Rightside News: Good Riddance to Barney Frank
In 1989, Frank's political obituary seemed all but written when his hustler boyfriend, Stephen Gobie, revealed that he had used the congressman's townhouse to host clients.
(Note: Public Advocate president Eugene Delgaudio and 100 other demonstrators talk to the streets and demanded the House condemn Frank's actions for several weeks in 1989.)
The House voted 408-18 to reprimand Frank for fixing 33 of his escort-turned-assistant's parking tickets and sending misleading letters on congressional stationery to Gobie's probation officers. .
Rather than humbling Frank, the scandal emboldened him. Frank again exploited his office to benefit a paramour-this time with adverse policy rather than tabloid repercussions. As Gretchen Morgensen and Joshua Rosner's Reckless Endangerment revealed earlier this year, Frank encouraged Fannie Mae in the early 1990s to hire his companion Herb Moses. Fannie Mae generously supported Frank's family foundation, his political campaigns, and his partner. In turn, the congressman charged with overseeing the housing behemoth became its biggest booster.
He spent the last decade assessing Fannie as "fundamentally sound" and dismissing solvency concerns as "artificial." He tenaciously pressed for "affordable" housing, which the foreclosure crisis revealed as quite unaffordable. "It is a common thing in Washington for members of Congress to have spouses work for the federal government," he told the Boston Herald, whose "complete political irrelevance" he had celebrated on election night 2010. "There is no rule against it at all."
(Note: Rush Limbaugh and other radio talk show hosts have discussed this conflict of interest and how it has destroyed America's and the world economy)