who's in the stew: Citigroup, $310,294; SAC Capital Partners, $282,000; United Technologies, $263,400; AIG, $224,678; Bear Stearns, $205,600; St. Paul Travelers, $205,400; Royal Bank of Scotland, $203,750; Goldman Sachs, $175,600; Morgan Stanley, $155,000; Credit Suisse, $154,550; Merrill Lynch, $134,950; JPMorgan Chase, $129,150; Lehman Brothers, $128,400; KPMG, $113,100; General Electric, $108,250; Deloitte Touche, $108,000; USB, $101,900; Hartford Finance Services, $101,500; The Hartford, $94,350; Bank of America, $91,300.

With $165,400, Sen. Dodd also tops the list of members of Congress who took campaign cash from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 1989. Sen. Barack Obama, the self-styled agent of change, is a distant second at $126,000 and Sen. John Kerry is third at $111,000. In the top 20 are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obviously, Sen. Dodd had plenty of buyers for the influence he was peddling. And without so much as a thought to the potential devastating economic consequences of his actions, he sold his soul, and sold out his constituents and country. In return, he saved $75,000 on two VIP mortgages from Countrywide Financial.

Long after the horses had left the barn, Sen. Dodd now pledges to "continue to work on solutions to help Americans weather this storm, including strengthening the housing sector, developing a second stimulus package and restructuring the regulation of the financial sector."

Senator Dodd: Haven't you done enough damage?

[DefenseLawyer]

1. Reams of legislation?

How about naming one single solitary specific piece of legislation that has "drained hundreds of billions out of the economy" and "cost tens of thousands of jobs". I mean if there are "reams" naming one shouldn't be hard.

[Coexist]

2. what do you think of this?

I have to get to work – I’ll do more later, but some quick notes:

Dodd has only been chairman of the banking committee for the past two years – most of the damage was already done by then, it just hadn’t fully ripened. Most of the donors listed were for his failed Presidential campaign. I would like a source for his numbers, please, so I can check out how long ago these numbers began and how many years it took to get to these totals.

He does NOT ‘shoulder a good deal of the blame.” Please have him list all the legislation he has ‘written or advocated for’ and also list all of the Republicans who wrote, co-sponsored, or voted for this legislation also. Or, how about naming just one specific piece of legislation that has "drained hundreds of billions out of the economy" and "cost tens of thousands of jobs". I mean if there are "reams" naming one shouldn't be hard.

There was a lot of deregulation (a Republican issue, not a Democratic one) that passed during the bush administration. Republicans held a majority in the house, senate and the white house. There were still some rules in place that were not enforced or followed. That is not Chris Dodd’s fault. It borders on absurd to say that. But of course, if an email sounds smart, it must be right, right?!

I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll address it more later, if you are still choosing to believe this source-scarce smear. And on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being more friendly to democrats… please. Quick example:

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

3. In the Senate

by definition, one cannot act unilaterally.