Who is Chris Dodd? UPDATED Federal Prosecutors on it.

UPDATE - Federal prosecutors are now on the prowl. Chris Dodd is on a perp board! His quote is that he thought "VIP" meant he got special customer service and that his loans were at market rates. Prosecutors have several dem cabinet members (one pub) and the guys form Freddie and Fannie in their sights as well.

When the NBC Today Show is going after a democrat, you know it's gotta be obvious. Original post detailing Dodd's misdeeds throughout his career follows the updated video below.

Sometimes when I am feeling badly – perhaps down on my luck financially or just realized that I made a poor choice a few days ago, or perhaps now it is the flood of headlines that has Democrats telling us how they will reshape America following an election that they haven’t won yet – I try to picture someone else that has it worse than me.

As I lay in bed last night trying to grasp sleep from the steel claws of the moon shining in my eyes, I pictured Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT). An image came to me. I saw him fitfully tearing at his bed linens, the stench of alcohol and immorality filling his hotel room. I saw a partially completed suicide note next to a prescription medicine bottle. It was a note that he realized he wasn’t man enough to finish, so he started to make a grocery list instead; the bottle he realized he wasn’t man enough to open. A glass of water had been knocked onto the floor, its contents evident from the darkened rug. Woman’s clothes were strewn on the bed, but there was no sign of a woman; judging by the “2X” Dress Barn label, I concluded that in his private moments, Chris liked to dress in a way that made him feel pretty.

“Who is Christopher Dodd,” I asked myself. Here is the answer I gave.

Chris Dodd was born in 1944. He attended an expensive prep school, followed by an expensive college. His father was a two-term US Senator. Dodd married at 25 and got his law degree a couple of years later. Three years after that he was elected to the House, and after three terms moved up to the Senate in 1981. A year after joining the Senate, he divorced his wife of 12 years. The divorce was probably inspired by the lewd and salacious lifestyle he came to enjoy with his new BFF, Ted Kennedy.

Lewd? Salacious? In 1985, Theodore and Christopher double-dated. With their dates safely off to the ladies’ room to powder their noses, the two formed a "human sandwich" with a female waiter. With the waitress on Dodd's lap, Kennedy jumped on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers. Naturally, the waitress screamed. Teddy got up and laughed. The waitress was not just shaken and angry, she was bruised. The two leaders in the Senate have a friendly argument over the check and leave.

Class acts. There’s plenty of documentation on the incident. Google “Kennedy Dodd Waitress Sandwich,” or start here.

Let’s talk money. In 2002 (referring to a then-current scandal but some 1995 Dodd legislation), Dick Morris went after him for Enron/Arthur Andersen. Now, if Dick Morris is going after you, you know the problem has got to blatant. Dick has all the investigatory skills and nuance of a dump truck.

Dick wrote: While many candidates of both parties have received campaign contributions from Enron and its self-serving "independent auditor" Arthur Andersen, very few have passionately fought their cause in Washington as diligently as Chris Dodd. Dodd has received more money from Arthur Andersen than any other Democrat - $54 843.00 - and has aggressively worked to insulate Arthur Andersen and other accounting firms from liability to defrauded investors in cases like Enron.

Moreover, it was on account of Dodd's tireless efforts that Arthur Andersen was able to act as both "independent auditor" and management consultant to Enron for $100 million a year, a role fraught with conflict -of -interest , that has been identified as one of the major causes of the debacle and an arrangement that makes a joke of the concept of outside auditors to protect shareholders.

In 1995, it was Dodd who jammed through legislation, overriding President Clinton's veto, to protect firms like Arthur Andersen from lawsuits in cases just like Enron. The Dodd bill limited liability for lawyers and accountants for "aiding and abetting" corporate fraud by their clients, making them liable only for their proportionate share of the blame, rather than for the entire fraud. So, if an accounting firm kept secret the true picture of a corporation's finances, it would only be liable for a percentage of the total fraud on the investors.

Dodd sought to protect aiders and abettors of fraud to some at-fault portion of the harm? That’s a helluva thing to ask a jury to figure out. Fraud is a tar baby – in for an inch, in for a mile. It’s what they call “Fair warning, mofo. Don’t go there.” And Dodd lessened the risk to perpetrators of fraud? Dang.

Let’s find out what else was happening during the 1995 period. PublicCampaign.org has scrubbed their website of Dodd and it looks like about everything else (here’s their home page), but good thing for the Internet Archive version of the Dodd page. I note that the Dodd page went away in late 2006, while the site seems to have stopped updating a full year after that.

On April 29, 1998, Dodd was awarded the “Golden Leash” by this organization. The award was inaugurated the month before, with the first recipient being Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL). Dodd was the first senator to receive the award. How quaint.

What is the “Golden Leash”? From the link: Public Campaign's Golden Leash Award focuses public attention on politicians who do particularly egregious favors for their cash constituents, highlighting their captivity to special interests at the expense of average voters, taxpayers and the public at large. Hunh. Sounds bad. Let’s find out what he did to earn the very first senatorial scarlet “GL.”

As examples of Dodd's generosity toward his major campaign financiers, Public Campaign's report cites the following examples: Dodd was an original cosponsor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and he helped to organize the Senate's override of President Clinton's veto. It ultimately became law in 1995. While the industry said the law would cut down on frivolous securities lawsuits, many say the new law would make it easier to commit securities fraud on unsuspecting investors and more difficult for the victims of fraud to recover their losses.

