Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, November 17, 2008 11:51:37 AM
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
Sound familiar? It approximates Obama’s response
when people pointed out that the man he picked to lead his VP search
team was one of the greedy executives he’d been demonizing on the
campaign trail:
I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I
mean at some point, we just asked people to do their assignments. Jim
Johnson has a very discrete task, as does Eric Holder, and that is
simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential
candidates. They’re performing that job well. It’s a volunteer, unpaid
position. … So these aren’t folks who are working for me, they’re not
people who I have assigned to a particular job in a future
administration.
That statement no longer applies, apparently. Donilon has already
begun working in some capacity for the transition, which is the core of
Obama’s coming administration. The volunteerism of former Fannie Mae
executives and power players seems remarkable, until one recalls that
Obama took money hand over fist from Fannie/Freddie sources — over
$30,000 per year while in the Senate, far outstripping anyone else in
Congress.
How interesting that Obama keeps selecting lobbyists for his
transition team after spending most of his time over the past year
issuing populist pap vilifying them. Among Fannie Mae’s culprits,
Donilon occupies a special place, having successfully blocked
regulators who tried to correct the corruption at the GSE as well as
having misled board members to the extent of the fraud. He should be
the target of an investigation, not an adviser to an incoming
administration — and his inclusion on Obama’s team exposes Obama’s talk
of “change” as a fraud in itself.