An unnamed White House official, quoted in today’s Times, describing Bush administration efforts to get home foreclosure relief: “It’s become clear that if you stick your head up, it’ll get cut off. We’re done in two months. The next administration can try to find a way out of that maze.”

Thanks to TPM Reader JR for the catch.

Federal lawmakers barred from using the term “haircut” in the context of discussing bankruptcy proceedings.

Sen. Lugar’s office throws cold water on reports that Bill Clinton will be called to testify at Hillary’s confirmation hearing.

“The manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.”

Those are the words of Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Obama’s nominee to serve as Energy Secretary, quoted by Elizabeth Kolbert in a post on the New Yorker’s blog.

The message is to Detroit. But anecdote comes from California’s role in setting energy efficiency standards for refrigerators in the 1970s, something the manufacturers said couldn’t be done. But when they were forced to do it, they did it — in spades. Since all this happened, to quote Kolbert, “the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.”

As Chu says, the key was they took the issue out of the hands of the lobbyists and into the hands of the engineers.

I’m always struck by the way our political culture puts regulations and mandates down as somehow inimical to free enterprise, innovation and ingenuity when in fact, in most cases, quite the opposite is the case. Resistance to efficiency standards like these is almost always born of a lack of confidence in the abilities of our engineers and technology. And the kind of innovations these sorts of regulations require is almost always a boon to economic growth.

If the issue is dictating the inner workings of manufacturing processes, that’s one thing. But if it is saying such and such benchmarks must be met by such and such year, that’s usually a prod to innovation.

Public Citizen has a blog tracking the Obama transition: becoming44.com.

If there’s a special election to fill Obama’s senate seat, she says she’s running.

Kwame Raoul, who succeeded President-elect Obama in his state senate seat, is now coming forward to say that he too got the shake-down from Gov. Blagojevich as he sought appoint to the two remaining years of Obama’s federal senate term. Raoul says he withdrew his name from further consideration because he was spooked by the governor’s ask. But the more interesting part of the article describing Raoul’s story in the Times is his suggestion that it was an open secret that Blagojevich was looking for a pay-off of some sort …

The state senator, Kwame Raoul, who represents the South Side of Chicago, offered few details of his interaction with the governor’s office but said he received a call about a month ago confirming that he was under consideration. Soon afterward, however, Mr. Raoul said he ran head-on into another message: that the governor was looking for a candidate who offered something of tangible value to him.

“It was open knowledge among people in and around Springfield,” Mr. Raoul said. “Legislators and lobbyists alike openly talked about the fact that the governor would want to appoint somebody who would benefit him. I can firmly say that I’ve had these conversations, that I’ve spoken with both legislators and lobbyists who felt that that would be the consideration in his appointment.”

Mr. Raoul would not specifically say what the content of the conversations were, or whom they were with, except that the initial inquiry from the governor’s office was made by Victor Roberson, deputy director for intergovernmental affairs. Interest in his candidacy died on both sides, Mr. Raoul said, adding, “Obviously, the perception was that I didn’t have anything to give other than my service.”

There’s a little wiggle room there. There’s horse trading and then there’s little for some sort of personal pay off. And Raoul’s comments are ambiguous as to what was common knowledge. But this does suggest that you not have needed to be the FBI agents listening to the wiretaps to know what was up.

Late Update: TPM Reader JP says that Raoul’s words are far more ambiguous than I suggest. Many governors in a position to appoint someone to the senate would want to appoint someone who would ‘benefit’ them. As in, strengthen them politically, be a way to reward friends, have someone loyal in Washington, etc. If we’re looking at the words themselves, I’d agree. But I think we need to look at the context in which Raoul knew he was saying these things. I think he must have been aware he was suggesting more than that, even not quite the boffo level of corruption revealed on the tapes.

The automaker bailout is now, apparently, officially and really dead. Dems were willing to agree to Republican demands that Big 3 employees move to wage parity with Japanese automakers operating in the US. But they wouldn’t agree to reach parity by 2009, as Republicans demanded.

Late Update: The AP has a different take on it— suggesting it wasn’t the Democrats who wouldn’t agree to the immediate move to wage parity but rather the UAW. Perhaps it’s simply a difference in emphasis since I would assume the Dems and the UAW leaders were operating in close consultation in the negotiations.

Later Update: Asian markets already tumbling on the news.

Comment: In the future I think it will be difficult to explain why this happened, perhaps even more challenging to explain why this key national decision was left in the hands of lame duck senate Republicans.

The Chicago Tribune has unnamed sources telling it that people close to Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., were actively raising campaign cash for Blagojevich to secure the Senate appointment for Jackson:

As Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to pick Illinois’ next U.S. senator, businessmen with ties to both the governor and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed raising at least $1 million for Blagojevich’s campaign as a way to encourage him to pick Jackson for the job, the Tribune has learned.

Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak, a major Blagojevich supporter who also has fundraising and business ties to the Jackson family, according to several attendees and public records.

Two businessmen who attended the meeting and spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity said that Nayak and Blagojevich aide Rajinder Bedi privately told many of the more than two dozen attendees the fundraising effort was aimed at supporting Jackson’s bid for the Senate.

Late Update: As I read through the story again, I’m struck by how someone with a broken internal ethical radar would see no difference between the usual mutual back-scratching (a Senate hopeful padding the campaign coffers of powerful state Democrats? how shocking!) and ethically and legally impermissible explicit quid pro quos.