The National Securities Market Improvement Act, another bill that Dodd fought earnestly for, was supposed to provide oversight of the mutual fund and securities industry. While it contained some good consumer provisions, it ultimately weakened oversight that would have protected investors. And, in October of last year, Dodd lined up as a cosponsor of the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act, an extension of the earlier securities litigation legislation. The bill was strongly supported by The Uniform Standards Coalition, an ad-hoc group of securities, accounting and high-tech computer firms. Even trial lawyers who opposed such securities litigation legislation, and heavy givers in their own right, especially to Democrats, could not compete with the industry's donations or lobbying efforts.

Rather than beef up consumer protections and enforcement for investors – at a time when more people are investing in stocks and mutual funds for their retirements – Congress is busy protecting Wall Street, with help from Senator Dodd. The Investment Company Institute, the main trade association for the mutual fund industry, reports that Americans currently have more than $1 trillion earmarked for their retirements invested in mutual funds. Most investors lack a basic understanding of financial terms and how investments work. Meanwhile, securities fraud is on the rise.

Of the $910,304 in campaign contributions that Senator Dodd received between January 1993 and December 1997, Wall Street and other investment firms came in as the heavy hitters, with firms like Goldman, Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers and others donating $523,551 in PAC and individual contributions. The accounting industry – perhaps the biggest winners in the 1995 securities litigation reform law – donated $345,903 in PAC and individual contributions. This includes such giants as Price Waterhouse, Ernst & Young and Coopers & Lybrand, among others. Deloitte & Touche's contributions to Senator Dodd increased nearly five-fold from 1995 to1996 soon after Congress passed the reform law the industry championed. The computer industry – a fairly new player in the campaign contribution field – ponied up $40,850 in contributions.

I always thought the phrase “pay to play” applied to prostitutes. Well, in a way I guess it still does.

That little piece of legislative history came back to bite you in the ass, eh Christopher? Good thing you got paid well for the fucking you gave America. I guess he’s more like a pimp than a working girl.

So Dick Morris nails him to the cross in 2002, the GL in his history, and who knows what has never seen the light of day. The pieces seem to be in place to suggest the boy is a little too close to the flame. Does he sense this and chill for a while? You know, just until nobody is looking? I mean, Enron was a pretty big thing. Not our Christopher.

In 2003, he pops a couple of Friend of Angelo refi’s : A 5-year, $506,000 loan at 4.25 percent on his WDC home, and a $275,042 mortgage on the Connecticut house was for 10 years at 4.5 percent. Must be nice being a friend of a guy that owned Countrywide, which wrote 11% of the mortgages in the entire country. More on this in a moment.

So can he at least shut his mouth? Seems not. In between Angelo Countrywide knee-padding Dodd in 2003, and Dodd assuming the reciprocal position in 2008, check out this intermissio:

In 2004, he vomited these words when speaking of Senator Robert “KKK” Byrd: ''I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment.'' He added: ''He would have been right at the founding of this country. He would have been in the leadership crafting this Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War in this nation. He would have been right at the great moments of international threat we faced in the 20th century.''

A member of the Ku Klux Klan “would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War”? The guy in the white robe and hood, riding a horse, and carrying on the tradition of lynching people based purely on the darkness of their skin?

Someone, explain to me why blacks vote for democrats. I don’t get it. Didn’t Trent Lott have his nuts roasted on an open fire for something approaching but nowhere close to this abomination of a statement? In all seriousness, W.T.F.?

Dodd said he was trying to say Mr. Byrd was a good senator and had not thought of his membership in the Klan or his efforts to derail the 1964 Civil Rights bill. Oh. That explains it.

Back to his Countrywide loans. The WSJ wrote in 2008 that: Mr. Dodd continues to insist that, though he knew he was a "special" Countrywide customer, he didn't think he was getting any special financial benefit. But a $75,000 reduction in mortgage payments is no small matter for anyone living on a Senate salary of $169,300.

It doesn’t stop there. Back to the “Friend of Angelo” link above comes this: Dodd has filed six financial disclosure statements since obtaining the mortgages in 2003. In the five reports he has made to the secretary of the Senate, as well as the 2007 report he filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics as a presidential candidate, Dodd disclosed only one mortgage: the 20-year, 4.8 percent variable-rate loan he obtained from the Allied Irish Bank in 2002 on his cottage on the island of Innishnee in the Connemara district of Ireland’s County Galway.

He didn’t disclose them? Did he forget about that three-quarters of a million dollars in debt?

Back to the WSJ published on June 19, 2008: Dodd announced that he was bringing to the Senate floor a housing bailout sure to help lenders like Countrywide.

How much will Countrywide benefit from Mr. Dodd's rescue? The Senator's plan allows mortgage lenders to dump up to $300 billion of their worst loans on to taxpayers via a new Federal Housing Administration refinancing program, provided the lenders are willing to accept 87% of current market value. The program will be most attractive to lenders and investors holding subprime and slightly-less-risky Alt-A loans made during the height of the housing bubble in 2006 and 2007.

Yeah, OK. But if there’s a real problem – which we have recently found out there was big time – we need the learned people in WDC to write legislation and solve it. I know they are generally a’holes – but they’re our a’holes, right?

But wait. Dodd announced the legislation, but Bank of America wasn’t done writing it yet! “BoA?” you ask, “where do they enter this?” They bought Countrywide. And apparently Dodd.

I’ll give him this – the dude knows who his friends are and he takes care of them.

We’re not even going to go into his defense of all these companies – including Fannie & Freddie – as the collapse became real.

This guy is filthy.

Thinking of Chris Dodd makes me feel better about myself.

A cloud broke the moon’s hold on me, and I drifted peacefully to sleep.