Emanuel to Resign House Seat on Friday

Despite pledge, Obama transition fails to disclose meetings; keeps promise with searchable inauguration donor database

The Obama team, pledging the ''most open and transparent transition in history,'' gets an ''A'' for disclosing donors to the Jan. 20 inauguration and a ''F'' when it comes to revealing transition meetings with groups. Contrary to its own ''seat at the table transparency policy,'' meetings are not posted on a Web site.

I'm giving a ''B'' to the Obama transition report on staff contacts with Gov. Blagojevich. The report was a summary narrative released last week of an internal inquiry into Gov. Blagojevich's selling-of-a-Senate seat scandal. While the Obama team deserves credit for disclosure -- including that President-elect Barack Obama and incoming White House staffers Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel met with federal prosecutors -- offering some notes or transcripts to support the conclusions would have been helpful.

During the presidential primary campaign, then candidate Obama, still an Illinois senator, made a pledge I heard for the first time on Oct. 24, 2007. In a school gym in Dover, N.H., Obama said if president, he would post his meetings on the Internet. That was interesting to me because Obama's Senate staff had been very selective about what Obama Senate-related meetings they disclosed and seemed to be guided by a ''less is best'' policy.

A month after the election, on Dec. 5, John Podesta, a transition co-chair, issued an Obama transparency policy. When it comes to meetings, ''the date and organizations represented at official meetings in the Transition headquarters or agency offices'' would be ''posted on our Web site,'' at www.change.gov.

Indeed, the ''seat at the table'' section states ''on this page, you can track these meetings, view documents provided to the Transition and leave comments for the team,'' but the statement is only partly true.

What is posted are materials -- for example, briefing or position papers -- submitted by groups in connection with a transition meeting. There is no list of meetings on the site, with a meeting defined in the policy as having three or more participants.

Transition spokesman Nick Shapiro, asked why the meetings are not posted despite the policy, said,

''This policy is part of President-elect Obama's commitment to run the most open and transparent transition in history. The transition staff has been instructed that this is a floor and not a ceiling. No transition has ever attempted to implement such disclosure requirements, and as we continue to evaluate the policy, refinements will be made to it."

There's better disclosure news when it comes to Obama's Presidential Inauguration Committee.

The PIC is providing near real time postings of donors of $200 or more, with a user-friendly searchable database at the PICs Web site, www.pic2009.org.

Donations are posted within 48 hours and include the contributors' state and employer.

In another advance on the transparency front, inauguration bundlers -- those who tap their personal networks for money -- are disclosed with how much they have raised.

The Obama team set $50,000 per-person contribution limit for the inauguration with a $300,000-per-bundler cap; no corporate or political action committee money is accepted.

The PIC is revealing more about bundlers than did the presidential campaign.

~~PONG!

Man Obama just might want to reveal is true COLB and get out before he gets impeached The left will turn on him soon they are a bunch of closet racist anyways

Note to Al BABY read the article before posting a reply

Does he still want Rod to keep his seat warm for him?

“been a privilege and an honor to serve as your representative for the last six years” Emanuel

“Political prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” (George Orwell)

Emanuel would not do this unless they believe he will escape any criticism over the Blago scandal.

The rats are already deserting a sinking ship.

What is Rod asking for Emanuels seat...I might want to bid on it.

What is Rod asking for Emanuels seat...I might want to bid on it.

Full immunity from prosecution.

Wouldn’t it be cool if something happened in the next week to cause Obama to throw Creamy* under the bus? Then he’s resigned his seat for nothing.

* “Rahm” is the German word for “cream.”

I wonder if there is any meaning to the timing...Just like when Obama resigned effective Nov 16- it surprised me, cause the date at he time seemed odd (this was before Blago info came out). Rahm is very important in the House. There MAY be something fishy with the timing of this.

I wonder if there have been any calls between Obama’s people and Fitz- isnt his term expire in 2 days, IIRC?

“Emanuel would not do this unless they believe he will escape any criticism over the Blago scandal.”

...or that is what they want you to believe.

Probably, I think it falls under some kind of timeshare program. Don’t know what the lease rate is yet.

I think he probably thinks he’s risen above merely being an IL rep.

Remember, he made $16M in just 2-1/2 years as an investment banker .... right.

He’s an enforcer and deal maker. Anyone who’s as connected to Mayor Daley, Rod Blagojevich, Bill Clinton and Obama as he is WELL connected and insulated and maybe protected.

But, we shall see what else Fitzgerald’s tapes and transcripts reveal and what else Rezko and Blago have to offer.

###

From Wiki:

__________________________

Emanuel began his political career with the public interest and consumer rights organization Illinois Public Action.[23]

He went on to serve in a number of capacities in local and national politics, initially specializing in fundraising for Illinois campaigns and then nationally.[24]

Emanuel worked for Democrat Paul Simon’s 1984 election to the U.S. Senate, was the national campaign director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1988, and then was senior advisor and chief fundraiser for Richard M. Daley’s victorious campaign for Mayor of Chicago in 1989.[23]

At the start of then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s presidential primary campaign, Emanuel was appointed to direct the campaign’s finance committee.[24]

Emanuel insisted that Clinton schedule a lot of time for fundraising and greatly delay campaigning in New Hampshire. Clinton agreed and embarked on an aggressive fundraising campaign across the nation.

