This guy is lower than low...... Stop sending us your carpetbaggers from the New England States: Chris Dodd's Irish 'Cottage' The Senate Ethics Committee has been looking into possible conflicts of interest in Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd's 2003 mortgages. Now questions about another Dodd real-estate adventure, this one in Ireland, should keep the Ethicists even busier. All the more because Mr. Dodd's "cottage" purchase involves a crooked stock trader for whom the Senator once did a very big political favor. Mr. Dodd is already under a cloud for receiving what a former loan officer claims was preferential treatment from Countrywide Financial on two mortgage refinancings -- in Connecticut and Washington -- in 2003. Countrywide was an aggressive lender to shaky borrowers and relied heavily on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy those mortgages in bulk. As a senior Member of the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Dodd was one of Fannie's greatest promoters. Mr. Dodd promised last year to disclose mortgage documents to prove he got no special treatment, but so far all he's done is let a few hand-picked journalists take a quick peek before he put the papers back in storage. [Christopher Dodd] Christopher Dodd Now enterprising Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie has uncovered another suspicious real-estate investment. The story starts in 1994, when the Senator became one-third owner of a 10-acre estate, then valued at $160,000, on the island of Inishnee on Galway Bay. The property is near the fashionable village of Roundstone, a well-known celebrity haunt. William Kessinger bought the other two-thirds share in the estate. Edward Downe, Jr., who has been a business partner of Mr. Kessinger, signed the deed as a witness. Senator Dodd and Mr. Downe are long-time friends, and in 1986 they had purchased a condominium together in Washington, D.C. Mr. Downe is also quite the character. The year before the Galway deal, in 1993, he pleaded guilty to insider trading and securities fraud and in 1994 agreed to pay the SEC $11 million in a civil settlement. The crimes were felonies and in 2001, as President Clinton was getting ready to leave office, Mr. Dodd successfully lobbied the White House for a full pardon for Mr. Downe. The next year -- according to a transfer document at the Irish land registry viewed by Mr. Rennie -- Mr. Kessinger sold his two-thirds share to Mr. Dodd for $122,351. The Senator says he actually paid Mr. Kessinger $127,000, which he claims was based on an appraisal at the time. That means, at best, poor Mr. Kessinger earned less than 19% over eight years on the sale of his two-thirds share to Mr. Dodd. But according to Ireland's Central Bank, prices of existing homes in Ireland quadrupled from 1994 to 2004. Perhaps Mr. Kessinger is a lousy businessman. Or maybe he merely relied on Mr. Dodd to tell him how much the property was worth. In his Senate financial disclosure documents from 2002-2007, Mr. Dodd reported that the Galway home was worth between $100,001 and $250,000. However, Mr. Rennie reports that in 2006 and 2007 the Senator added a footnote that reads: "value based on appraisal at time of purchase." Mr. Dodd had good reason to add the qualifier. Senate rules call for valuations to be current and anyone who looked into the estimate would immediately spot Mr. Dodd's lowballing. A June 17, 2007 feature in Britain's Sunday Times did just that. "Diary" observed that in Roundstone "a two-bed recently made E680,000 ($918,000) and a cottage is currently on offer for E800,000." Noting Mr. Dodd's estimate of his property -- between E75,000 and E185,000 -- the diarist quipped, "to hell with the stamp duty, and form an orderly queue." Mr. Dodd is busy these days blaming everyone else for the real-estate bubble and financial meltdown. But he owes his constituents and the Senate an honest accounting of his Galway property over the past 15 years. If its value grew with the rest of the area, he needs to explain why Mr. Kessinger handed it over for a song, why that isn't an unreported gift under Senate rules, and what role Mr. Downe might have played as a middleman. More broadly, Connecticut voters might want to know why their senior Senator has hung around for years with Mr. Downe, the kind of financial scoundrel Mr. Dodd spends so much time denouncing. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123681364667801647.html
For 8 years we had a Texas Oilman as president. When he launched a war to "liberate" Iraq people like you said nothing. Any shadiness on the part of democrats produces indignation from people like you.
Evidently your point here is that if there was a "wrong" before, we should therefore overlook every wrong that follows. Is that about it? If Bush had made this property deal what would your reaction have been? My guess is any "shadiness" on the part of Bush produced "indignation" from people like you. OldTrader
No a sense of proportionality should be good. People like you spend an inordinate amount of time investigating dodd's shady mortgages, while OVERWHELMING corruption in the Bush administration went unnoticed.
Proportionality, meaning that Dodd just has a "little" indiscretion when he is paid off in a property deal for a Congressional favor, and therefore we should overlook it, because Bush was guilty of something in the years prior. LOL. Yeah, I love the logic man. OldTrader
Well, you throw this kind of talk around, but where's the support for it? What overwhelming corruption? I'm pretty sure I know how many Bush Cabinet officials had embarrassing tax problems: zero. As I recall one of his very early nominees had a minor nanny tax issue and was immediately dropped.
What do you think war in Iraq was launched for? It was launched for OIL& Military industrial complex interests. Medicare part D was done for Pharmaceutical interests TARP was done to support selected (priviliged interests) US attorney scandal was because they refused to prosecute democrats Warrantless wiretaping scandal Valeri Plame issue. That is just off the top of my head. Keep talking about Chris Dodd and Barney Frank