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*snip* The Obama transition team released the names of 13 people on Wednesday who will direct a top-to-bottom review of federal agencies and another six who will lead teams that will review Treasury, State and Defense department policy, budget and personnel issues. *snip* It includes four former lobbyists, three top campaign fund-raisers and two former employees of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, with some overlap among them. Four people in the group have ties to the consultant McKinsey & Co. and two have experience leading high-tech start-ups. Mr. Obama's transition advisers include Tom Donilon, a top lobbyist for Fannie Mae,...

America Held Hostage- the Obama Files... With a hattip to Rush ( His idea during the Clinton plague upon America ) I am starting a file on “The One,” mostly starting from the election date. Older stuff- links, quotes, quips, and sometimes pointed graphics can be found by scrolling back from these two posts: -Hillary Clinton- archives, comments, and opposition research---Sarah Palin- links, from the beginning--There is some good material in those posts that raises a lot of uncomfortable questions that everyone ought to be asking, and probably will once the “new” wears off, and we are stuck with four...

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES HOLDS A HEARING ON TREASURY DEPARTMENT'S VIEWS ON THE REGULATION OF GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTERPRISES SEPTEMBER 10, 2003And I now will recognize the ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Frank. FRANK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate hearing from the two Cabinet secretaries, but I just say at the outset that before we move on any legislation, I would hope we would have some additional hearings. And in particular, I think it's important that the variety of groups in our country who care about housing be invited, because that's my major focus here, as it's...

Goodfellow’s BedfellowsWho’s in Bed with the Washington PostBy Fedora Introduction I. A Radical Education: Boston University and Cambridge-Goddard II. Vietnam Roots: Indochina Resource Center A. Luce at International Voluntary Services B. Luce and Cornell’s Hanoi for Lunch Bunch C. Luce’s Tiger Cages and the Indochina Mobile Education Project D. Luce and Branfman: The COLIFAM Connection E. Luce, Branfman, Winter Soldier, and Project Air War F. The Indochina Resource Center: Branfman, Luce, and Goodfellow G. The IRC and the Indochina Peace Campaign: The Hayden-Fonda Link III. Post-Vietnam Transition: Campaign for a Democratic Foreign Policy and Coalition for a New Foreign and...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Employees at mortgage giant Fannie Mae manipulated accounting so that executives could collect millions in bonuses as senior management deceived investors and stonewalled regulators at a company whose prestigious image was phony, a federal agency charged Tuesday. The blistering report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the product of an extensive three-year investigation, was issued as the government-sponsored company struggles to emerge from an $11 billion accounting scandal. Earlier, a person familiar with the situation said that Fannie Mae was being fined between $300 million and $500 million for the alleged manipulation of accounting to...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mortgage giant Fannie Mae has used its regional partnership offices over the years primarily to lobby Congress instead of promoting affordable housing, the Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded after a yearlong review. HUD opened a formal inquiry into the political activities of Fannie Mae's regional offices in July 2004 following a Wall Street Journal story that said the company used its partnership offices to funnel money into key congressional districts. HUD, which refused to release its report to the public, said in a statement Monday that Fannie's congressional charter allows it to set up regional...

As White House watchers mull possible replacements for Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, Deputy National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon appears to be on the short list. Donilon was part of the Obama transition team and served in the Clinton and Carter administrations. But one listing on his resume could cause President Obama and his vetting team a headache. Donilon was also Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae (2000-2005) during investigations into accounting irregularities at the mortgage giant and was accused of overseeing a lobbying campaign against those investigations in a scathing government report.

Four weeks before the mid-terms and Barack Obama fires General Jim Jones as National Security Adviser and appoints Tom Donilon in his place. So what on earth is going on and what does this mean? Here are 10 reasons to be worried: 1. Donilon has a poor relationship with Bob Gates, the Pentagon chief. Gates has issued a statement lauding his “very productive and very good working relationship” with Donilon. But Bob Woodward reported that Gates once told Jones that Donilon would be a “disaster” as National Security Adviser. Gates, Washington’s Mr Steady, is hardly likely to have used that...

Donilon, who contributed $4,600 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in March 2007 (and gave the maximum $2,300 to Obama for the general election in July), has a long resume in Democratic politics. He headed the Clinton-Gore transition effort and Clinton’s 1992 debate prep. He also served as an aide to Sen. Joe Biden in his failed 1988 presidential bid. More recently, he served as Fannie Mae’s executive vice president for law and policy from 1999 until 2005, giving him control of Fannie Mae’s legal, regulatory and public policy activities and government and industry relations. Donilon was one of several executives...

The exodus of senior aides from the White House continued as Gen James Jones, Barack Obama’s head of National Security, resigned. His departure, which comes a week after Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, resigned, removes one of the few senior officials not belonging to the US president’s coterie of long-time advisers. Brought in originally for his vast experience and independent voice, it had been clear for some time that the former Nato supreme commander had failed to gel with the president’s inner circle. Gen Jones is being replaced by one of those close aides, his former deputy Thomas Donilon....

Thomas Donilon, named by Barack Obama as an adviser to his transition team, oversaw lobbyist efforts to undermine OFHEO’s regulatory efforts over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ABC News reports on Donilon’s history and his participation in painting a much rosier picture than reality provided for Fannie Mae’s board. The Obama rebuttal will sound familiar to those who recall Jim Johnson’s involvement with Obama’s campaign: One of Obama’s top transition team members, Thomas Donilon, oversaw an aggressive, backdoor lobbying campaign by mortgage giant Fannie Mae to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm’s accounting irregularities, according to a...