Bydio

And then there is the case of Rhino Senator Olympia Snow.  Reports are that the White House is working on her to be the “bi-partisan” part of a Senate bill, with a trigger plan that might get the progressives to buy a plan that does not include a public option at first:

Senior White House officials, in conversations with reporters today, are floating the idea that President Obama is secretly negotiating with Sen. Olympia Snowe over a health care compromise that would phase in a government-funded health care alternative if private insurance companies fail to meet quality and cost benchmarks over a certain period of the time. The public discussion of the Snowe “compromise” is meant to test the reaction of House Democrats, who will pass a bill that includes an immediate public option added to a new health insurance exchange. The White House hopes that, having voted for a public option, House Dems would accept a “trigger” as part of a conference committee compromise rather than putting the kibosh on the entire health care reform project. In some ways, this strategy is old, and in some ways it’s new. For months, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been pushing the idea of a “trigger” internally, and he and Snowe regularly trade legislative and political intelligence. When President Obama addresses a joint session of Congress next week, he will present an outline of a comprehensive health care bill — one that will be universal in character. Privately, the White House is signaling that Obama is willing to sign a bill that is less than universal in its coverage ambitions, though the President will not say so publicly.

via The Public Option Isn’t Even MOSTLY Dead.

Front page article in the Washington Post today, calling attention to a highly questionable aspect of the $750 billion bailout plan: A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks.

We learn from WaPo that the Treasury Department slipped through a $140 billion tax windfall to US banks — in theory repealing 1986 legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan.

The likely illegal change was aggressively lobbied for by banking officials, who sought to take advantage of the market turmoil and credit crisis.This is an ongoing issue we have witnessed in every prior bailout: Opportunism knows no sense of decency.

WaPo:

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill. When they found out, some legislators were furious. Some congressional staff members have privately concluded that the notice was illegal. But they have worried that saying so publicly could unravel several recent bank mergers made possible by the change and send the economy into an even deeper tailspin.

“Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no,” said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. “They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks.”

This should come as no surprise to long-time watchers of the Bush White House. From their extra-legal signing statements (they took them seriously, but legal scholars said they had no legal standing) to the abuses at the Justice Department, there was very little respect ever paid to the US Constitution.

How typical of the rogue elements within the outgoing administration.

Look for litigation about this shortly . . .

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Source:
A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks
With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy
Amit R. Paley
Washington Post, November 10, 2008; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110902155.html

SO – where is that objective media to pile on here, providing oversight of the government that it doesn’t provide itself, asking the tough questions of those in positions of authority and speaking truth to power?

Oh, I forgot. This is Obama’s new Chief of Staff. Can’t ask him anything. It would be “racist” or “dangerous” or “divisive.” ABC News:

President-elect Barack Obama’s newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot “red flags,” according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002. Really? Well, where is the CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC/MSNBC prime-time, multi-day expose of this blatant corruption that was apparently just installed in a position of power in the incoming Hope-n-Change Administration? Which party and which politicians had a hand in this disaster, and which ones allowed it to happen, to fester and to continue unabated?

Look no further than members of the only party in power in Washington, and the Chief of Staff for Barack Obama (who took more campaign slush fund money from Fannie-Freddie than any Congressperson save Chris Dodd (D).

Inconvenient truths – three days after America voted these criminals in. Maybe some of our liberal commenters can explain to us all what Barack Obama’s website (or “The Department of Change”) says about this little inconvenient fact, because I was led to believe these sites contained all of the answers to life’s questions.

Strangely, none of this information about his new Chief of Staff’s role in the collapse of America’s largest and most corrupt mortgage institutions appeared anywhere on either site.