Nancy Killefer, who was nominated as the government’s first chief performance officer, has withdrawn her candidacy for the job.
When her selection was announced by President Barack Obama on Jan. 7, The Associated Press disclosed that in 2005 the District of Columbia government had filed a more than $900 tax lien on her home for …
Under the current law, you can be hired to advise corporations on how to win favors from Washington without ever registering as a lobbyists. In other words, you can be involved in “lobbying activities” that do not involve “lobbying contacts” and never wear a scarlet “L” on your Brooks Brothers suit. Lots of people have done this, …
On Saturday, I wrote a Swampland post about the difference between the Congressional Budget Office score of the House stimulus bill and the original goals for the plan proposed by President Obama’s team. (While Obama had proposed $300 billion in tax cuts, the CBO said the House plan only contained $182 billion in tax cuts.) On Monday, at …
On a morning when the New York Times is editorializing that Tom Daschle should step aside, Politico’s Ben Smith and Eamon Javers are reporting yet another potential problem for the HHS nominee:
Tom Daschle backed the patron who paid him a million-dollar salary and supplied him with a free car and driver for a job inside the Obama
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You hear Republicans increasingly making the argument that this stimulus package risks setting the United States on the same disastrous economic course that Japan pursued in the 1990s. Over at the Wall Street Journal, Gerald Seib has an interesting look at the similarities and the differences.
Who knew? I didn’t, until I came across it by chance. But you can follow us here.
In the ArenaUncategorized
Early indications are that Nouri al-Malaki’s Dawa party has had a strong showing in the regional elections; the other big surprise is the revival of former prime minister Iyad Allawi’s secular list. What does it mean? Well, the message is oblique. These were regional elections, with only indirect influence on the national assembly …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Pete Wehner, the former Bush propagandist now skulking about the Center for Unethical Public Policy (oh, sorry: it’s the Center for Ethics and Public Policy, ironically enough), predicts that after I’d praised Obama for a low-key first week (no showbiz press ops, no soundbite rants about malefactors of great wealth), I would neglect to …
Barack Obama may be the most eloquent politician on the scene today, but he laid a big one in yesterday’s interview with Matt Lauer.:
LAUER: Yeah, well — let — let me show you. This is the — the current issue of — of Us Weekly.
OBAMA: Right.
LAUER: And here’s a great picture —
OBAMA: Oh, it’s
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Mark Leibovich’s profile of Robert Gibbs and the Obama campaign’s communications operation was much-discussed when it came out in December. But there was one troubling passage in the piece that has not gotten the attention it deserves:
[Anita] Dunn tells the story of a tense practice session before the third debate in which Obama,
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In the ArenaUncategorized
It is hilarious to watch Republicans make distinctions between stimulus and…stimulus. Take Max Boot, for example. Please. Boot quotes the Wall Street Journal editorial board–which stands somewhere to the right of Hoover–on the inadvisability of spending money on things like rail transport (essential to move the country away from oil …
Today’s stories–reporting that Tom Daschle knew about his tax problem as far back as last June, but didn’t tell the Obama transition team about it until last month–are in many ways more damaging, I think, than the initial reports.:
Although Daschle had known since June 2008 that he needed to correct his tax returns, he never
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