It’s one thing to accept money from a piece of legislation you campaigned strenuously against. But we’re seeing more and more stories about Republicans who just got done trashing the stimulus bill in Washington and are now back in their districts taking credit for the spending programs contained in it. A lot of the stories have already been written up. But I think there are many, many more out there. So keep an eye on your local media for examples.
And remember, the criteria are pretty clear. Every House Republican voted against the bill. So any member of the House with an R after his or her name qualifies. And in the senate pretty much the same with the exception of Snowe, Collins and Specter.
Send us links or other citations. We’ll apply the appropriate snark and share with the rest of the TPM readership, all culminating in a ground GOP Stimulus Hypocrimap.
Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) has canceled his public events today and is hunkering down with advisers. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) says he doesn’t know accused billionaire fraudster Allen Stanford; photos say otherwise.
There’s been a lot of speculation about whether Bernie Madoff’s operation started legit and then drifted into a Ponzi scheme over time to cover up losses.
But the trustee told Madoff victims this morning: “We have no evidence to indicate securities were purchased for customer accounts.”
As we mentioned below, Rep. Pete Sessions and his congressional office are still saying that Sessions has never met billionaire fraudster Sir Allen Stanford — notwithstanding the fact that Zack Roth has come up with a picture of the two of them chilling down in Antigua a few years ago.
But it seems that there’s no shortage of pictures of these two pals spending time together. TPM Reader ES just sent us a link to this new picture on an Antiguan government website.
It seems there’s no shortage of pictures for the Sessions/Stanford photo album, so definitely send us your snapshots of Sessions and Stanford and we’ll share them with readers too.
The Hill has a piece today arguing that Obama might have a harder time pushing bank nationalization than a Republican since he’d be more vulnerable to charges that he’s a dangerous left-wing freak like Alan Greenspan, Joe Stiglitz, Lindsey
Graham and others who support the idea. As a political matter that may or may not be true. But what caught my eye was the quote from Scott Talbott, vice president and spokesperson for the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents most of the big TARP recipients in addition to a medium sized list of big financial institutions nationwide.
Says Talbott: “If you had government running the banks, in the long run, you’d destroy the private sector.”
The only problem is that no one is talking about a ‘long run’. No one who is remotely part of the mainstream policy discussion is talking about the government taking over and running the banking sector. The idea under discussion is having the government take over the failed banks, clean them up and then reprivatize them. Private banks in, private banks out. The only difference is that the private banks that come out on the other side would be owned by different people. That’s the rub.
So this is a complete non-point.
Last fall Sir Allen went on CNBC for a brief segment. Most of the attention has been focused on him saying it was fun being a billionaire, but I find the rest of the interview — where’s he’s bragging about how they didn’t get killed in the subprime debacle because they never felt like they could properly assess the “risk” — far more entertaining and ironic:
Coleman: Votes I said were legal should now be thrown out.