Over Thanksgiving we gave you our best of the primary season election reel… Now, in honor of the winter holidays, we’ve combed through hours of election speeches, debates, and election brouhaha to bring you The Best Of… 2008 General Election. Strap on your seatbelts, TPMtv viewers:
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
Meet a leading foe of the labor unions as they prepare for their big battle over the Employee Free Choice Act: A business rep who’s known as the “Dr. Evil” of D.C. lobbyists.
We’ll be hearing a lot from him soon enough.
From the Times Mag’s piece on Robert Gibbs which is coming out this weekend …
The paradox of this scene was that the Obama campaign’s communications strategy was predicated in part on an aggressive indifference to this insider set. Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time’s Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. “If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters. He said his least favorite words in the English language were, “I saw someone on cable say this. . . .”
Late Update: In the real world, the Obama campaign lavished far better treatment on Politico than the liberal blogs ever received. —gs
From a press release from the Organic Consumers Association:
Today’s announcement that former Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack, has been selected as the new Secretary of Agriculture sent a chill through the sustainable food and farming community who have been lobbying for a champion in the new administration.
“Vilsack’s nomination sends the message that dangerous, untested, unlabeled genetically engineered crops will be the norm in the Obama Administration,” said Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director of Organic Consumers Association. “Our nation’s future depends on crafting a forward-thinking strategy to promote organic and sustainable food and farming, and address the related crises of climate change, diminishing energy supplies, deteriorating public health, and economic depression.”
A lot of rich people have taken a bath courtesy of Bernie Madoff’s scam. And a long list of Jewish foundations and charities have been devastated because so many of them put their foundations’ endowment money in his hands for safe-keeping.
But it turns out that when it came to their own foundations, his sons knew not to have their dad manage the money.
They invested their foundations’ assets with a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers.
Lawyers for John Walker Lindh (the ‘American Taliban’), who has now spent seven years in prison, are asking President Bush to commute his sentence. Not expecting a lot of agreements. And I don’t think it’s particularly likely. But I think it’s the right thing to do.
Bloomberg says Obama is likely to tap Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood as Transportation Secretary.
Transportation is a famously disrespected Department, in the sense of being a high or low profile appointment. That’s where Bush put his token Dem, Norm Mineta. But given Obama’s expected emphasis on infrastructure and green transportation technologies, there’s probably more significance to the pick that has recently been the case.
Lurking in the background of the blossoming Madoff scandal has been the name Harry Markopolos, a money manager and investment investigator who began pushing the SEC to investigate Madoff almost a decade ago. Tonight the Journal has a lengthy article out describing Markopolos’s quest and — even more interesting — the documents Markopolos submitted to the SEC to show that Madoff’s record of consistent low-double-digit returns simply couldn’t be legit. Unfortunately, it’s behind their fire wall. But if you’ve got a subscription, definitely take a look.
Late Update: You can see Markopolos’s original filing with the SEC here.
A veteran SEC enforcement official tells TPMmuckraker that Bernie Madoff’s operation raised at least three “classic red flags” that should have prompted the SEC to take a closer look.