Newt, The New Boss

Hello, Newt.

The Washington Post reports that you legally transferred all of your business interests to your third wife when you decided to run. Now that’s a firewall. She must be pretty happy.

It has been widely reported that my man Newt has worked the system pretty well since getting throw… ahem, leaving office. Quoting Newt’s own attorney Randy Evans, The Washington Post reported my man Newt has made a bloody fortune since leaving office:

• $1.8 Million consulting for Freddie & Fannie
• $60,000 a pop for “50 to 80” speeches a year
• $52 million running a think tank called American Solutions for Winning the Future
• $37 Million collected from the Health Industry as dues to a group called the Center for Health Transformation

In fairness it appears that Gingrich and his team stayed clear of lobbying. However, like everything else in Washington there is the spirit of the law, and the letter of the law. Corporations did not pay Gingrich $100 million in consulting fees because they wanted to share a cup of hot cocoa. Corporations pay for access to get their agenda heard and then carried out.

In the spirit of Romney Gingrich now sees himself backtracking from the few areas where he has been bold enough to compromise, or worse, take a progressive position. In 2008 Gingrich appearing in a TV ad with Nancy Pelosi joined an Al Gore organized advertising effort to promote the battle against climate change. He now calls that “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done”.

Gingrich’s posture on the healthcare proposal which has raised the most ire and which is now being challenged in front of the Supreme Court—mandates for the citizens to purchase insurance—has evolved.

• 1993 “I am for people, individuals -- exactly like automobile insurance -- individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.”
• 2007 Editorial in the Des Moines Register- “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance”
• May-15, 2011- When given the opportunity to go after Romney Newt said, “I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay--help pay for health care… I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond ..."
• But a day later (May-16, 2011)  on his website Newt stated, “I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional.”

The post also reports that not all of Gingrich’s clients were happy. PhRMA, a lobbying group for the drug industry, dumped Gingrich after he suggested the industry should set up a web site to help consumers compare prices. F***ing communist!

The New York Times reported on a rapprochement  between Hillary and Clinton and Newt, and at the core I believe Newt’s views on healthcare might be thoughtful and there is the potential in their for some creativity, but as Romney already knows and Newt appears to have discovered the thuggery of Republican politics leaves little room for reconciliation and creative thinking.

Sadly for me at least, Newt’s suggestions about what he did for Fannie and Freddie look to be complete hogwash. David Frum, a speechwriter for George W Bush writing on his own blog the day after Gingrich made his assertion that he told-them-not-to–do-it took issue with Gingrich:

“…let’s not overlook this audacious moment from the debate: Newt Gingrich’s breathtaking assertion that Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for a lecture he gave “as a historian” about how they should forthwith cease their business practices.

Turns out, that’s not quite how it happened. From the AP:

The records obtained by the AP reflect growing concern within Freddie Mac over a chorus of criticism from Republicans worried that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had grown too big. The two companies owned or guaranteed over $5 trillion in mortgages.

The Bush administration and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan were sounding the alarm about the potential threat to the nation’s financial health if the fortunes of the two mammoth companies turned sour. They did eventually, when they took on $1 trillion worth of sub-prime mortgages and when their traditional guarantee business deteriorated. Commercial banks regarded Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as competitors and were anxious to pick up business that would result from scaling back the two companies.

Pushing back, Freddie Mac enlisted prominent conservatives, including Gingrich and former Justice Department official Viet Dinh, paying each $300,000 in 2006, according to internal records.

Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model.”

It has since come out that Gingrich was paid $1.8 million by Fannie and Freddie, which makes his posture overtly corrupt and highly misleading. He may not have lobbied, but he wrote and lectured and humped their case. Almost certainly cash won out over wisdom, because as with every other one of these scum, I simply refuse to believe that people did not know better. Everyone was making so much money everyone ignored the obvious. When the s*** hit the fan the rich walked away with their dough, and their bailouts and the poor and middle class took it up the what’s its.

On immigration, Newt has already proposed amnesty. I could forgive the scramble to avoid the word. As with the draconian posture suggesting free markets as solution for the housing crisis, just once I’d like to hear a lame-streamer ask how the right would propose making 11 million undocumented workers simply disappear.  Here again, this isn’t Newt, but Romney and the others are throwing red meat to the lions as a substitute for serious policy discussions.

On tax and economic policy with a few wrinkles, including a “Voluntary Flat Tax system” he is well within the mainstream of Republican circles which proposes additional transfers of wealth to those who already have done amazingly, stupidly well. He humps the same de-regulation crapola as the rest of them, which again shows the lack of seriousness in the goal of creating jobs by the Republican field.

I am still endorsing Newt though on the basis that he is still less slippery than Romney, and so more likely to say it like he feels it that whiff of blow dry, Willard from Massachusetts. Go Newt.