Voters in U.S. Rep. Barney Frank’s Congressional district have been flooded in the last two days with campaign literature telling them that Frank has “rich friends,” deserves a grade of “F,” and is “reckless and arrogant.”
“Massachusetts just can’t afford Barney Frank and his rich friends,” says one four-page, four-color piece that includes a photo of Frank with a background of a posh poolside ocean view lounge area. The flipside shows photos of a private jet, a limo, and a Oceanside resort hotel.
That piece is identified as being paid for by the campaign of Frank’s Republican opponent for the 4th Congressional District seat from Massachusetts, Sean Bielat. Two others are paid for by the Bielat campaign; a fourth indicates it was paid for by “Keep America Safe,” a group based in Cincinnati, and headed by Republican politicos Liz Cheney and William Kristol to promote national security efforts.
Bielat is making an aggressive push to wrestle the seat from Frank, who has held the seat for 30 years.
Inside, the literature claims Frank “was responsible for the housing meltdown” and that he “wrote a law that allowed his friend’s bank, OneUnited, to cook the books and take a $12 million taxpayer funded bailout.”
“Now, we learn that [Frank] took a free luxury jet ride to the Virgin Islands with a crony who got a $200 million federal bailout.”
But the last-minute drop of numerous glossy campaign literature pieces begs the question of where Bielat is getting his funding. Federal Election Commission records just a few weeks ago showed him with not even half the money Frank had.
Through October 13, Frank’s campaign reported receiving $3 million in contributions; Bielat’s reported receiving only $1.3 million.
Frank’s campaign had spent $2.5 million by October 13, with $650,000 left in cash; Bielat’s campaign reported spending $834,000 with $463,000 left in cash.
The small “Keeping America Safe” flyer arrived on the same day the national news media began to report on security measures that found suspicious packages aimed at perpetrating a terrorist attack in the United States.
News reports about Frank staying at a billionaire friend’s “tropical mansion” in the Virgin Islands surfaced in the Boston Herald, a conservative newspaper in Massachusetts, in mid-October. The Herald noted that Frank said he and his partner, Jim Ready, are friends of Donald Sussman and Sussman’s fiancée, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine. The Herald noted that Frank did report the flight and that his spokesman said the flight was cleared with the House Ethics Committee “before he did any of this.”
Copyright ©2010 Keen News Service. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sean Bielat is getting his funding in $10′s and $25′s and $100′s from folks like me. We know that the person most responsible for the losses we have sustained in the value of our homes is directly attributable to Barney Frank. NO ONE has more responsibility for those losses and it is now “payback time”!!!
So Mr. Bielat – who – when asked about the DADT issue – compared Gay people to short people. And whose campaign released an ad attacking Congressman Frank portraying him as a “hip swerving disco queen”- now has out of state extremists like Liz Cheney working on his behalf – telling us how to keep America safe.
As I recall – under her dad – we suffered the worst terrorist attack on American soil ever. We were told WMD’s were a slam dunk and invaded Iraq. We were told that the Mission was Accomplished. That Brownie did a good job on Katrina. We were told that the American economy was basically sound and that regulating Wall Street was unnecessary.
I am not inclined to take political advice from Ms Cheney – or Mr. Bielat – or anyone else who would throw in with the Republican party the party that has been responsible for the worst period of economic performance and governance in modern American history.
Are you referring to the same DADT that PRESIDENT CLINTON introduced to America? Just checking. Clinton, who Frank warmly welcomed to his district to help campaign, has never had to answer for DADT and Frank seems to not have a problem with that.
Bielat sides with CLINTON, the end.
No one has more responsibility for the meltdown than Barney Frank pushing incessantly for mortgages for the unqualified and refusing to even recognize the problem when Republicans tried to fix it. The man has the blood of the financial crisis on his hands and truly does not deserve to be reelected. Being short, gay, black or whatever is never a good reason to vote for anyone, ever.
@Ben Olan – Do we need to be reminded that a pre-cursor to this attack occurred on the very same building in 1993 under President Clinton? And that he had another 7 years to find those responsible?
Do we also forget that the excesses of the Dot-Com 90′s were merely transformed into the housing bubble of the new millennium using legislation enacted under the Clinton era? It was his idea for everyone to own their own home, regardless of whether or not they could afford it. The current state of Fannie/Freddie is Clinton’s doing.
Honestly, if Bush et. al. tried to pull in the reins on the housing market he would be accused of stifling the economy at a time when it needed to recover from the epic collapse of the overblown tech bubble inflated by Clinton 5 years prior.
Lets look at history over more than a 10 year time span, shall we?