The fundraising paid off later, providing the campaign a vital buffer to keep buying television time as attacks on Clinton’s character threatened to swamp the campaign during the New Hampshire primary.[10]

Clinton’s most serious primary rival, Paul Tsongas (the New Hampshire Democratic primary winner in 1992), later withdrew, citing a lack of campaign funds.

Richard Mintz, a Washington public relations consultant who worked with Emanuel on the campaign, spoke about the soundness of the idea: “It was that [extra] million dollars that really allowed the campaign to withstand the storm we had to ride out in New Hampshire [over Clinton’s relationship with Gennifer Flowers and the controversy over his draft status during the Vietnam War ].”[10]

Emanuel’s knowledge of the top donors in the country, and his rapport with potential donors within the Jewish community helped Clinton amass a then-unheard-of sum of $72 million.[10]

Following the campaign, Emanuel became a senior advisor to Clinton at the White House from 1993 to 1998.

In the White House, Emanuel was initially Assistant to the President for Political Affairs and then Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy.

He was a leading strategist in the unsuccessful White House efforts to institute universal healthcare and many other Clinton initiatives.[25]

One of his proudest moments during the Clinton administration “was an event that touched his political sensibilities and his personal ties to Israel: the 1993 Rose Garden signing ceremony after the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (”PLO”).

Emanuel directed the details of the ceremony, down to the choreography of the famous handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat.”[10]

[edit] Career in finance

After serving as an advisor to Bill Clinton, in 1998 Emanuel resigned from his position in the Clinton administration.

He then became an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella, (now Dresdner Kleinwort), where he worked until 2002.[26]

In 1999, he became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office. Emanuel made $16.2 million in his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, according to Congressional disclosures.[26][27]

At Wasserstein Perella, he worked on eight deals, including the acquisition by Commonwealth Edison of Peco Energy and the purchase by GTCR Golder Rauner of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.[26]

Emanuel was named to the Board of Directors for the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (”Freddie Mac”) by then President Bill Clinton in 2000.

His position paid him $31,060 in 2000 and $231,655 in 2001.[28]

During the time Emanuel spent on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities.[29]

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) later accused the board of having “failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.” Emanuel resigned from the board in 2001 when he ran for congress.[30]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel

Countdown for moonbats to try and blast him over draft allegations begin in three, two, one...

Does he still want Rod to keep his seat warm for him?

Yes he does.

Rahm the Enforcer

Sunday, December 28, 2008 2:25:48 PM · 52 of 52
Syncro to All

An article from back in July that is quite telling:

Rahm Emanuel: First Jewish Speaker of the House?
Posted by Daniel Treiman, July 16, 2008, 6:39 pm
Politico examines the ambitions of Democratic powerbroker Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who is considered a possible Senate successor to Barack Obama in the event that the Illinois Democrat is elected president in November.
But Emanuel insists that he’s not interested in Obama’s Senate seat , which, Politico notes, begs the question, “What does Rahm really want, and what is his timetable for getting there?”
Politico reports that “before he was even elected to his first term as the congressman from the North Side of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel was telling friends that he had one goal in life: to become the first Jewish speaker of the House.”
Insiders apparently think that Emanuel’s dream is a real possibility. Politico’s John Bresnahan writes:

…the private consensus among Democratic members, even among those who count themselves as critics, is that Emanuel is on the path to the speaker’s chair. Emanuel will have to do some fence-mending to get there, especially with some black and Hispanic Democrats he has offended over the years. But that obstacle is not seen as insurmountable for someone who, as chairman of the DCCC, gets the lion’s share of the credit for ending the GOP’s control of the House after 12 years.
“The whole question is one of time,” said one Democrat close to the current leadership team, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Does Rahm want to put in the time to be speaker? Will he hang in there long enough? He is young enough to wait, but will he? His age [48] is a dual-edged thing. It gives him time to wait, but does he want to put in six or eight or even 10 years or more? I don’t know.”
Pelosi is 68. Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland is 69. Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina turns 68 next week. If Pelosi serves another four to six years as speaker — the traditional tenure for the hugely demanding job — the two men next in line will be in their 70s by the time she steps down.

Incidentally, there would be a certain irony if Emanuel winds up getting Obama’s Senate seat: Emanuel was one of the few Illinois pols who didn’t jump on the Obama bandwagon during the primaries. He found himself in the sticky situation of choosing between the Clintons — who had given him his big break with a prominent White House post — and his home-state senator. His response? He hid under his desk.

IMO if that doesn't work out he would like the Senator from New York job.

Nazi Pelousi is now trying to smile thru her botox infested mug. She was always worried about and maneuvering around that thug.

How fitting to have a guy named Emanuel on the team of “the messiah”.